I'm releasing my Google Earth layer. This is a beta release. It will change and improve over time. Your comments and suggestions and data are welcome.

The KML (download here) is a very small network access file, so load it once, save it in the Google Earth sidebar, and all updates will be immediately available to you. There is also a ChangeLog so you can see what is new. You need the latest Google Earth to run this.

This will be presented at the SCAR IASC conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 8-11, 2008. The abstract follows.

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An ANDRILL SMS ARISE Educational Software Package: From a microscopic view of Antarctica 20 Ma to a global overview 100 years in the future

Mankoff, K. D.(1) and the SMS Science Team(2)

(1) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY 10025 USA, mankoff@giss.nasa.gov.
(2) http://andrill.org/projects/sms/team.html

We present an education software product (Google Earth Layer) that allows exploration of the ANDRILL SMS project. The geospatial, micro-to-macro, and multi-layering capabilities of Google Earth are used to allow viewers to tie together concepts from a microscopic view to a global overview. The journey begins with a microscopic view of diatoms in a borehole under the sea under the ice in Antarctica, and ends with a global overview of what the climate might look like in the year 2100 as calculated by the GISS Model II GCM from EdGCM. Paleo, present, and future GCM scenarios are available for users to explore more on their own using EdGCM.

I'm back in Christchurch, NZ. I'm in a different place. The temperature is warm. There are smells. Color. Moisture. Children and dogs. Life. The sun is setting, it gets dark. I cannot see my stars because it is cloudy tonight, but soon. I want to stand outside in a rain shower.

Unfortunately, there are also cell phones and advertisements. Traffic lights and cars. Commerce and industry.

My trip with ANDRILL is done. My work with ANDRILL is not quite done. But this blog is about ANDRILL, so I won't post much more. Future ANDRILL work that will show up here include a software release, a trip to Lincoln, NE in late January / early February, and an April trip to Tallahassee, Florida for a post-ice team meeting.

Thank you for following along on this journey. If you have questions feel free to email me. I'll host a slideshow and story time once I'm back in New York. I'll incorporate this trip into my talks on climate change. I'll post here if I ever decide to keep a journal about something else, and I'll post any remaining ANDRILL topics here.

After my short trip to the Pole, I returned to McMurdo at 3AM. Ten hours later (eat, shower, sleep, say goodbye) I leave McMurdo. Waiting at the runway, Erebus is smoking quietly behind us, rising 12,500 feet above the temporary frozen ocean on which we are standing and crazy enough to land a multi-ton plane.


While waiting, a C-130 returning from the pole flies overhead. (The toys on this continent are amazing: Helicopters and military planes and drills and robots swimming under the ice and telescope dishes cryogenically cooled to a quarter of a degree above absolute zero and much much more.)

Watching the last mountains of the continent recede behind the plane is a sad view. I will miss it here. I might return someday but I have no idea if or when.

A Glacier Tongue protruding into the breaking sea ice

My colleague, Robin, wrote a moving post about our departure here.

I'm writing this from the C-17 on may way from McMurdo Station, Antarctica back to Christchurch, NZ. It is the end of an amazing experience, and I'm sad to be leaving, but I am looking forward to what comes next.

Yesterday morning I woke up and boarded a C-130. This plane has skis, not wheels, and we took off from the sea ice runway at around 8AM. We landed 3 hours later at 90 degrees South latitude, 9301ft altitude. Even though the South Pole is only at 9301 feet it 'physiologically' at around 11,000 feet because there is so little atmosphere there. I felt it instantly, with a pounding heart and a racing pulse and difficulty climbing a flight of stairs.

The nothingness of the South Pole is breathtakingly beautiful. It is white and flat (except for a few structures) as far as you can see in every direction. It is more than 9,000 feet of ice under your feet, with nothing else between you and the bedrock that lies near sea level, and sometimes even below sea level.

From South Pole

I spent most of my time touring all the labs and buildings and science experiments happening there. An amazing caliber of science occurs at the South Pole. One of my favorite experiments is IceCube, an array of neutrino detectors buried in the ice. These detectors cover a space 1km x 1km x 1km (hence the name) buried with the top starting 1.4km down.

After a full afternoon of visiting the base, I ate dinner, gave my talk, waited in the South Pole International PAX Terminal for 30 minutes, and then caught a flight home to McMurdo. There were four passengers on the return flight and I got to spend most of it, including the landing, sitting in the cockpit.

It was a whirlwind 12 hour visit, 18 hour trip. It happened so fast and was so amazing and surreal and overwhelming that it is already starting to fade to a snapshot memory and feel like a dream. Fortunately I took a few hundred photos.

Need the top of your head scratched? Why not use your foot?

When I first met a penguin I thought it was an awkward animal. I'd love to see them in their liquid habitat as they are much better adapted to motion in that medium. It tuns out even on land they move quite well on their bellies, and to my surprise can do some amazing yoga poses.

I did not attempt to replicate this pose.

It is going to be a suspenseful weekend. I got an email this morning that South Pole Station is still interested in having me lecture there. So, I'm now scheduled for a day trip, McMurdo to Pole Monday morning, talk Monday evening, and Pole to McMurdo Monday night landing 3AM Tuesday. My flight from McMurdo north to Christchurch, NZ is scheduled for 11AM Tuesday. If I don't make it back in time there is a flight on Friday.

I got really excited when I was supposed to go south a few days ago, but it didn't work out. Weather here is fickle. Due to my schedule and pending departure I figured it just wouldn't happen. Now it might. But the weather here is fickle. I'm going to just be honored that I even have an invitation to speak at the South Pole, and expect nothing more until I feel the wheels skis leave the ground ice.

From Antarctica