Well...I know I'm late updating the blog but a lot has been happening since my last post. For one, there was the mad last minute rush to get everything ready for departure from Davis. There were lots of emotions ranging from disbelief and sadness to joy and happiness along the way. It took me quite a few weeks to realised that I am no longer in Antarctica, and that it might be a very long time before I get to go back. I hope not.... I miss it all and I still can't bring myself to look at the photos.

We arrived in Hobart on 1 December to a warm and sunny day. It was surreal to walk back to the Antarctic Division office in Kingston - nothing had changed except for there was a pile of mail for me waiting in a box. I was staying at the University accommodation and that night I went to have a quiet dinner on my own in the nearby shopping village. As I was sitting there, still dumbfounded and slurping away my miso soup, I realised that there was no way back now but to re-adapt back to the "real life". After a week in Hobart I travelled to Perth via Darwin, and after a few days in Perth's sunny 38C I left for Europe for four weeks to see my family and friends. I hadn't been back in Europe for three years and I felt most odd at Frankfurt airport in the morning rush hour, waiting for a flight for Finland. I returned to Australia in late January, visited Hobart for a week and then sat in the car for seven days driving across the continent back to Perth.

While camping in the silky blackness at Nullarbor desert, we took photos of comet McNaught - watching the brilliantly bright tail fanning perfectly far outward from the comet itself, it felt like time came to a halt. I had vivid flashbacks of deep impact footage and I felt humble once more. Our fragility is so easy to forget and our place in the Universe is even easier to ignore in the husstle and busstle of everyday life. As is our responsibility to inhabit and preserve the planet in a responsible way - the current generation(s) don't seem to have much of a problem letting the future generations worry about a planet which has been used and abused in the name of greed, personal benefit and blind pursuit of power. We haven't been very good tenants and there is no excuse to bury our heads in the sand now - the IPCC report should make sure that even the most stubborn opponent of climate change has been left without arguments.

Now I'm back in Perth and after some thorough thinking, I have come to the conclusion that I want to continue my PhD on a part-time mode. I am now working for CSIRO as a Research Scientist on a two-year contract, working on a marine project.

I'm putting off thinking about the inevitable, the imminent departure from Davis, which is now approaching at an ever increasing pace. Aurora Australis is currently off Mawson waiting for a weather break to commence fly-off operations. Everyone has been busy packing their boxes for cargo, making beds for the summerers, shovelling snow and repairing damaged vehicles (see below).

As if to remind us that summer is not yet here, we had our strongest blizzard so far on 26 October with wind gusts up to 101 knots and ~70 knots sustained. Davis gained a huge amount of snow and some truly handsome blizztails. Again a reminder of the insignificance and fragility of humans in the scheme of Antarctica.

Our feathery friends are as busy as ever with a full population of penguins now present in most rookeries. We spent some time with these darlings out on Gardner Island last Sunday and I managed to get some excellent footage excerpts of the daily life in the colony. The nest preparations and breeding being in full swing, the colony is regularly disrupted by bouts of blazing neighbour fury. These squabbles often start with two or three birds on neighbouring nests finding that the carefully measured pecking distance is no longer adequate to keep the peace, and soon the brawl spreads around with all the nearby birds becoming engaged in the action. Feathers fly as the furious birds bump their bellies against each other and direct exquisitely aimed pecks at each other. Mad dashes, loud flipper flapping and furious squawking accompany these arguments that can last for some time. Whilst all this goes on, a group of penguins next door goes about their daily business of stealing nest rocks, preening, breeding and waddling around for a beakful or two of snow. Skuas keep an ever watchful eye on the colony, and now and then make a half hearted effort to tug on some long dried carcasses.

