Operations Deep Freeze 63 And 64

Oceanographic observations were conducted aboard USS EDISTO (AGB-2) during DEEP FREEZE 63 and USS ATKA (AGB-3) during DEEP FREEZE 64. Emphasis was focused on the distribution of water masses in the Ross Sea and the identifying physical characteristics of each type. NAVOCEANO personnel obtained data at 122 stations during DF-63 and at 79 stations during DF-64. Included in these totals are 23 annual ice forecasting stations which were reoccupied both years along the Victoria Land coast and in McMurdo Sound to determine sea ice potential by the heat budget reversal. The stations occupied on DF-63 were in the western half of the Ross Sea and most of those occupied on DF-64 were in the eastern half. Station data include vertical distribution of observed temperatures, salinities, dissolved oxygens, and phosphate-phosphorus and machine computed densities, specific volume anomalies, dynamic height anomalies, and sound velocities. Selected cross-section profiles of observed physical and chemical properties are presented to illustrate the water masses in the Ross Sea. Water types are defined and discussed. From the data presented, it is evident that warmer water from oceanic depths moves in over the continental shelf and is forced to the surface causing the central Ross Sea to become ice free earlier than surrounding areas. Additionally, there is evidence of the formation of colder, more dense, Shelf Water during the austral winter which acts as a barrier to this warmer water intrusion into the south-southwestern extremities of the sea. (Author).

History of contribution made by Dakota aircraft to development of Antarctica.

“A comprehensive and lively book about the people and events that transformed Antarctica into an international laboratory for science.”—Raimund E. Goerler, Chief Archivist/Byrd Polar Research Center of The Ohio State University In Deep Freeze, Dian Olson Belanger tells the story of the pioneers who built viable communities, made vital scientific discoveries, and established Antarctica as a continent dedicated to peace and the pursuit of science, decades after the first explorers planted flags in the ice. In the tense 1950s, even as the world was locked in the Cold War, U.S. scientists, maintained by the Navy’s Operation Deep Freeze, came together in Antarctica with counterparts from eleven other countries to participate in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). On July 1, 1957, they began systematic, simultaneous scientific observations of the south-polar ice and atmosphere. Their collaborative success over eighteen months inspired the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which formalized their peaceful pursuit of scientific knowledge. Still building on the achievements of the individuals and distrustful nations thrown together by the IGY from mutually wary military, scientific, and political cultures, science prospers today and peace endures. Belanger draws from interviews, diaries, memoirs, and official records to weave together the first thorough study of the dawn of Antarctica’s scientific age. Deep Freeze offers absorbing reading for those who have ventured onto Antarctic ice and those who dream of it, as well as historians, scientists, and policy makers. “[A] highly informative and readable narrative account of perhaps the single most striking international scientific endeavor of the twentieth century.” —The Polar Record “Deep Freeze, based on countless interviews and painstaking research, is a timely and gripping account.” —John C. Behrendt, author of Innocents on the Ice