Antarctica

by Gabrielle Walker

  1978: Emilio Marcos Palma is the first baby to be born on the continent, at Argentine station Esperanza on the Antarctic Peninsula.

  1979: the first Martian meteorite is found on the continent—though it is not initially recognised as such.

  1981: the first lunar meteorite anywhere in the world is discovered on the continent. Until now, scientists had not believed that rocks could arrive on Earth from other large planetary bodies. This find triggers a re-evaluation of previous ones the world over, revealing that a whole category of previously unidentified meteorites have in fact come to us from the planet Mars.

  1985: British scientists working at Halley Station on the Ronne Ice Shelf report a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

  1986: the first dinosaur in Antarctica is found by Argentine scientists on James Ross Island.

  1994: the last dogs leave the continent. From now, in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty, the only non-native species permitted on the continent are humans.

  1995: American researchers report the discovery of buried ice in the Dry Valleys that is at least eight million years old and yet is still frozen solid.

  1996: Russian drillers at Vostok Station halt their ice core at a depth of 12,000 feet, to avoid contaminating the lake beneath. The longest ice core ever drilled—until it was surpassed in 2010 by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet core—Vostok contains the records of four full ice ages and shows a very tight correlation between temperature and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

  1998: American researchers report satellite results showing that ice in the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating at an alarming rate. A blizzard of papers follows, showing that this large area of the continent is indeed the ‘weak underbelly of Antarctica’.

  2002: the Larsen B Ice Shelf, an area of ice the size of the US state of Rhode Island, shatters in spectacular fashion, triggering fears that the Antarctic ice is responding to global warming. American researchers find that this has not happened for at least 10,000 years.

  2004: European consortium EPICA halts its ice core drilling at Dome C. Though the core is slightly shorter than that of Vostok, it goes back farther, through eight complete ice age cycles. Tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped in the core confirm the tight connection between higher levels of greenhouse gases and higher temperatures, and show that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere today are higher than they have been for at least 800,000 years. This is also the year that contract worker Jake Speed becomes the first person to spend five winters at the South Pole. Though his record has since been surpassed, he remains the only person to have spent five successive winters there.

  2005: French-Italian Concordia Station is occupied for its first winter. Concordia becomes the first new wintering station on the polar plateau in almost fifty years. Separately, American researchers discover that the continent has a hidden face. They find that the hundreds of lakes underlying the Antarctic ice are not isolated, but are interconnected by channels and waterfalls; many of the lakes appear to be continually filling and emptying, with rushes of water that could destabilise large parts of the ice sheet.

  2005: temperature records from many stations confirm that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by nearly 5°F over the previous fifty years, which is more than three times the global average.

  2009: China establishes a summer-only station called Kunlun at Dome A in the Antarctic interior, with the intention of drilling a new ice core to probe even further into Antarctica’s buried climate records.

  2011: the American WAIS Divide project retrieves the continent’s deepest ever ice core, and one of the few from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. They hope it will reveal much more about the history and likely fate of this highly vulnerable ice sheet.

  Glossary

  ANSMET: the Antarctic Search for Meteorites, a programme for seeking meteorites on the continent.

  Antarctic 10: a person of the opposite sex who would rate a 5 back in the real world.

  Antarctic Treaty: a treaty regulating ownership and use of the entire Antarctic continent, which came into force in 1961, and has now been signed by forty-nine nations. The treaty sets aside the continent as a scientific preserve and bans commercial exploitation and military activity.

  Barrier: early explorers’ name for the Ross Ice Shelf.

  Boomerang: a flight from New Zealand to McMurdo Station that has to turn around at the Point of Safe Return because of poor weather at the landing site.

  Bunny boots: large white (or sometimes blue) boots that look like space boots and are adapted with layers of insulation for extremely cold weather.

  Cat or snow cat: snow dozer or tractor with caterpillar tracks.

  Comms: communications—a central part of Antarctic operations.

  Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB): the faint afterglow of the birth of the Universe, the Big Bang, which is invisible to human eyes but still pervades the sky.

  DDU: Dumont d’Urville, the main French base on the Adélie coast.

  EPICA: European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, involving two deep ice cores, one at Dome C and one in Dronning Maud Land.

  Fingee: the pronunciation of ‘FNG’, which stands for ‘fucking new guy (girl)’.

