1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. 199293010

Description

This dataset contains the underway data from Voyage 1 1992-93 (MONGREL) of the Aurora Australis. This voyage visited Mawson and Davis, leaving from and returning to Hobart.

From the voyage leader's report:

The first voyage of the 1992-93 season left Hobart on 17 October on board the Aurora Australis for Mawson and Davis Ice Edges, and Sea Ice Program research activities in the Prydz Bay region. On board were a total of 97 expedition personnel, including 44 for Mawson, 42 for Davis and 11 round trippers.

The journey to the ice edge north of Mawson took just over 16 days, primarily because of particularly heavy ice conditions in the approach to Mawson and bad weather. On the morning of the 31 October, a blizzard forced the ship to stop in the ice as visibility was less than a few hundred metres in driving snow. The barometer reached its lowest ever recording on Aurora to that time, 940.6 Hpa, although the wind only reached 55 knots in gusts.

When conditions improved, the ship proceeded again and finally reached the fast ice edge 55 km north of Mawson on the morning of 2 November. Just over three days were spent at the ice edge, the period being marked by frequent periods of low cloud and whiteout. All required personnel were transferred to and from the ship and nineteen huskies bound for the United States were taken on board. The limited opportunities for aircraft operations and the very poor condition of the Mawson-ship fast ice route resulted however in only very high priority cargo being delivered to the station.

The vessel departed the Mawson ice edge on the afternoon of 5 November, working its way north then east in to Prydz Bay. Heavy ice conditions continued to be experienced, and this coupled with poor visibility and large amounts of snow lying on the ice (both which considerably restricted the ability to choose the best route through the ice), made progress slow. Some two days were spent in Prydz Bay conducting sea ice research, including the deployment of two buoys, and the Aurora reached the ice edge off Davis on the morning of 10 November.

The ship took almost twelve hours to break through the heavy fast ice present at Davis to reach the optimum position for the pumping of station fuel ashore. A large amount of dry cargo was discharged over two days and the majority of RTA cargo awaiting on the station (mainly rubbish) back-loaded. Aurora left the ice edge at Davis on the afternoon of 12 November and after pushing north through, at times, heavy pack ice, the voyage to Hobart was smooth, and the vessel reached there late on the afternoon of 23 November.

Quality

Please see the Marine Science Support Data Quality Report via the Related URL section.

Where data for a particular sensor do not exist for a particular time, the last known value is used unless the sensor has been disabled or has encountered an error. For example, some sensors only record data every minute, but the resolution for the underway dataset is 10 seconds, so the same value will be used 6 times a minute. No averages are taken for sensors that capture data at a rate other than every 10 seconds. Instead, each record will be a snapshot of each sensor at that time.

Access

Data are available on-line via the AADC web page or via the Related URL section below. A "supplementary" dataset is also available for download from the provided URL. It contains raw data collected directly from the ship, which has not been quality checked.

Reports from the voyage are also available for download.

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 1992-10-24 - Stop date: 1992-11-23

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE > SURFACE TEMPERATURE > AIR TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR > WATER VAPOR INDICATORS > HUMIDITY
• EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WINDS > SURFACE WINDS
• EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION > SOLAR RADIATION
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > BATHYMETRY/SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY > SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN TEMPERATURE > WATER TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > SALINITY/DENSITY > SALINITY
• EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE

Use Constraints

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=199293010 when using these data.