Evolution of the central West Antarctic Ice Sheet using ice-penetrating radar (NSF-funded UW/ESS-based projects)

May 10th, 2006: Job opportunities are announced. Due date: June 12th (Mon)

Two undergraduate assistantships are now open. We accept applications by e-mail until June 12th. See this page for more details.

April 3rd, 2006: European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria [Slides used for the talk is available here]

Matsuoka gave a solicited talk in European Geosciences Union General Assembly on the recent progress of polarimetric radar measurements of glaciers and ice sheets. This talk is chosen as most-interesting talks for journalists and science writers together with talks given by Richard Alley and Eric Rignot.

March 30th, 2006: Ice Core Working Group annual meeting [Slides used for reporting this project]

This project closely collaborates with ice coring community that conducts full-depth ice coring near the central West Antarctica. Although PIs of this project can't make this trip, Physics representative and our collaborator Larry Wilen from Ohio University reported our activities.

March 15th, 2006 - March 20th, 2006: Calibration of the radar system used for this study

All radar instruments borrowed our colleagues in Tokyo have safely returned to their home place. Matsuoka visited National Institute of Polar Research to make calibration experiments of the radar system. This calibration is crucial to examine echo-intensity data. The collected data show that the radar characteristics do not change significantly since the other calibration before the field work.

November 13th, 2005 - February 6th, 2006: Field work in West Antarctica.

Contact Information: Kenny is reachable by e-mail and by phone when he will stay at McMurdo Station (until late November). Afterward, he can be reached only by a satellite phone. When you will e-mail to Kenny's ess mail account, an auto-reply message including more detail information will be sent to you. Web journal of the project will be released on the web site. Check it out at Field Note on the Web and Joe's photo album.

October 7th, 2005: Project meeting on the West Antarctic Field Work [Link to slides used in the meeting]

It's a long way to reach this point. The project was funded this June, and two research assistant positions were announced immediately, but the interview process took long time. Finally, two candidates successfully passed physical exams and appointed to the position. Donovan Power and Ryan Eastman, recent graduate of the Atmospheric Department of the UW, got these positions. Together with Donovan and Ryan, Joe MacGregor, UW glaciology graduate student, will join the team. Field safety expert, Peter Braddok is already on the way down to Antarctica.

September 27th - October 3rd, 2005: Send off Japanese radar system down to Antarctica

Kenny sent off all radar instruments that we will borrow from National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, down to Christchurch, New Zealand. The cargo has arrived at CHC and now is waiting for the forward to McMurdo Station.

August 27th - 31st, 2005: Geodetic GPS training at UNAVCO, Boulder, CO

Kenny visited UNAVCO in Boulder, CO, to learn more about geodetic-scale GPS receivers and GPS measurements for ice-strain studies.

June 17th - August 26th, 2005: Two undergraduate students conduct summer research with collaboration with NASA Space Grant, UW

Katie Liu and Pavan Vaswani from engineering departments at the UW worked for this project as participants of Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), NASA Washington Space Grant. More details of their projects are available here.