  Freshies: fresh fruit and vegetables—which are worth more than gold in Antarctica.

  Galley: common name for dining area in bases and camps, derived from early naval logistics support on the continent.

  Helo: helicopter.

  Here or Hercules: C-130 military transport aircraft used extensively by the US programme in Antarctica for long-distance flights. Other operations use Hercs to fly on to the continent using wheels on sea-ice runways, but only the United States has the technology to attach skis to the planes, and therefore to use Hercs in the interior.

  Ice sheet: a thick layer of ice covering a very extensive area of land; currently the only remaining large ice sheets in the world are the three that lie on Greenland, East Antarctica and West Antarctica. If any or all of these melt substantially they would dump very large amounts of water into the oceans, raising sea levels significantly around the world.

  Ice shelf: a region of floating ice, where a glacier has spilled out into the sea but not yet broken up to form icebergs. Antarctica has large numbers of smaller ice shelves, and two very large ones—the Ross Ice Shelf (also known as the Barrier) and the Ronne Ice Shelf, which are each approximately the same size as France.

  Ice stream: very large and wide glaciers, typically more than a kilometre deep and up to 50 km wide, which move extremely quickly and drain ice from the centre of the ice sheets down to the sea.

  Jamesway: long half-cylindrical tent with two layers of tarpaulin and a wooden floor, usually heated with stoves. This is often used as a communal space in larger camps, or as sleeping accommodation.

  Knots: a nautical measure of speed for winds or ship travel. One knot is equivalent to 1.85 kmph.

  Mactown: a nickname for McMurdo Station, the US headquarters in Antarctica.

  Mattrack: a strange-looking Antarctic vehicle that resembles a pick-up truck but has triangular wheels with caterpillar tracks that grip on to sea ice.

  Medevac: contraction of‘medical evacuation’: an emergency flight out for someone who is gravely ill or injured.

  Ob Hill: Observation Hill, a volcanic cinder cone overlooking McMurdo Station.

  Pack or pack ice: tightly packed sea ice.

  Sastrugi (sing. sastruga): wave-like ridges of snow built up by the wind.

  Scott tent: pyramid-shaped tent based on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s original design, usually intended to accommodate two people plus a stove for cooking.

  Sea ice: frozen ocean, usually much thinner and more fragile than land ice.

  Skidoo: a common means of individual transportation on snow, which looks like a motorbike on skis. It can also be used to tow sledges.

  Snow dozer: like a bulldozer, but for snow.

  300 Club: to belong to this, you need to ha
ve passed, naked, through a temperature change of 300°F (149°C). Typically, you start in a sauna at 200°F (93°C) before going outside wearing only bunny boots and a mask and walking a set distance in -100°F (-73°C). This is only possible while wintering in the coldest parts of the continent—principally the South Pole—and it’s a very exclusive club.

  ‘Toast’: Antarctic slang for the mental instability that affects most people who spend the winter there, as in ‘going toast’ or being ‘toasty’.

  Twin Otter (or ‘Otter’): a twin-engine, propeller aircraft famous for its rugged construction, reliability and ability to take off and land on short runways. Designed for remote environments, Twin Otters can be equipped with skis or wheels, and can get into Antarctic field sites that larger planes only dream of.

  Winter-over: to spend the entire winter on the continent.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. https://www.comnap.aq/facilities/antarctic_stations

  2. Jonathan L. Bamber, Riccardo E. M. Riva, Bert L. A. Vermeersen and Anne M. LeBroq, ‘Reassessment of the Potential Sea-Level Rise from a Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’, Science, vol. 324, 2009, pp. 901–3.

  1. Welcome to Mactown

  1. This vehicle has its name ‘Ivan the Terra Bus’ stencilled on the side. Nobody in Antarctica seems to be able to resist puns.

  2. Huntford, Race to the South Pole, p. 39.

  3. http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=OPP

  4. Sam has an excellent website describing his work at http://www. bowserlab.org/antarctica/

  5. There’s a spectacular, though disturbing, BBC video of ribbon worms feeding on a dead seal in McMurdo Sound: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8378000/8378512.stm

  6. Named after the great Australian scientist and explorer Douglas Mawson.

  7. Stephanie B. Suhr, Stephen P. Alexander, Andrew J. Gooday, David W Pond and Samuel S. Bowser, ‘Trophic modes of large Antarctic foraminifera: roles of carnivory, omnivory, and detritivory’, Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol. 371, 2008, pp. 155–64.

