Patagonia

A few weeks I had an opportunity to join some Japanese colleagues for field work in Patagonia. I have long been interested in this area, and it is fantastic to make this connection with researchers from Hokkaido's Institute of Low Temperature Science. They have a long history of investigation in Patagonia. I am particularly fascinated by the lake-calving glaciers on the Argentinian side, because they are quite different from those we have in Alaska.

The field team, including my Japanese host, Masahiro Minowa, and the grand old glaciologist of Argentina, Pedro Skvarca.

On the way to Upsala Glacier. This glacier has retreated dramatically in the past few years and until recently it was not even possible to approach the glacier because of the quantity of ice on the lake.

CTD measurements by hand take a long time in water that is over 500 m deep. We also deployed a mooring that we hope to recover in March 2020. It will be the first such measurements near Glaciar Upsala.

We also installed a timelapse camera near Upsala.

This is the view from the camera.

And our boat, operated by the Argentinian coast guard.

Beautiful glacially carved and recently exposed rock.

Patagonia is the land of wind and this cloud is showing that it is starting to blow hard again

We also did some glacier GPS surveys on Perito Moreno Glacier.

Perito Moreno from our base camp

This is the view from our Perito Moreno camera site. This glacier is intriguing, because unlike other Patagonia glaciers, it is not (yet) retreating. In fact it annually advances against the point in the picture and sometimes temporarily dams one branch of Lago Argentino, leading to dramatic outburst floods.

Condor over Glaciar Perito Moreno