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Current Casey Temperature

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Antarctic Dictionary

[ A - E ]

[ F - J ]

[ K - O ]

[ P - T ]

[ U - T ]

	A
	AAD	Australian Antarctic Division
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	Apple	A fibreglass field hut
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	Aurora	Aurora is the name given to the phenomena of ghostly shimmering lights that appear in the skies of the Earth towards the polar regions. aurora - the display "dancing" light patterns seen in areas of high latitudes. Auroras are caused by magnetic sun storms that release huge amounts of energy. The energy travels toward Earth as an ionic cloud that interacts with Earth's magnetic field. The ions move Earth's magnetic poles where they interact with the ionosphere. The ions energize the oxygen and nitrogen, causing them to emit light. In the north, they are called Aurora Borealis (northern lights). In the south, Aurora Australis (southern lights) Links: This is an excellent interactive website developed by NASA [ http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/auroras/story.html ]
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	Aurora Australis	1. The name given to Aurora in the Southern Hemisphere polar region
	Aurora Australis	2. The name given to the research vessel operated by the Australian Antarctic Division click for more information on the Aurora Australis
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	B
	Blizzard	"When the visibility is less than 100m due to blowing snow and the wind speed is greater than 35 knots (65 km/h) for more than a continuous 10 minute period in an hour".
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	C
	Crevasse	Cracks and fissures in the ice, frequently snow-covered and not readily visible, and one of the most hazardous and everpresent dangers down here.
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	D
.	Dew point	The temperature to which air must be cooled at a constant pressure to become saturated.

	F
	Fast Ice	Sea ice connected to th continent or islands
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	Field Trip	Any departure from the defined station limits
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	Fjord	(fiord) - a long, narrow, steep-walled, u-shaped coastal inlet. Fjords typically have been excavated by glaciers. More.
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	G
	Glacier	A large mass of ice, air, water, and rock debris formed at least partially on land. Glaciers are amounts of ice large enough to flow with gravity because of internal deformation. Glaciers include small valley glaciers, ice streams, ice caps, and ice sheets. The term glacier also includes ice shelves if they are fed by glaciers.
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	Glacier terminus	The leading edge of the glacier; the glacier nose. The glacier terminus often has a large amount of glacial debris. More.
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	Glaciology	The study of the physical and chemical properties of snow and ice. Glaciologists might study the movement of ice sheets, and how ice flows. Glaciologists also study how snow slowly changes to glacier ice.

