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AAD |
Australian Antarctic Division |
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Apple |
A fibreglass field hut |
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Aurora |
Aurora
is the name given to the phenomena of ghostly shimmering lights
that appear in the skies of the Earth towards the polar regions.
aurora - the display "dancing"
light patterns seen in areas of high latitudes. Auroras are caused
by magnetic sun storms that release huge amounts of energy. The
energy travels toward Earth as an ionic cloud that interacts with
Earth's magnetic field. The ions move Earth's magnetic poles where
they interact with the ionosphere. The ions energize the oxygen
and nitrogen, causing them to emit light.
In the north, they are called
Aurora Borealis (northern lights). In the south, Aurora Australis
(southern lights)
Links:
This is an excellent interactive website developed by NASA
[ http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/auroras/story.html
] |
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Aurora Australis |
1.
The name given to Aurora in the Southern Hemisphere polar region |
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Aurora
Australis |
2.
The name given to the research vessel operated by the Australian Antarctic
Division click
for more information on the Aurora Australis |
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B |
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Blizzard |
"When the visibility
is less than 100m due to blowing snow and the wind speed is greater
than 35 knots (65 km/h) for more than a continuous 10 minute period
in an hour". |
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C |
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Crevasse |
Cracks and
fissures in the ice, frequently snow-covered and not readily visible,
and one of the most hazardous and everpresent dangers down here. |
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Dew
point |
The temperature
to which air must be cooled at a constant pressure to become saturated.
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F |
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Fast Ice |
Sea ice connected
to th continent or islands |
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Field Trip |
Any departure from
the defined station limits |
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Fjord |
(fiord)
- a long, narrow, steep-walled, u-shaped coastal inlet. Fjords typically
have been excavated by glaciers. More. |
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Glacier
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A large mass of
ice, air, water, and rock debris formed at least partially on land.
Glaciers are amounts of ice large enough to flow with gravity because
of internal deformation. Glaciers include small valley glaciers, ice
streams, ice caps, and ice sheets. The term glacier also includes
ice shelves if they are fed by glaciers.
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Glacier
terminus |
The leading edge
of the glacier; the glacier nose. The glacier terminus often has a
large amount of glacial debris. More. |
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Glaciology
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The study of the
physical and chemical properties of snow and ice. Glaciologists might
study the movement of ice sheets, and how ice flows. Glaciologists
also study how snow slowly changes to glacier ice. |
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Hagglund |
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Husky |
Australia was the
last of the Antarctic countries to remove working dogs from their
base at Mawson in 1992. Without the husky teams Antarctica would
not have been explored to the degree that it has now with all of
the successful early explorations employing dog teams as a means
of transport.
Huskies were first used in
the Antarctic by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1898-1900.
The huskies wore harnesses and could haul from fifty up to ninety
kilograms.
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I |
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Ice
age |
(glacial
period, glacial epoch) - recurring periods in Earth's history when
the climate was colder and glaciers expanded to cover larger areas
of the Earth's surface. |
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Iceberg |
Icebergs
are nothing more than solid water. They float because the density
of the ice is less than the density of sea water. Icebergs come in
all shapes and sizes, they have been compared to mountains, pyramids
and castles.
Many icebergs are moulded into unusual and fascinating shapes by the
action of the wind and waves. The process of melting causes an iceberg
to change shape.
Icebergs are formed both in the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans. Arctic
icebergs come mainly from Greenland, a huge island which is almost
completely covered by an ice sheet.
The course of an iceberg cannot be judged by wind direction alone.
Since nine-tenths of an icebergs mass lies under water, much more
of a bergs surface is affected by water currents than by wind. The
final direction is one that takes both the wind and currents into
account. A berg can move against or across the wind, as well as downward
or at small angles to it. |
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Ice
cap |
A
large dome-shaped mass of ice that is thick enough to cover all topography
underneath it. Ice caps are smaller than ice sheets, usually with
an area less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,000 square miles).