Again the looming shadow of the approaching departure makes me avoid thinking about all the things I will have to face again back in the real world. On one hand I am ready to go home to see my family and friends but on the other hand I already miss Antarctica and feel that dark and tearful depression slowly but surely descending upon me. When I went to McMurdo someone said to me that you should treat every trip to Antarctica as your last. I was depressed for months when I returned last time and I dare not to think what the after effects will be this time. I will miss the serene peace, the incredible breathtaking beauty and the daily feeling of awe that I have felt here. Denial of what is about to happen is definitely setting in.

The penguins are back!! I refrained from updating the blog until I had some new penguin photos to share...These little darlings returned just a few days ago and there is now a steady stream of them arriving here to start their annual nesting activities. We haven't yet lost the snow that fell a week ago (Davis in general has very little snow as usually most of it blows away soon after falling) and as the penguins toboggan across the sea ice they leave tracks with perfect little foot marks and immaculate flipper impressions on the side (see photo above). Their squawks can be heard again after a long break of no sounds other than the wind. It is absolutely fantastic to have these lovely birds back! Last week we saw some Weddell seals with their newborn pups as well - there is definitely spring spirit in the air. The sun now sets at around 9:30pm which gives us a good time to head out after dinner to check out the progress of the return of life to Antarctica.

Aurora Australis, our orange ocean going splendour, left Hobart last week and, after dropping in at Macquarie Island, is now approaching Casey. After that she will head for Mawson for crew changeover and finally arrive at Davis (if all goes well) around 13 November. Everyone has started to slowly pack their belongings which need to be in the cargo system one week prior to the ship's arrival. There's also the work RTA (Return To Australia) to take care of plus making the station summer-ready. This involves preparing all empty rooms for new occupants and turning heating on in the summer accommodation block. Only four of us winterers will be leaving on V1 (voyage 1) and I think that it will be rather hard for the remaining winterers to watch the ship leave without them, knowing that she is taking her passengers back to their loved ones. I definitely miss my family and friends and as such I feel ready to go, but at the same time I know already now that as soon as I set foot on the ship I will miss Antarctica. That's the thing about this place, once it has you it will never let go. I'd like to quote a couple of excerpts from Kim Stanley Robinson's book "Antarctica" because I feel that he captures the essence of Antarctica so well:

"...everything still and motionless; the clarity of the light unlike anything you've ever seen, like nothing on Earth, and you all alone in it...and the uncanny beauty rises in you and clamps your chest tight, and your heart breaks then simply because it is squeezed so hard, because this world is so spacious and pure and beautiful.."

The PhD is going veeery slowly as there are a lot of other things that need to get done at the moment. However some positive progress has certainly happened - I finished the first draft of my first chapter a couple of weeks ago which felt great! In addition I have been playing with the perl data language (PDL) to see where I can use it instead of having to deal with IDL (which I still think is a rather cranky and unfriendly language not to mention its lack of elegance - it does its job but it ain't pretty).

The ozone hole has started to abate after showing its might by trailing the upper limits of the annual average curve. Factor 30+ is essential and with all the snow around to increase the exposure it doesn't take long before the skin burns badly. The PSCs seem to have disappeared but not before making a comeback on 8 October. This was facilitated by a wobble in the polar vortex which brought Davis close to the cold vortex core.

As said things will now get rather busy and this Saturday we will be celebrating the "official" end of winter. With just a few weeks to go it is also a time for reflection on what we have experienced in the past 8 months. We last saw anyone except for each other on 2 March and it is time to start the psychological preparation for reintegration into the real world!

