Analysing Antarctica’s climate conditions and predicting energy usage with Marple

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Team Polar is an international collective of scientists, engineers, and students committed to advancing research in extreme environments. Their focus is on developing autonomous systems capable of exploring and operating in some of the world’s most challenging regions, such as Antarctica.

Why Antarctica you would ask, well, currently Antarctic researchers are deployed on blue ice fields to find meteorites. And as you could already imagine, finding these meteorites is tough, leaving the researchers battling extreme cold and winds.

In this context, Team Polar aims to make this process safer and more efficient by creating an autonomous, affordable rover to improve research on the continent.

The alignment:

Marple and Team Polar align perfectly. Team Polar needs to analyse harsh Antarctic conditions to design their autonomous rover. Marple's platform makes it easy to process and visualize this critical data, helping Team Polar build a rover that can handle the extreme environment.

The Challenge:

Team Polar needed to ensure their rover could generate enough energy to operate autonomously in Antarctica’s harsh climate. To do this, they had to analyse extensive climate data—no easy task in such a demanding environment.

The Solution and results:

Team Polar used Marple, a cloud-based platform for time series data analysis. Marple's tools helped the team process and visualize sensor data, leading to key insights:

1. Wind Speed: Marple’s first plot showed wind speed at 10 meters above ground. This data allowed Team Polar to assess the rover’s stability in extreme winds, a crucial factor for its survival in Antarctica.

2. Solar Irradiance: The second plot focused on solar irradiance, key to the rover’s energy generation. By analysing this data, Team Polar could determine how much solar power the rover could harness.

3. Albedo: The third plot highlighted albedo, the reflectivity of the ground. In Antarctica, where up to 90% of sunlight is reflected by snow and ice, understanding albedo was vital for maximising the rover’s energy intake.

Outcome:

With Marple, Team Polar conducted a deep analysis of the rover’s energy generation potential, using data from January 2020 to April 2021. The insights gained were essential in preparing the rover for its mission in one of the world’s toughest environments.

Benefits:

By using Marple, the team can:

• Data visualisation from Marple allowed for informed, data-driven design decisions for the rover.
• Marple allowed the Team Polar to quickly process large volumes of climate data, saving valuable time.
• Marple’s insights helped reduce the risks associated with operating the rover in extreme environments.
• The easy use of Marple Interface allowed engineers and scientists to collaborate seamlessly on data analysis, even if they did not use Marple before.

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