In the stark, icy world of one of the Earth's coldest places, scientists are looking for answers to some of today's hottest questions:
How widespread is global warming?What impact will the depletion of ozone have on life on Earth?
What effects will increased UV radiation have on ecosystems and food chains?
"Antarctica offers special things for science," says Lynn Simarski, public affairs specialist for the National Science Foundation, which coordinates and oversees U.S. research on the icy continent.
"There are things that you can study only there, things that have to do with weather and climate of the whole world. If we want to look at the ozone hole, that's where it is. We can only study the ice sheet there; and sea ice is so important for jump-starting the entire food chain. The cold, deep water that flows there eventually flows through the whole ocean."
Nor is it just climate research, she says. "We do a lot of astronomy work at the South Pole. It's a great place to look out into space." So good, in fact, that the clean, dry, dark atmosphere is affectionately called the "poor man's space probe." Biology and geology and ecology are also important areas of study.
Antarctica may seem remote and isolated - and it is - but, says Simarski, there are so many links, so many connections to the rest of the world.
Scientific interest in Antarctica really took off during the International Geophysical Year, 1957-58. The Heroic Era - the intense era of exploration and discovery that lasted into the first part of this century - was over, and scientists were beginning to wonder what else we could learn from this vast and desolate continent. "IGY was the first all-out scientific assault," according to John Annexstad, a geophysicist from Minnesota who spent IGY at the Byrd research station at the South Pole. "It was an international effort, a very intense period of research that ushered in a new era of scientific exploration."
Since that time, Annexstad has participated in or led 10 different Antarctic expeditions, including several to collect meteorites. "The famous Martian meteorite - the one that may hold clues to life in the universe - that was collected in Antarctica," notes Simarski. Meteorites are not always easy to find, but scientists have discovered that due to the way they flow through the glacial ice they tend to get bunched up in certain places. And who knows what eventual secrets about the makeup of the universe they will disclose?
One of the important byproducts of Antarctic research has been the arena of international cooperation it has engendered. Although a number of countries have laid claim to Antarctica, those claims were set aside by international treaty early in the 1960s, when it was agreed that the continent should be reserved for peaceful and scientific purposes.
Twelve nations originally participated in the IGY project. That has expanded to include another 14 that are participating in Antarctic research. Not all countries maintain permanent research stations there, but a number do, including Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, Russia, the Ukraine and Great Britain.
The U.S. currently maintains three year-round stations, in addition to a number of summer camps and field stations.
McMurdo is the largest station, built on the bare volcanic rock of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island. It is the logistics hub of the U.S. Antarctic Program, with a harbor, landing strips on sea ice and shelf ice and a helicopter pad. Its 85 or so buildings range in size from a small radio shack to large, three-story buildings. Research at or near McMurdo involves marine and terrestrial biology, biomedicine, geology and geophysics, glaciology, glacial geology, meteorology, aeronomy and upper atmosphere physics.
Peak summer population at McMurdo can exceed 1,100. In winter, that number drops to about 250. Those who stay the winter there are totally isolated from late February to late August.
The Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole, named in honor of the explorers who reached the pole in 1911 and 1912, has been occupied continuously since November, 1956. Fewer than 30 scientists and support personnel winter at the station; population increases to about 180 in the summer. Temperatures often hover at -20 F. or colder in the winter.
Research at Amundsen-Scott includes glaciology, geophysics, meteorology, upper atmosphere physics, astronomy, astrophysics and biomedical studies.
Palmer Station, on a protected harbor on the southwest coast of Anvers Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, is the only U.S. station north of the Antarctic Circle. Its milder temperatures make it ideal for biological studies of birds, seals and other members of the marine ecosystem.
Logistic support for the Antarctic stations is provided by ship, particularly for the Palmer Station, and by LC-130 Hercules planes with ski-equipped landing gear. Obviously, in a place where everything but ice cubes must be shipped in, supplies must be carefully planned and coordinated.
Because of the expense of antarctic operations, research is performed there only if it can't be performed anywhere else. Most of it is done by investigators at universities, although some federal agencies and other organizations get involved. It is coordinated and funded by the National Science Foundation.
We are learning valuable things in Antarctica. We are learning that gauging the extent to which penguin colonies flourish and decline provides insights into the health of the whole Antarctic environment and the effects of global warning. We are learning that ice conditions affect the breeding success of krill, the tiny shrimp-like creature abundant in these waters - and when krill fares poorly, so do penguins, seals and whales.
We are learning that our climate may be changing faster and in different ways than we believed possible. The notion that climate operates in a series of 100,000-year cycles is fading, as is the idea that significant climate change takes centuries. Analysis of ice core samples from Antarctica shows otherwise.
We are learning that a thinning ozone layer can let through increased amounts of radiation that may not only impact biological life but lead to catastrophic changes in world climate and ocean levels.
And perhaps more than anything, we are learning about the impact the human species has on our home planet.
Out of all the research to come out of Antarctica, says Annexstad, that may be the most important lesson. "The most important thing has been our increased awareness of our own position in the cosmos. We are the one species that is capable of the total destruction of the system. But we are learning, as human sojourners on Spaceship Earth, that we must treat the planet as a total organism."
That increased awareness is the most important and most exciting lesson of all, he says. It is a lesson from a cold world that may fire a new era of insight into who we really are.