Ice caps are large enough to deform and flow with gravity and spread
outward in all directions |
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Ice
cliff |
Walls
of ice where glaciers meet the sea, such as at the edge of land or
the edge of an ice shelf. Ice cliffs occur in areas where drainage
of the ice from the continent diverges and slows. More. |
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Ice
crystals |
Tiny
particles of ice produced when a state of supersaturation of moisture
is obtained in the atmosphere. Ice crystals account for the majority
of the accumulation on the Polar Plateau. Often ice crystals precipitate
when the sky is clear! Ice crystals may be called ice needles, although
they do not have the shape of needles. |
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Ice
dome |
Slow
moving areas of accumulation on an ice sheet. Ice domes are roughly
symmetrical in outline, and dome-shaped in cross-section. An ice sheet
might be comprised of several ice domes. |
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Ice
floe |
A
large, flat, sheet of ice that has broken off of the coast and floats
in open water. |
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Ice
sheet |
Large
mass of ice that is thick enough to cover the topography under it.
Ice sheets are large enough to deform and move with gravity. Ice sheets
are larger than ice caps. Ice sheets cover large parts of Greenland
and Antarctica. |
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Ice
shelf |
An
ice shelf is a large sheet of ice that is permanently attached to
land, never melts over summer, but is still floating on the ocean.
These ice shelves are permanent features of the Antarctic geography
and can be extremely thick. The Amery Ice Shelf in Eastern Antarctica
is around 2000m thick in some spots! |
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Ice
stream |
A
rapidly moving current of ice in an ice sheet or ice cap. An ice stream
flows more quickly than the surrounding ice and pulls ice out of the
ice sheet. Antarctic ice streams flow about one kilometer per year
(0.6 miles per year). |
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Ice
tongue |
Long,
narrow, projection of ice out from the coastline. Ice tongues form
where a valley glacier flows rapidly to the sea or a lake. Ice tongues
may float. Drygalski Ice Tongue is a large ice tongue in Ross Sea.
More. |
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Jamesways |
Canvas and wood "tents"
that are used as semi-permanent shelter. At Wilkes station series
of jamesways connected buildings toeach other as a common central
hallway |
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K |
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Katabatics
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(From
the Greek: katabaino - to go down) is the generic term for downslope
winds flowing from high elevations of mountains, plateaus, and hills
down their slopes to the valleys or plains below. |
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Knot |
A
nautical unit of speed equal to the velocity at which one nautical
mile is traveled in one hour. Used primarily by marine interests and
in weather observations. A knot is equivalent to 1.151 statute miles
per hour or 1.852 kilometers per hour.
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Krill |
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Lichen
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A
symbiotic association of algae and fungus. The fungus provides protection
and moisture. The photosynthetic algae provide food for the fungus. |
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Moraines
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Accumulations
of poorly sorted glacial materials (till) transported by glacial ice.
Moraines can form in many ways. Some moraines form in front of a glacier
(terminal or end moraine), along the side of a glacier (lateral moraine),
or under a glacier (ground moraine).
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Moss |
Small, leafy-stemmed
cryptogamic plants belonging to the class Musci. Mosses grow in carpet-like
mats and tufts on moist ground. |
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Mukluk |
A heavy-duty insulated boot
(an Inuit word) |
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Nunatak |
- an isolated
peak of bedrock that sticks above the surface of an ice sheet. Nunataks
offer important information about ice-covered regions because they
provide a sample of the rocks that lie under the ice. |
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Ozone |
A chemically active
bluish gas that is made of three oxygen atoms (O3). Ozone occurs in
the atmosphere at altitudes of approximately 15 to 30 kilometers (9
to 19 miles). Ozone acts as a protective barrier for Earth's surface
by blocking much of the potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation
that comes from the sun.
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Ozone layer
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A layer in the
upper stratosphere of Earth's atmosphere that contains almost 90%
of Earth's ozone. The ozone layer occurs approximately 15 to 30 kilometers
above the surface of Earth. |
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P |
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Pancake
ice |
Coherent
plates of ice that can reach a few meters across (a few feet). Pancake
ice grows from thickened grease ice and resembles pancakes or lily
pads. The edges are upturned because the plates bump into each other.