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	H
	Hagglund
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	Husky	Australia was the last of the Antarctic countries to remove working dogs from their base at Mawson in 1992. Without the husky teams Antarctica would not have been explored to the degree that it has now with all of the successful early explorations employing dog teams as a means of transport. Huskies were first used in the Antarctic by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1898-1900. The huskies wore harnesses and could haul from fifty up to ninety kilograms.
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.	I
	Ice age	(glacial period, glacial epoch) - recurring periods in Earth's history when the climate was colder and glaciers expanded to cover larger areas of the Earth's surface.
	Iceberg	Icebergs are nothing more than solid water. They float because the density of the ice is less than the density of sea water. Icebergs come in all shapes and sizes, they have been compared to mountains, pyramids and castles. Many icebergs are moulded into unusual and fascinating shapes by the action of the wind and waves. The process of melting causes an iceberg to change shape. Icebergs are formed both in the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans. Arctic icebergs come mainly from Greenland, a huge island which is almost completely covered by an ice sheet. The course of an iceberg cannot be judged by wind direction alone. Since nine-tenths of an icebergs mass lies under water, much more of a bergs surface is affected by water currents than by wind. The final direction is one that takes both the wind and currents into account. A berg can move against or across the wind, as well as downward or at small angles to it.
	Ice cap	A large dome-shaped mass of ice that is thick enough to cover all topography underneath it. Ice caps are smaller than ice sheets, usually with an area less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,000 square miles). Ice caps are large enough to deform and flow with gravity and spread outward in all directions
	Ice cliff	Walls of ice where glaciers meet the sea, such as at the edge of land or the edge of an ice shelf. Ice cliffs occur in areas where drainage of the ice from the continent diverges and slows. More.
	Ice crystals	Tiny particles of ice produced when a state of supersaturation of moisture is obtained in the atmosphere. Ice crystals account for the majority of the accumulation on the Polar Plateau. Often ice crystals precipitate when the sky is clear! Ice crystals may be called ice needles, although they do not have the shape of needles.
	Ice dome	Slow moving areas of accumulation on an ice sheet. Ice domes are roughly symmetrical in outline, and dome-shaped in cross-section. An ice sheet might be comprised of several ice domes.
	Ice floe	A large, flat, sheet of ice that has broken off of the coast and floats in open water.
	Ice sheet	Large mass of ice that is thick enough to cover the topography under it. Ice sheets are large enough to deform and move with gravity. Ice sheets are larger than ice caps. Ice sheets cover large parts of Greenland and Antarctica.
	Ice shelf	An ice shelf is a large sheet of ice that is permanently attached to land, never melts over summer, but is still floating on the ocean. These ice shelves are permanent features of the Antarctic geography and can be extremely thick. The Amery Ice Shelf in Eastern Antarctica is around 2000m thick in some spots!
	Ice stream	A rapidly moving current of ice in an ice sheet or ice cap. An ice stream flows more quickly than the surrounding ice and pulls ice out of the ice sheet. Antarctic ice streams flow about one kilometer per year (0.6 miles per year).
	Ice tongue	Long, narrow, projection of ice out from the coastline. Ice tongues form where a valley glacier flows rapidly to the sea or a lake. Ice tongues may float. Drygalski Ice Tongue is a large ice tongue in Ross Sea. More.
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	J
	Jamesways	Canvas and wood "tents" that are used as semi-permanent shelter. At Wilkes station series of jamesways connected buildings toeach other as a common central hallway


	K
	Katabatics	(From the Greek: katabaino - to go down) is the generic term for downslope winds flowing from high elevations of mountains, plateaus, and hills down their slopes to the valleys or plains below.
	Knot	A nautical unit of speed equal to the velocity at which one nautical mile is traveled in one hour. Used primarily by marine interests and in weather observations. A knot is equivalent to 1.151 statute miles per hour or 1.852 kilometers per hour.
.	Krill
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	L
.	Lichen	A symbiotic association of algae and fungus. The fungus provides protection and moisture. The photosynthetic algae provide food for the fungus.
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	M
.	Moraines	Accumulations of poorly sorted glacial materials (till) transported by glacial ice. Moraines can form in many ways. Some moraines form in front of a glacier (terminal or end moraine), along the side of a glacier (lateral moraine), or under a glacier (ground moraine).
.	Moss	Small, leafy-stemmed cryptogamic plants belonging to the class Musci. Mosses grow in carpet-like mats and tufts on moist ground.
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	Mukluk	A heavy-duty insulated boot (an Inuit word)
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	N
.	Nunatak	- an isolated peak of bedrock that sticks above the surface of an ice sheet. Nunataks offer important information about ice-covered regions because they provide a sample of the rocks that lie under the ice.
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	O
.	Ozone	A chemically active bluish gas that is made of three oxygen atoms (O3). Ozone occurs in the atmosphere at altitudes of approximately 15 to 30 kilometers (9 to 19 miles). Ozone acts as a protective barrier for Earth's surface by blocking much of the potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun.
.	Ozone layer	A layer in the upper stratosphere of Earth's atmosphere that contains almost 90% of Earth's ozone. The ozone layer occurs approximately 15 to 30 kilometers above the surface of Earth.


