Kelsey is a natural explorer and has a love for field work. She says her first field experience during undergrad, where she lived in a tent for 2 months in rural Mongolia. During this time, she also fell in love with doing science in the field. She studied butterfly migration patterns in the Horidol Saridag mountains and studied the effects of a changing climate on the butterflies. While she loved the field work, she transitioned into more of an earth science and oceanography role at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). While at VIMS, Kelsey got her first taste of polar research, working with Arctic upwelling data. This led her to pursue a master's degree at the University of Utah in atmospheric science, researching Southern Ocean and Antarctic clouds, which is what brings her to the Denman cruise today!
Kelsey has been on 2 other Southern Ocean voyages, MISO and SOTS. She has launched over 300 weather balloons (and we still have nearly 80 left to go on this voyage!). She says that her favorite launches were on the RV Investigator because you have to time the release with the swell, which makes it more of an art! The RV Nuyina is a bit more stable, so the swell is less of a factor unless we are in bad weather. However, she says her most memorable failed launch was on board the Nuyina during a bad weather day in which the winds were so violent it pushed the balloon down into the ocean! The radiosonde was destroyed, and we had to launch another one once the winds calmed. She says one of her most memorable moments on the ship so far was the super-cold day yesterday, where the wind chill was -36 degrees Celsius and the time to frostbite was less than 10 minutes. So what did we do? We went outside and made ice art on the windows!
