Start of the last field season

Finally, the last leg of the field work of the IceCon project. This time Dr Reinhard Drews (ULB) and Dr. Nicolas Bergeot (ROB) will form the team to finish up the last measurements for the project and retrieve the data that has been collected so far. Today they arrived safely in Cape Town for the first leg of the voyage. It is planned to fly out on Friday to Antarctic, but all depends on the weather conditions that don't look so well so far.

Reinhard (left) and Nico, ready for departure in Brussels Airport (5 Januray 2016).

The field work has - as usual - a very tight plan, including travel to the ice shelf to retrieve radar instruments and reinstall the GNSS/GPS systems for another year of deployment that are part of the Tweeting Ice Shelf (http://tweetiniceshelf.blogspot.com - @TweetinIceShelf on Twitter). A second set of radar measurements the the ApRES system (phase sensitive radar) needs to be done on Derwael ice rise, in order to get the vertical velocity field within the ice mass. The geodetic GNSS will also be dismantled there. Finally, a series of further measurements with radar (high and low frequency + ApRES) will be carried out in the vicinity of the grounding line, enabling to have sufficient data to constrain the ongoing modelling of the deglaciation in this area.

The two other cGNSS systems on rock need to be revisited as well, checked, data downloaded and put in operation again. And all this in one month.
We'll keep you posted on the events, live from the field.

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