It's spring! The weather has been variable with both gorgeous days of sunshine and sunsets with the icebergs bathing in those famous pastel colours as well as gloomy solid grey days when all the colours look the same nomatter where you look. This weekend we had -30.2 C and combined with 15 knot winds this made outside ventrues a bit on the nippy side. The ozone hole has taken off with gusto and so far its area is about 25 million km2 (1.9) with minimum ozone values dropping to 167 dobson units (1.9). Follow the development of the ozone hole at NASA's ozone hole watch web page at http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Some of the permanent Antarctic residents have reappeared and we saw three emperor penguins a couple of weeks ago when doing some sea ice drilling for sea ice thickness mapping. They are truly amazing creatures with an impossibly perfect plumage. Their calls resemble a slightly guttural trumpet and vary from short squawks to long extended complex vocalisations. Their waddle is slow and precise with no energy being wasted in unnecessary movements. I had not realised how big they are - onboard the Aurora Australis last October and November we saw many of them when skirting the ice edge but it was hard to gauge their actual size from the heights of the upper deck. It is easy to understand why they were called emperors - if a bird can be called graceful and dignified then these guys fit the bill perfectly. Their character is very different from the small adelie penguins which run and rush around like small duracell toys endlessly squabbling and carrying on amongst themselves. I have to say though that despite of being deeply impressed by the emperors I still love the adelies the most. Being a scientist and especially in the light of the recent movie "March of the penguins" it may be unforgivable to humanise these animals but I can't help myself - the adelies are just too lovably temperamental and animated not to identify with (the usage of these adjectives speaks for itself). These darlings won't be back for another few weeks yet.

We went to the plateau last Friday and it was the very first time I hav made it to the actual plateau (back in 2002 we only spent time in the Dry Valleys). Finally!!! What a view it was with all of the Vestfold Hills and countless icebergs scattered across the sea ice stretching in front of us - see photo above. I took a couple of panoramas (stitched together from 20 photos) which unfortunately are too big to include here. We also visited a couple of field huts to drop in some supplies and I discovered a small geological treasure coffin near one of the wind scoured ice edges. This was a small saddle like feature covered with boulders of various lithologies representing the metamorphic petrology of the Vestfold Hills. With just that one outcrop one could say quite a lot about the local tectonic evolution.

The PhD is coming along as it should but I have to admit that there have been some stalled moments which are hindering the desired pace (sound like a standard PhD student?). To combat this the work for now will focus on the data analysis system side and began by installation of a new version of MySQL plus some perl modules and Apache reconfiguration. The aim is to use Perl/Tk to make a nice little GUI that allows the user to select and analyse various data using just one interface. Underneath the GUI it is of course perl (what else) that glues it all together and calls various other modules such as MySQL, IDL (for processing and plotting) and the DMI model (microphysical model written in Fortran). The shell scripts I wrote earlier to do some of the were fine for quick and nasty shuffling but the amount of data is growing and the number of things I want to get out of the data is increasing and changing so why not make it all a little bit easier. It might not be elegant but it will work!

And finally, congratulations to the European Space Agency and the SMART-1 team for an excellent mission - what a way to go out for the little spacecraft! Check out the images of the impact at
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=39962 and an overview of the final moments of SMART-1 at
http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0903_SMART1_Mission_Goes_Out_With_a_Bang.html

What an amazing series of heavenly displays we have been treated to lately. After a long cloudy stretch we have been enjoying clear skies again - just in time for the full Moon. The above photos were taken this morning - the "portrait" was taken with a 300mm Canon lens at f/5.6, 1/320 and ISO100 - not bad for a little lens and a slightly shaky tripod! The image below that was taken a bit later at dawn and the Moon looked like the classic big cheese, only this time it was accompanied with the dignified icebergs and the beautiful hue of the shadow of the Earth. The last photo was taken yesterday evening when an amazing complement of both type 1 (NAT) and 2 (water ice) clouds appeard across the sky. It was a frozen hour with numb fingers but well worth it - these are such beautiful clouds and not just the garden variety iridescent clouds - let us show some respect here! Our cloud camera has captured numerous beautiful sunrises with Orion and Sirius with PSCs as well as Jupiter, Spica, Altair and so on. The seeing here is nothing short of spectacular - stargazers around the world spend thousands of dollars on equipment and still can't get the seeing - all you need down here is an average complement of standard camera gear (and lots of warm clothes!)

