Since the 1980s a group of researchers at University College London have been seeking new phases of ice, testing the behaviour of the bonds of the water molecule at the very highest pressures and lowest temperatures. In 1996 they discovered ice XII, which can be created in a number of ways, including by careful heating of one of the amorphous ices which lacks a crystalline structure. Twenty years on, the scientists have identified the crystal structures of ice XIII and XIV, and discerned the diffraction pattern of ice XVI. One of the team, John Finney, has described this work as being like that of the artist, making new ‘sculpted ice structures’. ‘A good forger can reproduce the pattern,’ Finney writes, ‘but the painter creates something new and original that has never existed before. Anywhere. Perhaps it was similar for ice XII. Perhaps it was the first time that water molecules had been persuaded to link together in this particular way to form this structure? We could easily argue that the same pressure, temperature and cooling rate conditions that we used to “create” ice XII would be unlikely to be found anywhere else in the universe. In which case, perhaps we could look at the first making of ice XII as an original act of creation. How many other forms might ice take?’
While Finney and his fellow scientists work to create the conditions of outer space in the laboratory, and predict the phases of ice on distant moons, the view back from space to Earth is helping scientists understand changes in the composition of ice on our own planet. Space travel has changed the way humans think about the world, from the moment in 1969 when astronauts first walked on the moon and audiences back on Earth were enchanted by images of the planet taken from space – and more aware of its fragility.
All through the 1970s, Nimbus satellites travelled the Earth in near polar orbits. These spacecraft were intended to document rainfall and collect atmospheric data to help everyday weather forecasting, but the later missions would reveal something far more momentous. When Nimbus 7 launched in 1978, its sensor technology allowed scientists to map sea ice concentrations across the globe, distinguishing newly formed ice from older ice. As observations accumulated, another pattern started to emerge: a hole which appeared in the ozone layer over Antarctica each winter.
The environment was already a matter of concern: the first connections between CO2 emissions and climate change were made in the 1930s. In 1957 Revelle found that CO2 produced by humans would not be readily absorbed by the oceans; Keeling measured CO2 in the atmosphere and detected its rise in 1960. In the 1970s models of glacier flow revealed an instability in the Antarctic ice sheet, and ocean geologists found huge deposits of methane-bearing ices in the world’s seabeds. Increasing numbers of scientists chose research topics relevant to climate change. It was little surprise when these discoveries were followed by the announcement that 1981 had been the warmest year since records began.
NASA launched an Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) in 2003 to measure the polar ice sheets; it de-orbited in 2010 after a seven-year mission. ICESat-2 was launched in 2018 to pursue research in a very different public ‘climate’. Now researchers have found the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet to be irreversible and confirm that it will lead to a rise in sea level over future centuries. The topic of climate change is no longer restricted to specialist conferences and research programmes, but is reported by the mass media. In July 2017, when a 1.1-trillion-tonne iceberg calved from the Larsen C ice shelf, it made headline news around the world. Some channels dwelt on the fact that the Antarctic ice shelf was now at the lowest extent ever recorded. Others celebrated the awe-inspiring dimensions of one of the ten biggest icebergs ever seen.
How to calculate the magnitude of an iceberg? Boyle, who worked so hard to create modest pieces of ice in his laboratory, notes with some admiration the ‘stupendiousest piece of single ice . . . which our Famous English Seaman Mr. W. Baffin (whose name is to be met with in many modern Maps and Globes) mentions himself to have met with upon the coast of Greenland.’ Or rather ‘ſtupendiouſeſt’, since the word looks even more impressive with the long s of the seventeenth-century font, its tip curling like an incomplete f above the character’s x-axis. Baffin calculated the size of this most stupendous object as ‘one hundred and forty fathoms, or one thousand six hundred and eighty foot from the top to the bottom.’ Baffin and Boyle both knew that to calculate the size of these ice islands one has to consider the ice that lies hidden below the waterline.
