Scientists’ heads in the clouds

FINDING out the secrets behind the supercooled clouds in the Southern Ocean will be the focus of this summer’s Aurora Australis expedition.

Australia’s Antarctic icebreaker yesterday set off from Hobart for its first voyage of the summer season, taking 105 expeditioners to the Davis research station with a further 400-plus to join them.

With $14 million worth of equipment on board, over 92 projects will be supported by the Australian Antarctic Division on the frozen continent, the Southern Ocean and Macquarie Island.

But the major piece of work will be the studying of the supercooled clouds in the Southern Ocean — regarded as the stormiest place on Earth.

Despite being well below freezing, the clouds in the Southern Ocean manage to maintain liquid water.

Australian Antarctic Division acting director Charlton Clark said the project would be conducted by Australian and US researchers.

“This is one of the most exciting international and interdisciplinary projects that we have,” he said.

“This is the first time that this project in its form has been conducted on the Aurora Australis.”

Aircraft will also be deployed to gather samples of the largely unstudied cloud structure.

US scientist Kim Nitschke, from the Department of Energy, said it was a massive opportunity.

“We have bench tested it, we’ve deployed some of this all around the globe, we’ve deployed in Antarctica before we’ve deployed it on ships before but we have never done both,” he said. “This is the first time we have put it on a ship to experience some of the wildest and windiest weather about.

“There is a good reason why this region is under-sampled when it comes to the data we are trying to obtain because there is nothing there so this is a really great opportunity for us to deploy those instruments on the Aurora Australis.”

Atmospheric scientist Simon Alexander said with very little aerosol and man-made pollution in the Southern Ocean, the region was a perfect place to research.

“It’s a very pristine environment,” Dr Alexander said.

“Clouds are a central part of the whole Earth system, they control precipitation, they influence how much radiation is directed back from the sun through the tops of clouds.

“They are good things to have a go and measure and understand.”