  8. From the US Antarctic Program newspaper, the Antarctic Sun, available at http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contenthandler.cfm?id=1946

  9. You can hear some of these sounds here: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/ about-antarctica/fact-files/animals/sounds-of-antarctic-wildlife

  10. K. M. Proffitt, J. J. Rotella and R. A. Garrott, ‘Effects of pup age, maternal age, and birth date on pre-weaning survival rates of Weddell seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica’, Oikos, vol. 119, 2010, pp. 1255–64.

  11. K. M. Proffitt, R. A. Garrott and J. J. Rotella, ‘Long-term evaluation of body mass at weaning and postweaning survival rates of Weddell seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica’, Marine Mammal Science, vol. 24, 2008, pp. 677–89.

  12. Gillian Louise Hadley, Recruitment Probabilities and Reproductive Costs for Weddell Seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica, Ph.D. Thesis, Montana State University, Montana, April 2006. Available at: http://etd.lib.montana. edu/etd/2006/hadley/HadleyG0506.pdf. See also Kelly Michelle Proffitt, Mass Dynamics of Weddell Seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica, Ph.D. Thesis, Montana State University, Montana, March 2008. Available at http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/2008/proffitt/ProffittK0508.pdf

  2. The March of the Penguins

  1. David has an excellent website describing his penguin work, at http://www.penguinscience.com/

  2. The letter B signifies that the berg broke off between 90°W and 180°W it was the fifteenth named that year, and it was called ‘a’ because the original B15 then broke up into fragments of which this one was the largest.

  3. Riffenburgh, Nimrod, p. 25.

  4. Ibid., p. 226.

  5. Ibid., p. 226.

  6. Ibid., p. 260.

  7. Ibid., p. 107.

  8. One website offered a reward for anyone who could track this original advert down. You can follow the results here: http://www.antarctic-circle.org/advert.htm

  9. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, p. 281.

  10. Ibid., p. 240.

  11. Ibid., p. 246.

  12. Ibid., p. 242.

  13. Ibid., p. 251.

  14. C.W. Parsons, Zoology, vol. 4, 1934, p. 253. See also Gabrielle Walker, ‘The Emperor’s Eggs’, New Scientist, 17 April 1999, p. 42.

  15. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, p. 234.

  16. Ibid., p. 274.

  17. P. J. Ponganis, T. K. Stockard, J. U. Meir, C. L. Williams, K.V. Ponganis, R. P. van Dam and R. Howard, ‘Returning on empty: extreme blood O2 depletion underlies dive capacity of emperor penguins’, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 210, 2007, pp. 4279–85.

  18. Frenchman Guillaume Dargaud wrote a lovely review of his contrasting experiences of alcohol at McMurdo and DDU for the website Big Dead Place: http://www.bigdeadplace.com/alcoholreview.html

  19. C. Gilbert, Y. Le Maho, M. Perret and A. Ancel, ‘Body temperature changes induced by huddling in breeding male emperor penguins” American Journal of Physiology, vol. 292, 2007, pp. 176–85.

  20. Unlike for seals, the researchers had discovered that flipper tags impeded the penguins so did not use them: Claire Saraux et al., ‘Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change’, Nature, vol. 469, 13 January 2011, pp. 203–6.

  21. C. Gilbert, G. Robertson, I. Le Maho, Y. Naito and A. Ancel, ‘Huddling behavior in emperor penguins: Dynamics of huddling’, Physiology & Behaviour, vol. 88, 2006, pp. 479–88.

  22. C. Gilbert, S. Blanc, Y. Le Maho and A. Ancel, ‘Energy saving process in huddling emperor penguins: From experiments to theory’, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 211, 2007, pp. 1-8.

  23. Mawson, Home of the Blizzard, p. 77.

  24. Ibid., p. 83.

  25. Riffenburgh, Race with Death, p. 71.

  26. Ibid., p. 118.

  27. Ibid., p. 141.

  28. To be safe, Thierry told me, they never keep a captive animal under the lowest weight they have measured in a wild male, which is 3.3 kg. If any bird hit that weight, even if they weren’t moving about and digesting proteins, they got their freedom.

