Thanks, G...Temps: we had daily air temps that ranged from low 20s F, to a high one day of maybe 42 on that rare sunny day at Elephant Island chugging through "Iceberg Alley", for an hourish. Nights, while never totally dark, were in the 20s Farenheit. It was the wind on most days, that really cut through you, esp. on the windy side of the boat.

The Southern Ocean, around the Antarctic Peninsula, averaged about 29 degrees F. I put my hand in a few times in the Zodiac, just to feel it: it was numbingly cold. The Zodiac drivers, (most were renaissance men with amazing backgrounds), said we had about 3 mins max before unconsciousness, if we fell in; thus, the major league life vests that would inflate automatically when immersed in sea water, that they made us wear on any Zodiac ride or shore excursion.

Interestingly, most of the hard core Antarctic scientist types said that any "melting" thus far, of the shelf ice, seemed to be cyclical or within the std deviation, though they all felt it was affected to some degree by the climate change. The interior ice sheets, in the hard core ages old glacier producing areas, are 3.5 miles thick and actually deflect the continental plates they rest on...a factoid tossed around is that if all the ice on that continent were to melt the sea level would rise 200-250 feet.

There are areas in the barely scratched interior that receive less than 1/10th inch of precipitation per year; it come as snow obviously, and is blown around and never melts, until thousands of years later it turns up at the end of glacier oozing into the ocean...from whence all those thousands and thousands of big bergs turn up.

Class dismissed, .
BR,mD

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