Swedish researchers fly all the way to the AntarcticJanuary 20, 2003Participants in the second part of this winter's polar expedition to the Antarctic, SWEDARP 2002/03, are ready to depart. Today, Monday, January 20, five members of the expedition will leave Sweden to join the group of ten researchers already on site in Antarctica as of the middle of December. Swedish scientists in the fields of glaciology, atmospheric physics, and chemical meteorology are participating in the expedition: · Glaciologists from Uppsala University will be working with ice dynamics and mass balance in local glaciers. · Researchers from the Institute for Space Physics in Kiruna will measure atmospheric electricity and the impact of solar wind on global electrical currents. · Meteorologists from Stockholm University will launch a long-term project to measure local variations of aerosol in the air and snow in Antarctica. They will fly down via Cape Town in South Africa. From there the journey will continue by large transport plane of the Tupolev model (TU-154M). This type of plane comes from Russia and can land on ice. The expedition is charted to leave Cape Town on January 25. The flight to Antarctica takes about six hours, and the plane is to land at the Russian station Novolazarevskaya ("Novo"). From there the team will be flown to the Swedish station Wasa on a plane of Antonov model (AN-2). Flying scientists to Antarctica is something new for Sweden and will be the dominant means of transport for future expeditions to that continent. Yet another airport in Dronning Maud Land is planned through an international cooperative effort involving 11 nations, including Sweden. During SWEDARP 2002/03 the Wasa station is being renovated to be able to receive researchers flown down with light packing in coming years. Travel-time from Sweden to Antarctica can be shortened by more than two weeks, which means that more Swedish scientists will have the opportunity to use the Wasa station during the Antarctic summer which occurs in December through February. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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