  29. Thierry and his group have since discovered that corticosterone is indeed key. See M. Spee, L. Marchal, A. M. Thierry, O. Chastel, M. Enstipp, Y. Le Maho, M. Beaulieu and T. Raclot, ‘Exogenous corticosterone mimics a late fasting stage in captive Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae)’, American Journal of Physiology: AJP Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology, vol. 300, 2011, pp. R1241–9.

  30. Olivier and his colleagues have since confirmed this. See Aurelie Goutte, Marion Kriloff, Henri Weimerskirch and Olivier Chastel, ‘Why do some adult birds skip breeding? A hormonal investigation in a long-lived bird’, Biol. Lett. vol.7, 2011, pp. 790–2; A. Goutte, E. Antoine, H. Weimerskirch, and O. Chastel, ‘Age and the timing of breeding in a long-lived bird: a role for stress hormones?’ Funct. Ecol. vol. 24, 2010, pp. 1007–16; F. Angelier, B. Moe, H. Weimerskirch and O. Chastel, ‘Age-specific reproductive success in a long-lived bird: do older parents resist stress better?’, Journal of Animal Ecology, vol. 76, 2007, pp. 1181–91.

  3. Mars on Earth

  1. There is a nice short summary of the evidence for water on Mars together with the latest tantalising findings suggesting that there could even have been liquid water there in the geologically recent past. Richard Kerr, ‘A Roller-Coaster Plunge Into Martian Water—and Life?’, Science, vol. 330, no. 6011, 17 December 2010, p. 1617.

  2. Gabrielle Walker, ‘Antarctic Landscape is Testbed for Mars’, New Scientist, 17 April 1999, p. 48.

  3. http://geology.cwru.edu/~ansmet/

  4. Cassidy, Meteorites, Ice and Antarctica, pp. 64–7.

  5. In May 2011, Ralph’s University, Case Western Reserve, awarded John an honorary doctorate. His friends have now taken to calling him ‘Dr Johnny Alpine’.

  6. Gabrielle Walker,‘Meteorite Heaven’, New Scientist, 17 April 1999, p. 30.

  7. Cassidy, Meteorites, Ice and Antarctica, p. 147.

/>   8. http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/antmet/lmc/F2%20ALHA81005.pdf

  9. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/marslife/slide_12.html

  10. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an excellent website about the Martian meteorites at: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/index.html

  11. Sean C. Solomon et al., ‘New Perspectives on Ancient Mars’, Science, vol. 307, 25 February 2005, no. 5713, pp. 1214–20.

  12. D. S. McKay et al., ‘Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite ALH84001’, Science, vol. 273, no. 5277, 16 August 1996.

  13. http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/clinton.html

  14. http://people.bu.edu/marchant/

  15. D. R. Marchant and J. W Head, ‘Antarctic Dry Valleys: Microclimate zonation, variable geomorphic processes, and implications for assessing climate change on Mars’, Icarus, vol. 192, 2007, pp. 187–222.

  16. The astronauts named part of the landing site ‘Head Valley’ in Jim’s honour. See the Apollo 15 flight journal at http://history.nasa.gov/ap15fj/20day10_science.htm

  17. J. S. Levy, J. W. Head, D. R. Marchant, J. L. Dickson and G. A. Morgan, ‘Geologically recent gully-polygon relationships on Mars: Insights from the Antarctic Dry Valleys on the roles of permafrost, microclimates, and water sources for surface flow’, Icarus, vol. 201, 2009, pp. 113–26; J. S. Levy, J. W Head and D. R. Marchant, ‘Cold and Dry Processes in the Martian Arctic: Geomorphic Observations at the Phoenix Landing Site and Comparisons with Terrestrial Cold Desert Landforms’, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 36, 2009, p. L21203.

  18. D. E. Sugden, D.R. Marchant, N. Potter, R.A. Souchez, G. H. Denton, C. C. Swisher, and J. L. Tison, ‘Preservation of Miocene Glacier Ice in East Antarctica’, Nature, vol. 376, 1995, pp. 412–14.

  4. The South Pole

  1. Huntford, Race for the South Pole, p. 184.

  2. Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, p. 525.

  3. There are two excellent websites about South Pole station. http://www.southpolestation.com/ is especially good on ‘trivia’, including stories about past occupants of the station. The official National Science Foundation site is also full of great images and videos, including an excellent virtual tour of the new station: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/index.jsp