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There's a few people onboard not travelling as well as they'd like to, but we really have little to complain about as far as the conditions go. The ship is moving easily in a moderate swell, with a few larger waves with deep troughs resulting in the occasional spray of water on the bridge windows.
We are host to a substantial science project this trip, which will be resident for the entire shipping season this year: the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is collaborating with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology on the Measurements of Aerosols, Radiation, and Clouds over the Southern Ocean (MARCUS) campaign. The experiment will acquire comprehensive observations over the Southern Ocean during a 5‐month period centred on the Austral summer using our ship as it makes its way between Hobart, Australia, and Antarctica, visiting Macquarie Island and Davis, Casey and Mawson. MARCUS will collect measurements of aerosols in the boundary layer, retrieve vertical distributions of physical properties of liquid and mixed‐phase clouds and measure down-welling radiative fluxes over the Southern Ocean. The MARCUS data will provide an insight into key processes controlling aerosols, clouds, and their interactions in a remote region where climate models typically perform poorly. Our ARM team managed their first balloon launches today, collecting data up to 26km above the release point.
The down side for us, is that the Monkey deck, above the bridge (a prime spot for Aurora watching!), is bristling with high tech expensive instruments, and is out of bounds to nearly all of us. So we're all hoping for a good talk on the project and maybe a tour of the exotic instrumentation when we get to the ice!
We'll have a time change tonight to begin to align ourselves with Davis time (UTC+7), so clocks back one hour tonight (UTC+10).
Regards, Doug & Andrew
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.