Team places sensors on enormous iceberg

University researchers have placed Automatic Weather Stations on the massive Antarctic iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf last March.

The iceberg, designated B- 15A, is about 90 miles long and 20 miles wide.

Transported to the iceberg by the U.S. Coast Guard in late January, Jonathan Thom of the UW- Madison and Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago erected three stations on the ice surface, roughly 150 feet above the surface of the ocean.

The stations each incorporate Global Positioning System units that will allow the science team to track the motion of the berg; an anemometer, to measure wind velocity and direction, as well as sensors to measure relative humidity, surface temperature and barometric pressure.

Two weeks worth of data from the sensors has already been collected by satellite. MacAyeal said he expects soon to begin analyzing the iceberg’s motion and the effects of collisions between the berg and the shoreline and ice at Cape Crozier in Antarctica.

The weather stations, assembled at UW–Madison, are equipped with batteries and solar panels. Based on their use elsewhere in Antarctica, they could be expected to operate for as many as five years.