Objective: interpretation of a model of the winds around the base camp and interactive work with the field team for repositioning a weather mast.

The Antarctic is a dome of ice over which very powerful winds blow - the katabatic winds.

These are extremely cold winds that hurtle down the slope of the polar icecap by gravity until the coast following a direction that is relatively constant at the local level.

Professor Hubert Gallée of the Lemaître Astronomy and Geophysics Institute of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium will create computer models of these winds in the Orvin mountain range where the expedition is taking place. From that, we propose interactive work with the team on the ground.

Wind studies in the base camp region

Necessary material:

Download the map of the Orvin mountains and the map of the modelled winds from the educational website.

Steps to follow:

Hubert Gallée’s model will provide a map visualising the wind that should be observable in good weather in the region at ground level (at 4-5 m high).

A scanned map of the region will be available for the schools, showing, among others things, the mountains and the glaciers.

The team on the ground will have at its disposal a mobile weather mast that measures and records the speed and the direction of the wind at a height of 4-5 m.

The experiment consists initially of analysing in the class the model of the winds for distinguishing the most interesting phenomena, such as whirlwinds behind a mountain or wind acceleration due to the topography of a glacier.

For this analysis, the children will be able to ask the advice of the team on the ground, but also of the scientific partners of the project.

Each class will then propose to the ground team three sites that the children think to be the most pertinent for the installation of the weather mast, and for measuring for example any unusual phenomena that might happen or the action of a glacier and a mountain, but also to check the accuracy of the model.

Among all the proposed sites some will be selected, and the mast will then be installed for several days in each and the results will be put on the network.

If the wind measurements on the ground are significantly different from the results of the model, a new computer calculation could be envisaged with the supplementary data collected from the various sites proposed by the children.