This problem of ‘the proportion betwixt the extant and immers’d parts of floating ice’ hinged on understanding the way ice behaves in water. Some men, Boyle writes, report ‘that there is but one seventh part of Ice above water . . . This proportion I know doth hold in much Ice, but whether it do so in all, I know not.’ After some calculations, he comes to believe that the part of the berg underwater ought to be eight or nine times as deep as that seen above the water.
Today’s glaciologists place the figure even higher, at around 91% – although the exact amount will depend on the character of the ice. Such percentages suggest that the iceberg can be easily divided into upper and lower parts, whereas it is no respecter of the waterline – it soon enough slips sideways, turning as it melts. In this it echoes the evolution of the percentage sign itself. The zeros, which in Boyle’s day were written above and below a horizontal fraction line, now balance precariously either side of a diagonal solidus.
VI
I have no desire to go to Antarctica, but I’m curious. The artist-explorer Emma Stibbon RA has just returned from a residency on board the Antarctic research vessel HMS Protector, and we meet in a café on Turl Street to compare notes. As HMS Protector sailed down the Antarctic Peninsula towards Rothera Research Station, Emma observed the ice formations – and the navy personnel who were studying them. ‘Everyone had their work to do,’ Emma tells me. ‘There were specialists in meteorology and hydrography and navigation, as well as the ice experts.’ In contrast to the remote recording technologies used by navy personnel to capture data, Emma made her records from chalk and water and pigment. She believes that this human, tactile response is as important as ever in understanding the world.
Emma tells me that the coastline of Antarctica is so inaccessible that it has not been surveyed for nearly two centuries. Ships are still navigating with charts made by sailors on whaling ships, who would have dropped a sounding line down to take a depth reading and used a sextant for positioning. ‘Obviously,’ she continues, ‘that leaves room for error. So the new data gathered by HMS Protector is really going to contribute to modern mapping. The ship is fitted with sonar that emits beams of sound energy off the seabed. The ship tracks the mapping area (a bit like mowing a lawn) and this produces lines of sonar data that is then sent to the Chart Room on board. Here, the data is expertly cleaned by the surveyors to remove any excess noise – and then digitally converted into positions and depth.’ This detailed, high-resolution data is transferred to the Admiralty UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton, where it will be used to make new navigational charts.
The users of the maps will be the temporary inhabitants of the Antarctic, most of whom arrive at research stations to analyse the environment. They will tell you that a trip to Antarctica is like a journey back in time as well as over many miles: Europe experienced similar conditions during the Ice Ages, when glacial sheets covered the planet as far south as London and Oxford. Emma questioned how to record this ancient landscape. ‘Working in my sketchbook in such cold temperatures meant I had to draw quickly. I tend to use wet media such as Indian ink or watercolour and this would sometimes freeze on the brush. Drawing on board a ship means the landscape is continuously slowly sliding by and that requires a swift response.’
Emma’s drawings of ice are shape-shifters, making the viewer wonder not only how the image is made, but also how such strange visions can exist at all. Are they glaciers or ghosts? Back in her studio she would deliberate about which media to use, ‘I sometimes work with gesso, graphite and silverpoint which gives a silvery effect.’ Her Ant
arctic works record all three states of water – solid and liquid and gas – and the permeable line between them, a reminder that it is the only substance to exist naturally in all these forms on Earth.
Once a museum conservator of works of art on paper, Emma has a sense of the longevity of materials. She uses processes with an awareness of archival permanence. ‘When I consider the amount of time I invest in making art it gives me some consolation to think that it will be around for a while yet.’ But then, she adds – ‘we have to think in wider circles of time, beyond those our minds can comprehend. What can last for ever?’
Our conversation is interrupted by a hailstorm. Emma wipes the condensation off the window and we watch the transformation of the street. Bikes come to a halt and tourists scurry into the bookshop for shelter; students rush towards the porter’s lodge, burying their faces in books and scarves. When hailstones strike they hurt like hell, but they are nonetheless glorious in their dynamism. There is something comical in the way the pellets fall and then immediately bounce back upwards, their downward trajectory less certain than it seems.
