About the trip and blog

My teammate Dan Satterfield (chief meteorologist at WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama) and I, along with four other journalists, have been selected by the National Science Foundation to participate in a media expedition to Antarctica from January 5-12, 2010. We will be covering a range of important studies: ice core drilling on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide; new research on the Ozone hole; discoveries made with the new South Pole telescope; how weather is measured in such a harsh conditions; liquid lakes that lie beneath miles of ice. Oh, and of course, the penguins (who will also play the role of the peanut gallery above). Learn more about the major studies we are planning to cover.

During and after trip, we will be posting blog articles, photos, videos and more -- a multimedia smorgasbord -- to a variety of Web sites: Earth Gauge, Planet-Connect, Capital Weather Gang, WHNT, Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal, and the home page of the National Environmental Education Foundation. This blog will serve as a clearinghouse for all of this information, and a means with which to communicate with you from one of the most remote places on Earth. This trip couldn't come at a better time -- less than three weeks after COP15, the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, while the world's eyes are on our Earth's climate system and its impacts, including those in polar regions.

Many thanks to Kristian Whipple for setting up this blog, including creating the awesome penguin graphic above. View more of his work at kwhipple.com.