It is needless to say that as the sunlight has returned our spirits have lifted with it. I know I keep repeating myself but after a prolonged period of darkness and just a trickle of light it is amazing how seeing the sun energises the soul. I keep thinking of Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall" and the maddening influence of darkness on the entire population of the planet. Perhaps not quite as dramatic but nevertheless there is a lot of truth in the concept.

The ozone hole has started to form and I am studying the dynamics of the vortex which is now nearly completely depleted in several key chemical species (well, from the point of view of a PSC). Our lidar dataset is growing and I am trying to decide which NCEP archive I will use to construct the trajectories - I ran some tests with several archives and there were some significant differences between the results which is a worry. For the sake of homogeneity I may have to default to an archive that might not be the most accurate but if one is dealing with six years worth of data and attempting to do an intercomparison there aren't that many options. In the case of UARS vs. Aura MLS the choice is easy - take it or leave it.

I don't really miss the outside world amenities too much but one of the things I long after is the bookshop...endless hours reading books of all kinds while sipping a hot coffee....sigh. I couldn't resist ordering a book from Amazon after seeing an ad for it in an old issue of the Planetary Report - it is called "Centauri Dreams - Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration" by Paul Gilster. I can't wait - I will save this one for the long trip to Europe when I return from Antarctica. Have a look at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038700436X/104-1940233-7296761?v=glance&n=283155

I love it how Amazon allows you to read bits of the books and wet your appetite until you can't resist and end up ordering the book (of course that is why they do it, not of the kindness of their hear). That said I reckon Amazon is one of the best things that ever came out of the ecommerce phenomenon. How could they ever be worried that eBooks would replace paper books - I cannot think how curling up in a comfy chair with an e-reader could possibly compare with a good quality printed works - yes it would be better for the trees but there is something in the psychological aspect of turning the pages of a book that you cannot substitute.

Waiting for the sunrise...not long to go now! We will see the disk of the sun again in two days time but the maximum solar elevation will not be positive until 16.7. It is difficult to describe the effect of the return of the sun after more than a month of days consisting of a few hours of twilight and the rest of the day darkness - just as with the changing seasons it signifies a new beginning and, in a short while, the return of life as the penguins return to start their nesting preparations all over again. To us it also means that the time of our stay here is getting shorter. It feels like turning a corner and heading towards something finite.

Midwinters celebrations were undertaken with the appropriate grandeur and humility that can be expected. Numerous midwinters greetings were exchanged between Antarctic stations (McMurdo, South Pole, Rothera, Halley, Dumont D'Urville, SANAE, Scott Base, Syowa, Signy and so on) and some faxes were also received from old ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) expeditioners. The midwinters celebration started with a polar plunge (-1.8 C water) in the morning followed by a brunch and a bath in the old snow melter (37 C water), pre-dinner canapes and drinks, the most delicious dinner (see the above photo of the dinner table) and finallly the midwinter's play and other entertainment such as poetry, songs and guitar music. I feel very privileged to have experienced this Antarctic tradition that has gone uninterrupted since the first winterers started it in Scott's and Shackleton's days.

Since I last made an entry we have acquired a lot of new lidar data with the weather staying nice and clear for several days at a time permitting collection of near-contiguous datasets. PSCs were first detected above Davis on 13.6 and have been present in every observation since then. I also obtained some visual images of them and in the above photo they can be seen as white wavy streaks in the sky. These are type 1 PSCs which consist of either solid nitric acid tri/dihydrate or supercooled solutions of water, nitric acid and sulfuric acid. The "ripples" just discernible in the photo are probably gravity wave effects. The stratosphere within the polar vortex above Antarctica has been progressively depleted of nitric acid since late May and, lately, water vapour as a result of continous condensation of these clouds as the air whirls about the pole. The daily Aura MLS plots clearly demonstrate this annual phenomenon and by late June the depletion of nitric acid within the vortex low temperature region (where temperatures are below ~196K) was nearly complete. Heterogeneous processing of chlorine compounds by these clouds is also visible as the increasing mixing ratio of ClO outside the polar night terminator and the depletion of HCl inside the vortex. PSCs contribute to ozone depletion in two ways. Firstly they allow heterogeneous (multi-phase) chemical reactions to proceed on the particle surfaces that would not proceed via gas-phase-only mechanisms (the "usual" ozone depletion cycle). These reactions liberate chlorine from its main reservoir species HCl and ClONO2. Secondly the existence of polar stratospheric clouds allows irreversible removal of nitrogen and water from the stratosphere which in turn allows ozone depleting reactions to continue longer (due to the effect of this removal on chlorine partitioning). This latter process, sedimentation, proceeds by downfall of solid phase cloud particles from stratosphere to troposphere.

