Field work on Atka Bay land-fast sea ice in 2012/13
Since 2010, we perform a regular monitoring of sea-ice properties on the land-fast ice of Atka Bay, Antarctica, as part of the international Antarctic Fast Ice Network (AFIN). Our activities mainly comprise regular drillings and EM-based sea-ice thickness transects every few weeks, as well as the deployment of several autonomous measuring stations. These regular AFIN measurements were complemented in 2012/13 by a two month field campaign (19 November 2012 to 9 January 2013) of four scientists and technicians in the framework of the project “Sea-Ice Mass Balance influenced by Ice Shelves” (SIMBIS). During the SIMBIS field campaign, we intensified our monitoring by using a variety of methods to investigate the physical properties of the sea ice, its snow cover and the processes affecting their mass- and energy balances at Atka Bay. This report summarizes our activities of AFIN and SIMBIS in 2012/13.