Troll is a Norwegian research station located at Jutulsessen, from the coast in the eastern part of Princess Martha Coast in Queen Maud Land,

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. It is

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

's only all-year research station in Antarctica, and is supplemented by the summer-only station Tor. Troll is operated by the

Norwegian Polar Institute The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI; no, Norsk Polarinstitutt) is Norway's central governmental institution for scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The NPI is a directorate under Norway's Min ...

and also features facilities for the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the

Norwegian Institute for Air Research The NILU – Norwegian Institute for Air Research ( no, NILU – Norsk Institutt for luftforskning) or NILU is one of the leading specialized scientific laboratories in Europe researching issues related to air pollution, climate change and healt ...

. Unlike most other research stations on the continent, Troll is constructed on the snow-free slope of solid rock breaking through the ice sheet at Jutulsessen, located

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

. The station opened as a summer-only station in 1990 and was taken into use as an all-year station in 2005. It has an overwintering capacity of eight people and a summer capacity of 40. It is served by Troll Airfield, which is the base for the Dronning Maud Land Air Network (

DROMLAN Dronning Maud Land Air Network Project (DROMLAN) is a coordinated project between eleven countries with bases in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica ( no, Dronning Maud Land) to create a coordinated logistics service to reduce costs. The participating count ...

Facilities

Troll is located in the eastern part of Princess Martha Coast in Queen Maud Land, which Norway claims as a

dependent territory A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the controll ...

. The station is located on the nunatak bare ground area Jutulsessen, at above mean sea level. It is completely surrounded by the Antarctic ice sheet. This is unlike most other Antarctic research stations, which are located on snow. Troll is from the coast. The station facilities are owned by the Government of Norway through the Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property. Operation of the facility is done by another government agency, the Norwegian Polar Institute. The facilities consist of a module-built new section that is , and the old section that is . The new section consists of eight bedrooms, a gym, a sauna, a kitchen, a communication center and office space. In addition, there are several smaller buildings which are used as laboratories, provision stores, generators and garages. The old station is used partially for storage and partially as a summer station. The facility also features an emergency facility for eight people, located at a safe distance from the main base, in case of fire or other accidents. The station is dimensioned to tolerate temperatures down to and wind speeds of . The facility attempts to minimize its environmental impact through several mechanisms, including minimizing area usage. Energy consumption is reduced by using recirculating excess heat to melt snow and ice for drinking water and heating. Waste is minimized through purchase planning and recycling; the remaining waste is compressed and transported away from the Antarctic. Fuel is handled in such a way that even small spills are minimized. In 2016 a solar PV plant with 7.3 kilowatt peak has been installed on one of the roof tops. It serves as a pilot installation for the declared middle term target of reducing the oil consumption of the research station significantly, by extending the solar PV plant over the next few years. The station has a cold and dry climate, being located in a

desert A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About on ...

. The annual mean temperature is , with the summer temperature able to reach about and the lowest during the winter at . Storms, which can occur throughout the year, can occasionally make outdoor activity impossible. Being located south of the

Antarctic Circle The Antarctic Circle is the most southerly of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of Earth. The region south of this circle is known as the Antarctic, and the zone immediately to the north is called the Southern Temperate Zone. So ...

, Troll has

midnight sun The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon that occurs in the summer months in places north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle, when the Sun remains visible at the local midnight. When the midnight sun is seen in the Arctic, ...

in the summer and polar night during the winter.

Research

The

(NILU) maintains air and atmospheric measurement equipment at Troll. Combined with a similar measuring station,

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp ...

Ny-Ålesund Ny-Ålesund ("New Ålesund") is a small town in Oscar II Land on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. It is situated on the Brøgger peninsula (Brøggerhalvøya) and on the shore of the bay of Kongsfjorden. The company town is owned ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group rang ...

, Norway. This allows the institute to collect such data from both polar regions. In particular, the facility measures

aerosol An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog or mist, dust, forest exudates, and geyser steam. Examples of anthropogen ...

s, organic and inorganic pollution,

ozone Ozone (), or trioxygen, is an inorganic molecule with the chemical formula . It is a pale blue gas with a distinctively pungent smell. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope , breaking down in the l ...

and

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...

(UV) radiation. NILU also creates air samples annually to generate data for trend analysis. The weekly air pollution measurements are compared to equivalent measurements at Zeppelin. Ground measurements are taken of ozone and mercury, two of the greatest pollution threats in the polar regions.

Stratosphere The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air h ...

measurements are conducted to measure ozone and UV levels, in particular to gain additional information about

ozone depletion Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone lay ...

and the Antarctic ozone hole.

Kongsberg Satellite Services Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) is a Norwegian-based company. KSAT has the most extensive ground station network globally, and the world's largest ground station for support of polar orbiting satellites located at 78° North - Svalbard, ...

