It usually takes at least ten days to sail to DML from Cape Town, some 4,000 kilometres away. But all in all, I can say that I am always rewarded with a unique experience in a hostile but fascinating world.”īut let’s start at the beginning. “ You are on your own in many extreme situations.
#Corona weather midsummer professional#
However, they demand a great sense of responsibility and a high level of risk awareness, independence and flexibility as well as social and professional competence“, says Christian Paulmann, graduate meteorologist and team leader of the DWD’s Antarctic consulting and shipboard meteorological services and often on-site himself. “ These assignments during the Antarctic summer on site give you a feeling of adventure. Getting there, as well as moving around and doing research, requires meteorological information to ensure safe operations – and this is the DWD’s task in the DML region. But even during this period, weather is the limiting factor for all human activities. The station can only be reached and therefore supplied safely by air and sea during the austral summer between late October and early March.
One of them is the German Neumayer III Station on the Ekström Ice Shelf at 70☄0’S 8☁6’W. Map of Antarctica with Dronning Maud Land inset, indicating the different Antarctic stations including Neumayer III (source: ALCI, Kapstadt, modified by Christian Paulmann, DWD).Įleven countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, South Africa, and the United Kingdom) operate research stations in DML under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty, some of which are manned all year round. That is well over 2,000 kilometres from north to south, and along the east-west coastline, DML stretches about 2,500 kilometres. Named after Norway’s first Queen Maud, the boundaries of Dronning (Norwegian for “Queen”) Maud Land (DML) territory have not been officially defined, but it extends approximately from 20°west to 45 east and from about 65°south over the coastal ice shelves to about 85°south. To the west of the DROMLAN territory, responsibility for weather forecasting and consultations lies with the British Met Office, to the east with Australia, and in between, including the geographic South Pole, it is with the National Weather Service of the United States. In terms of weather forecasting, Antarctica is classified into four regions: Germany, and thus the German Weather Service, provides forecasting services for Dronning Maud Land (DML) within the so-called DROnning Maud Land Air Network (DROMLAN) network, a non-profit organization launched in July 2002.
This is where Germany’s National Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) comes in. The German Neumayer Station is in Dronning Maud Land (DML), where, alongside Germany, ten other countries operate research stations, which can be reached by air or sea, with ease and safety of access being weather-dependent. The original version of this article (in German) has been published here.Īntarctica is the driest, windiest and coldest continent on Earth, with an annual mean temperature of minus 49 degrees Celsius (☌). In this contribution to Polar Prediction Matters, Nöth writes about Paulmann’s meteorological work, about DWD’s role in Antarctica and, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated weather forecasting in the southern high latitudes. She has talked to DWD weather forecaster Christian Paulmann who spent six austral summer seasons at the German Neumayer Station in Antarctica. Gertrud Nöth is deputy head of the Press and Public Relations at the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany’s National Weather Service. Knows the way – emperor penguin in Atka Bay (Source: Christian Paulmann, DWD).
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