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Polynyas |
Areas
of open water in pack ice or sea ice. Polynyas can be kept open by
consistent winds or upwelling. Polynyas tend to recur in the same
locations year after year. |
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Polar
Front |
(Antarctic
Convergence) - surface oceanographic boundary at which the colder,
saltier Antarctic Surface Waters sink beneath the northerly warmer,
less salty Subantarctic Surface Waters. |
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Q |
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R |
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Rookery |
A colony of penguins or seals |
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S |
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Salinity
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The amount of
dissolved salts contained in sea water. The average salinity of sea
water is 35 parts per thousand. Freshwater has a salinity of 0 parts
per thousand. |
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Sastrugi |
Wind blown snow
heaped into ridges parallel to the wind direction. Can be quite large
- perhaps up to 2m high. |
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Sea
Ice
for
more information |
A general term
for the seasonal ice that forms from seawater. Sea ice can cover
large parts of polar waters in the winter. The sea ice melts back
in the summer. (click
for more information) |
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Skua |
A variety of Antarctic
seagull |
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Stay
(
more about "Stay") |
A dog, or to
be more precise a Guide Dogs collection box in the shape of a full-sized
golden retriever,
Stay, as she is called, has
been an honorary expeditioner since 1992. That was the same year
that real dogs, huskies, were finally removed from our sister station
Mawson. Since then, Stay has been the only dog in Antarctica. She
has been repeatedly kidnapped, has had one leg replaced by a wooden
one, and has entered Antarctic folklore.
She has wintered at every Australian
station, and this time she came to Davis from an even more extensive
trip, to Spitzbergen in the Arctic. |
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Snout |
The
surface of the ocean after it freezes. Sea ice is not permanent -
it "breaks out" or melts and disappears over summer and
reforms again for winter. |
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Snow |
Frozen
precipitation in the form of white or translucent ice crystals in
complex branched hexagonal form. It most often falls from stratiform
clouds, but can fall as snow showers from cumuliform ones. It usually
appears clustered into snowflakes.
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Snow
blindness |
Temporary
blindness or impaired vision that results from bright sunlight reflected
off the snow surface. The medical term is niphablepsia.
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Snow
devil |
A
small, rotating wind that picks up loose snow instead of dirt (like
a dust devil) or water (like a waterspout). Formed mechanically by
the convergence of local air currents. Also called a snowspout.
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Solstice |
The
point at which the sun is the furthest on the ecliptic from the celestial
equator. The point at which sun is at maximum distance from the equator
and days and nights are most unequal in duration. The Tropic of Cancer
and the Tropic of Capricorn are those parallels of latitude which
lies directly beneath a solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere, the
summer solstice falls on or about December 21 and the winter solstice
on or about June 21
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Southern
Hemisphere |
The
southern half of the Earth. The part of the globe "below"
the equator. |
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South
geographic pole |
90
degrees S.
The south geographic pole is
the southern location where the axis of rotation of Earth intersects
Earth's surface. It also is home to Amundsen Scott Station.
The south geomagnetic pole
is tilted about 12 degrees to the axis of rotation of the Earth
(geographic pole). |
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South
magnetic pole |
The
point on Earth's surface that a south-seeking compass needle seeks.
This point is off the coast of Wilkes Land. |
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Sun
dog |
Either of two colored
luminous spots that appear at roughly 22 degrees on both sides of
the sun at the same elevation. They are caused by the refraction of
sunlight passing through ice crystals. They are most commonly seen
during winter in the middle latitudes and are exclusively associated
with cirriform clouds. The scientific name for sun dogs is parhelion
and they are also known as mock suns. |
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Sun
pillar |
Horizontal
ice crystals in the form of plates, which occur in clouds and ice
fog near the earth's surface, reflect sunlight into vertical sun pillars
for a spectacular display. |
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Tabular
iceberg |
A
flat-topped iceberg. |
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Traverse |
The
name for any journey on the ice to any place of distance |
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U |
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W |
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White-out
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A
weather condition in which the horizon cannot be identified and there
are no shadows. The clouds in the sky and the white snow on the ground
blend. White out conditions are potentially dangerous because it is
difficult to find a point of reference.
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Windchill
more
about Windchill |
An
expression of temperature that incorporates wind speed in the temperature
reported. Wind can make the temperature feel cooler. The wind chill
factor is a way of expressing how cold the wind might make the temperature
feel. (more
about Windchill ) |
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X |
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Y |
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Z |
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Zooplankton
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Microscopic free-swimming
or suspended marine or freshwater animals within the planktonic or
planktic community. Many organisms spend part of their lives as zooplankton,
either in a juvenile life stage or an adult life stage (including
crustaceans like shrimp, echinoderms or starfish, corals). |