	P
.	Pancake ice	Coherent plates of ice that can reach a few meters across (a few feet). Pancake ice grows from thickened grease ice and resembles pancakes or lily pads. The edges are upturned because the plates bump into each other.
.	Polynyas	Areas of open water in pack ice or sea ice. Polynyas can be kept open by consistent winds or upwelling. Polynyas tend to recur in the same locations year after year.
.	Polar Front	(Antarctic Convergence) - surface oceanographic boundary at which the colder, saltier Antarctic Surface Waters sink beneath the northerly warmer, less salty Subantarctic Surface Waters.
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	Q
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	R
	Rookery	A colony of penguins or seals






.	S
	Salinity	The amount of dissolved salts contained in sea water. The average salinity of sea water is 35 parts per thousand. Freshwater has a salinity of 0 parts per thousand.
	Sastrugi	Wind blown snow heaped into ridges parallel to the wind direction. Can be quite large - perhaps up to 2m high.
	Sea Ice for more information	A general term for the seasonal ice that forms from seawater. Sea ice can cover large parts of polar waters in the winter. The sea ice melts back in the summer. (click for more information)
	Skua	A variety of Antarctic seagull
	Stay ( more about "Stay")	A dog, or to be more precise a Guide Dogs collection box in the shape of a full-sized golden retriever, Stay, as she is called, has been an honorary expeditioner since 1992. That was the same year that real dogs, huskies, were finally removed from our sister station Mawson. Since then, Stay has been the only dog in Antarctica. She has been repeatedly kidnapped, has had one leg replaced by a wooden one, and has entered Antarctic folklore. She has wintered at every Australian station, and this time she came to Davis from an even more extensive trip, to Spitzbergen in the Arctic.
	Snout	The surface of the ocean after it freezes. Sea ice is not permanent - it "breaks out" or melts and disappears over summer and reforms again for winter.
	Snow	Frozen precipitation in the form of white or translucent ice crystals in complex branched hexagonal form. It most often falls from stratiform clouds, but can fall as snow showers from cumuliform ones. It usually appears clustered into snowflakes.
	Snow blindness	Temporary blindness or impaired vision that results from bright sunlight reflected off the snow surface. The medical term is niphablepsia.
	Snow devil	A small, rotating wind that picks up loose snow instead of dirt (like a dust devil) or water (like a waterspout). Formed mechanically by the convergence of local air currents. Also called a snowspout.
	Solstice	The point at which the sun is the furthest on the ecliptic from the celestial equator. The point at which sun is at maximum distance from the equator and days and nights are most unequal in duration. The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are those parallels of latitude which lies directly beneath a solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere, the summer solstice falls on or about December 21 and the winter solstice on or about June 21

.	Southern Hemisphere	The southern half of the Earth. The part of the globe "below" the equator.
	South geographic pole	90 degrees S. The south geographic pole is the southern location where the axis of rotation of Earth intersects Earth's surface. It also is home to Amundsen Scott Station. The south geomagnetic pole is tilted about 12 degrees to the axis of rotation of the Earth (geographic pole).
	South magnetic pole	The point on Earth's surface that a south-seeking compass needle seeks. This point is off the coast of Wilkes Land.
	Sun dog	Either of two colored luminous spots that appear at roughly 22 degrees on both sides of the sun at the same elevation. They are caused by the refraction of sunlight passing through ice crystals. They are most commonly seen during winter in the middle latitudes and are exclusively associated with cirriform clouds. The scientific name for sun dogs is parhelion and they are also known as mock suns.
.	Sun pillar	Horizontal ice crystals in the form of plates, which occur in clouds and ice fog near the earth's surface, reflect sunlight into vertical sun pillars for a spectacular display.

	T
	Tabular iceberg	A flat-topped iceberg.
	Traverse	The name for any journey on the ice to any place of distance
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	U
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	V
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	W
.	White-out	A weather condition in which the horizon cannot be identified and there are no shadows. The clouds in the sky and the white snow on the ground blend. White out conditions are potentially dangerous because it is difficult to find a point of reference.
.	Windchill more about Windchill	An expression of temperature that incorporates wind speed in the temperature reported. Wind can make the temperature feel cooler. The wind chill factor is a way of expressing how cold the wind might make the temperature feel. (more about Windchill )
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	X
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	Y
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	Z
	Zooplankton	Microscopic free-swimming or suspended marine or freshwater animals within the planktonic or planktic community. Many organisms spend part of their lives as zooplankton, either in a juvenile life stage or an adult life stage (including crustaceans like shrimp, echinoderms or starfish, corals).

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