, a joint venture between Kongsberg Group and the Norwegian Space Center, operates TrollSat, a

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

ground station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves f ...

which allows downloading of data. In conjunction with SvalSat, located in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, TrollSat targets satellites in a polar orbit. TrollSat consists of a single radome with an

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never m ...

antenna capable of

S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the conventi ...

and X band reception. To relay the information, TrollSat has a and a C band uplink to provide

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

connection to Europe and North America. TrollSat will be one of 30 ground stations for the European satellite navigation system

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

, and is Norway's main contribution to the project. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute operates a manned

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

at Troll. It measures

air pressure Atmospheric pressure, also known as barometric pressure (after the barometer), is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as , which is equivalent to 1013.25 millibars ...

, temperature, humidity and wind, both at the station itself and at the airfield.

History

During the 1980s, it became increasingly important for the Government of Norway to have a permanent base in Queen Maud Land. The area had been annexed as a dependency on 14 January 1939, at the time mainly based on Norwegian

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

interests in the Antarctic. From 1956, Norway operated the research station Norway Station, but this was given to South Africa in 1959. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Norway's research activities in Antarctica were sporadic and without a fixed base. This gave the advantage that the research was not bound geographically, but it weakened the Norwegian claim for Queen Maud Land and the right to participate as a consultative member of the Antarctic Treaty. In 1989, any party to the Treaty could ask for it to be renegotiated, and Norwegian authorities saw the need for a permanent base to strengthen Norway's claim to Queen Maud Land. The Norwegian Polar Institute decided to establish a summer station. This was built during the summer of 1989 and 1990, resulting in a building with room for eight people.Kyvik ''et al''. (2008): 153 Construction required of materials to be hauled from the coast and the station was officially opened on 17 February 1990. The station took its name from the surrounding jagged mountains, which resemble

troll A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human ...

s of

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern per ...

. The first overwintering occurred in 2000, when a South Pole expedition used the camp as a base. To ease logistics, Norway took the initiative to establish Dronning Maud Land Air Network (DROMLAN), a cooperation between the countries with bases in Queen Maud Land to streamline transport costs. Having an airfield at Troll allows quicker transport to the research stations in western Queen Maud Land, which are located further away from the incumbent airfields at Henriksenskjera and Novolazarevskaya. The first flight that was a preliminary to DROMLAN was made in 2000 from

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

, South Africa, to Henriksenskjera, where a

Twin Otter The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a Canadian STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada, which produced the aircraft from 1965 to 1988; Viking Air purchased the type certificate, then restar ...

was used onwards to Troll. In 2003, it was decided that Norway was to extend its operations in Antarctica by establishing an all-year research station. By then, Norway was the only country with a territorial claim to Antarctica to not have an all-year research station on the continent. The government stated that the investment was motivated to improve climate research, to strengthen Norway as a bi-polar research nation and to strengthen Norway's role as a premise-maker in the environmental policy of the Antarctic. Construction of the expansion was done from December 2004 through February 2005 by the Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property, who contracted the job to AF Gruppen. About of equipment was hauled to the base from the ice shelf. The base was prefabricated and only required the modules to be connected at site.Kyvik ''et al''. (2008): 154 New infrastructure included a new generator, emergency station, garage, provision stores, container ramps for equipment and fuel, and more laboratories.Kyvik ''et al''. (2008): 155 At the same time, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute established a meteorological station at Troll.Kyvik ''et al''. (2008): 159 The construction of the runway itself required the filling of

crevasse A crevasse is a deep crack, that forms in a glacier or ice sheet that can be a few inches across to over 40 feet. Crevasses form as a result of the movement and resulting stress associated with the shear stress generated when two semi-rigid p ...

s and the removal of stones. Troll Airfield was opened on 11 February 2005 by

Queen Sonja of Norway Sonja (born Sonja Haraldsen on 4 July 1937) is Queen of Norway since 17 January 1991 as the wife of King Harald V. Sonja and the then Crown Prince Harald had dated for nine years prior to their marriage in 1968. They had kept their relatio ...

and the new research station the following day. After the opening, another power station was built in 2005. In 2006, a satellite base station was built by Kongsberg Satellite Services.Kyvik ''et al''. (2008): 157 This resulted in the need for a

connection for the base. During the winter season of 2006, there was no overwintering due to lack of funding, but from 2007 this has been re-instated. In 2008, a windmill was taken into use to provide some of the power. Norwegian

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Jens Stoltenberg Jens Stoltenberg (born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who has been serving as the 13th secretary general of NATO since 2014. A member of the Norwegian Labour Party, he previously served as the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 to ...

visited Troll in January 2008, when he among other things opened TrollSat. At the same time, as part of the

International Polar Year The International Polar Years (IPY) are collaborative, international efforts with intensive research focus on the polar regions. Karl Weyprecht, an Austro-Hungarian naval officer, motivated the endeavor in 1875, but died before it first occurred i ...

, a joint Norwegian – United States expedition traveled from Troll to the

Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is the United States scientific research station at the South Pole of the Earth. It is the southernmost point under the jurisdiction (not sovereignty) of the United States. The station is located on the ...

and back. On 23 February 2009, Norwegian Minister of the Environment Erik Solheim hosted a meeting for environment ministers from 15 countries to discuss climate change and learn about recent research in the field.

References

Bibliography

External links