Hail’s ambiguity has puzzled humans since ancient times. People once believed it only fell during the day. The author of the nineteenth-century classic Meteorology admitted that – even in his enlightened era – no one could agree on its cause. ‘How are we to understand that during the fine season, and the hottest days, considerable masses of ice fall?’ wrote Ludwig Kämtz. ‘Why certain countries are ravaged by hail almost every year, while adjacent localities are almost entirely spared?’ Another mystery was that hailstorms took place over a very limited area: ‘At a few myriametres from the place where the hail has fallen, not even wind has been felt.’
Kämtz was impressed by record-breaking data: he reports that on 29 April 1697 hailstones fell in Flintshire weighing around 130 grams; and the following week a Mr Taylor of Staffordshire found hailstones 3 centimetres in circumference; a hailstorm ravaged the banks of the Nile on 13 August 1832; and at Utrecht in 1736, Mr Mussenbroeck observed a heavy hailstorm, of which all the hailstones were the size of pigeons’ eggs and even those of hens. But these are as nothing: on 5 October 1831, hailstones the size of a fist fell in Constantinople.
Hailstones fall in brief stints. It’s as if the sky can’t maintain the dramatic detonation of ice for more than a few minutes. A short hailstorm is like those uncomfortable condensed forms in poetry, the limerick or the triolet, which often have a sting in the tail. The short form requires wit, and wit sometimes tips over into malice. If snow were falling now, it would be a soft accretion, the flakes lying in sheltered nooks of the old buildings. It’s hard not to get lyrical about snow, which falls so gently that it seems to slow down time; hail speeds time up like strobe lighting does a pantomime. Snow commands a respectful silence, whereas hail elicits a noisy reaction as car alarms are activated by the pellets.
Yet snowflakes and hailstones begin alike as drops of water in the clouds, where they freeze into ice crystals. The snowflake has a simple journey; an ice crystal floats down through a cloud, and further crystals adhere to its extremities. Hailstones originate in vast cumulonimbus clouds, above the altitude at which planes fly. The hail has further to fall, and may be thrown back into the cloud by updraft. As it passes through alternating layers of warm and cool air above the ground it melts, and then refreezes, accumulating ever more layers of ice. Ice buried deep in the ice cap can be preserved for centuries, but ice falling through the atmosphere can change state by the second.
The torrent stops as suddenly as it began, but the pellets remain. Some have collected in the statues over the archway opposite: the Virgin Mary standing on the globe, wearing a red cloak over her more traditional blue, and St Mildred, riding a flock of geese like a wing-walker. When Emma and I step outside, our feet crunch upon the tiny, opaque balls of ice.
II
EXPLORERS
PAPER TRAIL
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge
National Library, Greenland
We had seen God in his splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.
Ernest Shackleton, South
We left no footprints, even.
Ursula Le Guin, ‘Sur’
I
Around every corner in Amsterdam, the Arctic is there to meet me. It’s January. The new feature film Nova Zembla has just hit the cinemas, and the poster is pasted onto bollards down dreary stretches of Damrak and all along the Amstel. The handsome face of an explorer framed by fur cap and grizzled beard, the frozen rigging of his ship behind him: these don’t look much out of place in this city of waterways. The film is a historical drama about Willem Barents’s voyage, which set out for the north from Amsterdam four centuries ago. I’m intrigued, but can’t afford the cinema admission.
Almost a year has passed since my return from Upernavik. I long to go back to the Arctic; I have a pressing feeling of unfinished business. Meanwhile, money is scarce, too scarce to settle anywhere. When Eva asked me to keep an eye on her harpsichord, I spent fifteen pounds on a ticket for the overnight bus from London Victoria to Amsterdam. Groggy with lack of sleep and fresh air, and the monotony of motorways between Calais and Rotterdam, I arrive in the De Baarsjes district, where Eva lives on a street that was the setting for a Dutch police procedural drama in the 1980s. Now recovered from TV fame, it is quiet and relatively crime-free. Nevertheless, Eva is pleased to have me in the flat with her treasure. Before catching her flight to Tallinn, she shows me the meter which I’ll use to check the temperature and humidity of the room morning and evening. Dusting the harpsichord is optional. ‘And give the cat some pollock every day,’ she adds.
