Mid-Winter is celebrated right across Antarctica by all the nations & stations. It is the 0ldest tradition in Antarctica and refers to the Winter Solstice (or hibernal solstice). It occurs when one of the Earth’s poles has its maximum tilt away from the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky.
At the pole, there is continuous darkness or twilight around the winter solstice. Its opposite is the summer solstice.
The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere’s winter. In the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (usually 20 or 21 June). Although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment, the term sometimes refers to the day on which it occurs. Other names are “midwinter”, the “extreme of winter” (Dongzhi), or the “shortest day”.
So, for Antarctic Expeditioners / Overwinterers the worst is over with regards to dark (lack of light and sunlight).
Happy Mid- Winter to all – share this email far and wide.
From all of us
Jasmine Arnold
Office Administrator to The Ship’s Operations Manager | Directorate: Southern Oceans & Antarctic Support | Office address: East Pier, Waterfront | Direct no: 021 405 9485 | Switchboard: 021 405 9400
Mid-winter Event Pretoria, South Africa – organised by Carol Jacobs :
Katherine Hutchinson (Postdoctoral Researcher, Oceanography at L’Ocean University of Cape Town) was one of the 48 expedition members, part of the Weddell Sea Expedition of 2019. During this expedition scientists did the first ever sampling on the A68 ice berg, that broke off of Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017.
Meet all the South Africans that was part of the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019: click here.
Her research ‘explores the role of the ocean in possibly driving basal melting and thus destabilising the ice shelf making it more prone to loss via massive calving events’ like the event mentioned above.
She is currently in New York sharing her knowledge on ocean conservation (click here for more information on this event). She compares the size of ice berg A68 with Manhattan, which is 180 times the size of this part of the city and most probably the best way to create a sense of scale.
Top photo: Katherine Hutchinson, second from the left.
Tomorrow, 8 June, is World Oceans Day and is also a Commemorative event in South Africa. We need to protect and conserve our oceans. Read more about World Oceans Day here.
Anché Louw, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, 07 June 2019.
All onboard the vessel has gone thorough customs.
The tugboat has just arrived alongside the vessel, to assist her in shifting into East Pier where passengers will disembark.
The 76th Marion Island Overwintering team training started during the second week of March and will end Friday, 29 March.
The team training is intended to give the team a good background of the South African National Antarctic Programme and the history of South Africa’s involvement in the Southern Ocean. The team will also get an idea of what to expect of their year on Marion Island, learn what they can and can’t do and get a better idea of what to pack. During training the team can mingle with each other and learn how to work together during First Aid and Fire Fighting training, during the packing of containers and the cooking class. Each member’s dental health will also be assessed and attended to, as there is no way of returning home for an aching tooth. Each member on the team will also be kitted out with the necessary protective clothing for living and working in the sub-Antarctic.
The current expected time of departure for the vessel, S.A. Agulhas II is 11 April 2019. Click here to view the S.A Agulhas II Voyage Schedule.
Anché Louw, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, 20 March 2019
Following up on the story of the our Liquid Robotics Wavegliders returning home to Cape Town from the Southern Ocean (click here) we have now completed the first half of the journey. Waveglider WG052 will arrive at its intermediate waypoint 43°S 9°E on Saturday 2nd March. It has completed the first 1200km of its journey in 17 days at an average of 70km per day during which it sailed through 3 storms and crossed both the Polar and Sub-Antarctic fronts (see photo below).
On Sunday 3rd March WG052 will meet up with its twin WG027 that has been making its own CO2 and physics measurements at our long term observation station SAZ-1 since early December 2018. They will return together in the second 1200km stretch of sub-polar and sub-tropical waters but separated by about 50 – 100km to test some ideas about the correlations length scales for pCO2. Both units continue to provide almost real time observations of ocean physics and CO2. You will see from the attached pic (earth.nullschool.net), which is derived from almost real time satellite observations-based surface ocean circulation product OSCAR of the mesoscale features around the south of Africa, that we are aiming to use one of these “jets” to propel both gliders towards Cape Town across the turbulent cauldron west of the Agulhas current retroflection. It shows very nicely how the ocean is not made up of large homogeneous currents but a series of high speed jets and eddies. We are exploring how the interaction of storms with these features influence the seasonal variability and ultimately the climate sensitivity of the air – sea fluxes of CO2 in the Southern Ocean.
– Dr. Pedro M. Scheel Monteiro & SOCCO & SA-RobOTIC team, 01 March 2019 (posted 06 March 2019)
East Pier Shed, East Pier Lane,
V&A Waterfront, Cape Town,
South Africa