The uplifting events of the past weeks naturally include the launch of the Discovery and its safe arrival at the ISS. I can never watch a launch without an intense feeling of pride and hope - if only we could reach further and conquer the biggest challenge of all - to not obliviate ourselves before we reach the technology and maturity to explore (and inhabit) the rest of the solar system. And the Milky Way. And the local group. And the supercluster. Or maybe another civilisation finds us first - if they do I hope that they are less fearful and aggressive of the new and unknown than we are.

Time flies and it has been almost a month since my last update. It is all too easy to forget that there is a "real" world out there somewhere - things that concern us here are mainly the weather and the need to keep the station, our lifeline, operational.

The polar night has finally descended upon us and the sun will not rise again before early July. I was expecting it to be much darker until I remembered that the polar night is really only referring to Sun's altitude being zero or less (there is always good light until the altitude gets to about -7 degrees). The colour display every "morning" and "evening" is stunning ranging from deep indigo to ridiculously bright light blue and from peachy orange-yellow to rosey pink and crimson red, all colours being there at the same time depending on which direction of the sky one is looking at. I wish I was a poet so I could better describe it all!

We have just completed the first Hagg (Hagglunds all-terrain vehicle - see photo above) trip of the season. The sea ice needs to be of a certain minimum thickness before these vehicles can venture out but they enable travel even when the weather conditions exclude all other forms of mobility. You still need to mentally prepare yourself for the experience though - you are moving in a square box weighing several tons above an unimaginable volume of unimaginably cold water and the only thing that separates you from it is less than a metre of sea ice.

Whilst temperatures in the lower stratosphere are now suitably low for cloud condensation no PSCs have been detected at Davis yet. I am following the evolution of various chemical species within the vortex using the EOS MLS plots which are great for an overview of what's going on up there (http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/plots/mls/mls_plot_locator.php). The PSC modelling work is also progressing nicely and the current aim is to be able to quickly run all new incoming data through a standard set of models. The more I look at the data the more there is, as always. Where does one stop?!

I have also configured the CloudCam to spy the skies. It is a Canon 300D with a standard 18-55mm lens mounted on a motorised tripod thingy and a set of scripts controlling its operation. The camera takes one photo every 10 minutes and the system then stitches the images into a timelapse movie. Any aurorae in that part of the sky will also get captured as we use exposures of around 30 seconds at night time.

Apart from the usual routine and the preparation for the PSC showtime we are all getting excited about the biggest festivity of the Antarctic year - the Midwinter's celebration. It will be held on 21 June and traditionally involves a black tie dress code with a delicious dinner followed by the perpetual performance of Cinderella. This tradition dates back to Scott's and Shackleton's days and psychologically holds a great significance to the wintering expeditioners as it marks a turnaround point - from then on the days will again start getting longer and the resupply date will start approaching at an ever faster pace. However it is probably watching the beirded Cinderella with the rest of the gracefully hairy crew doing their uttermost to keep this tradition alive that will be the highlight of the night!

Again I feel so very privileged to be in Antarctica. It is simply awesome to be part of all the Antarctic traditions here and to be able to share them with the fellow winterers - we have a fantastic group of people here this winter and I know already that I will miss them when it is time to return to the real world.