These duties leave me several hours during the day to wander the city. My mind is still so occupied by thoughts of the Arctic that I’m not surprised to see a polar bear standing on its hind legs sniffing the air in Erasmus Park as the afternoon light starts to fade. I’m impressed by its size and its poise; edging closer I discover it’s a statue in white marble by Simona Vergani, installed during recent renovations. I cross Mercatorplatz, which honours the creator of the first map of the world, and stroll along the sluggish Admiralengracht. The streets in this neighbourhood are named for navigators of much tougher waters. Among Marco Polostraat and James Cookstraat, I find tributes to the iconic polar explorers: John Franklinstraat, Shackletonstraat, Baffinstraat and Hudsonhof. Their names look strange on the blue enamel street signs fixed to the apartment buildings. I’m used to encountering them on the maps of the waters they charted: Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay. They are equally out of place there, of course – those regions were home to others, and not theirs to name. Indigenous Arctic dwellers would never think of naming a place after a person, but rather after its own attributes. As the Greenlandic politician and poet Aqqaluk Lynge wrote:
They explored and explored
and every island or fjord
river or mountain was named
to honour this or that or themselves
Like those earlier explorers, over time I become more adventurous. One afternoon I pass the Rijksmuseum. It’s closed for refurbishment, and most of the building is concealed behind netting and scaffolding, but part of one wing is open. I enter through a side door, and in a dimly lit gallery I find a collection of objects that travelled to the Arctic in the sixteenth century. This was ambitious baggage, even by the standards of the time: a carriage clock, muskets with ornate silverwork and, most unexpected of all, a cache of engravings. The prints depict mythological and religious subjects, like Spranger’s Paradise, and famous historical scenes including Goltzius’s Roman Heroes and the patriotic Defenders of Haarlem. In those days connoisseurs kept their prints in albums or folders, not framed like paintings. These images were once bundled up and carried as cargo by Willem Barents on his final trip.
Barents was searching for a sea route to China which must, he reasoned, exist north of Siberia. He believed that t
he midsummer sun would melt any ice in the region. He was wrong. The expedition passed Bear Island and, at 80 degrees north, met the pack ice, sailing along its edge. They reached Nova Zembla, a long pennant of land that stretches up from the coast of Russia towards the North Pole, on 17 July 1596 and pushed on round its northern tip, which he named ‘IJskaap’ or Ice Cape, before turning into the Kara Sea. Ice began to surround the ship. Anxious to avoid becoming trapped as the weather grew colder, he started to retreat, but Mercury’s progress was confounded by icebergs and floes. Barents could go no further. By 28 August Mercury was frozen in. Its timbers began to creak – and then to crack – under the strain.
Gerrit de Veer, the ship’s carpenter, survived the ordeal to write a memoir. An etching in the first edition depicts the dramatic wreck in the ‘IJshaven’ or Ice Harbour: the unlucky ship, listing sideways, its rigging slack, the poop deck raised up on a great spar of ice, and the anchor hanging forlorn and useless from the bow. Barents and his sixteen crew were forced to spend the winter on the bare peninsula, gaining the dubious honour of being the first Europeans to winter so far north. They built a small log cabin using driftwood that had floated from Siberia and, when there was no more driftwood, lumber from their ship. Even working swiftly against the worsening weather, care was put into the construction of ‘Het Behouden Huys’ (the Saved House). The engravings in de Veer’s memoir show a well-proportioned single-storey building with an impressive chimney rising from the roof. It looks cosy, but I wouldn’t have wanted to live there. The shelter was not merely a means to keep out the cold, but also the polar bears that prowled the area, lured by the prospect of food.
The Library of Ice Page 5