Together with Alfonso Ferrone, PhD student at Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory LTE, we arrived in Antarctica at Princess Elisabeth Station on 22 November. We have been since then busy deploying a variety of instruments to monitor clouds and precipitation, with of course many expected and unexpected issues. The SPI Exploratory Grant that was awarded to me significantly contributed to this measurement campaign, in particular regarding the deployment of a transect of three micro rain radars (MRR) at different locations in the mountains surrounding the station. This transect will make possible the collection of vertical profiles of precipitation before, in the middle and after the mountains for the air flow, crucial to understand the influence of complex terrain on precipitation in this region of Antarctica. I will leave the station and the beautiful landscape to start my journey back to Switzerland on 20 December, but Alfonso will stay until the end of the summer season to increase the data set as much as possible.
© Alexis Berne
Alexis Berne is a Professor at EPFL. This field note relates to his field trip at Princess Elisabeth Station in December 2019 funded by an SPI Exploratory Grant.
Header photograph: © Alexis Berne
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