Norway, U.S. team up for IPY traverse
Scientists from the two countries will travel East Antarctica overland to study how snow variability relates to global climate change.
Even after 50 years of continuous research across Antarctica by scientists from countries around the world, there are still parts of the icy continent that remain relatively unexplored.
A team of Norwegian and American researchers will take a long trek into one of those unknown areas this austral summer during a 10-week, overland traverse of Dronning Maud Land in East Antarctica.
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Explore Earth's Poles at a Museum Near You With "Polar-Palooza"
NSF and NASA are funding Polar-Palooza and other education and outreach activities as part of the International Polar Year (IPY), which began last March and ends in March 2009. IPY focuses science and education on Earth's remote polar regions.
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Glaciers and Ice Caps to Dominate Sea Level Rise Through 21st Century
Ice loss from glaciers and ice caps is expected to cause more global sea rise during this century than the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.
The researcher concluded that glaciers and ice caps are currently contributing about 60 percent of the world's ice to the oceans and the rate has been markedly accelerating in the past decade.
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Antarctic Icebergs: Unlikely Oases for Ocean Life
Icebergs have long gripped the popular imagination, whether as relatively run-of-the-mill floating hazards that cause "unsinkable' ships to founder or, more recently, as enormous breakaway pieces of ice the size of states or small countries.
But, according to a paper published in this week's Science magazine, scientists have discovered that these floating ice islands--some as large as a dozen miles across--have a major impact on the ecology of the ocean around them, serving as "hotspots" for ocean life, with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill and fish below.
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Report Offers Guidance on How to Safely Explore Vast Aquatic Systems Buried Under Antarctic Ice
The National Science Foundation (NSF) should work within the environmental framework of the international Antarctic Treaty system to develop a global scientific consensus on minimally disruptive ways to investigate one of the "last unexplored places on Earth"--a unique system of lakes, and the aquatic systems that may connect them, buried thousands of meters under the Antarctic ice sheet--according to a newly released report.
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New species discovered in Antarctic deep sea
This week's issue of the science journal Nature carries a paper with some of the highlight findings of the ANDEEP project. The paper explores the questions of the biodiversity of the deep parts of the Weddell Sea, and of whether Antarctic deep-sea animals are very old ancestors of shallow-water species, or whether they evolved from shallow-water species that colonised deeper waters. The findings suggest high biodiversity, and that the glacial cycle of advance and retreat of ice led to an intermingling of species that originated in shallow and deep-water habitats.
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Network uses radio waves to log lightning
Scientists creating a network to triangulate and pinpoint lightning strikes around the world are using a very narrow band of radio waves to detect the phenomena over long distances. The small network of very low frequency (VLF) receivers includes stations in the Antarctic, including at Palmer Station. VLF generally refers to radio frequencies in the range of 3 to 30 kilohertz.
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Palmer Station, Antarctica Celebrates Earth Day With an Underwater Clean Up
Residents at Palmer Station, a year-round U.S. research station on the Antarctic Peninsula, removed old debris from the sea floor near the station in late April 2007, as a part of an annual Earth Day clean up.
In the early days of Antarctic exploration, in the first decades of the 20th century, expeditions were largely unregulated and free to dispose of wastes as the leaders saw fit. In the latter half of the century, following renewed efforts to explore the polar regions that were sparked in part by worldwide interest in the continent and a burgeoning, global environmental consciousness, nations began to develop environmental policies for Antarctica as well as efforts to mitigate past environmental harm.
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Rod Well Brings Water to the Desert
“Water, water everywhere / Nor any a drop to drink.”
South Pole residents can relate to the famous lament of this mariner, surrounded by undrinkable water.
The station sits on top of a two-mile-thick ice sheet, which stretches to the horizon in every direction, gently rolling like a calm sea. And while snow and ice blanket the region, no drinking water exists in the polar desert.
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Polar Technology Conference
Stanford University is hosting the 3rd annual Polar Technology Conference on the 26th (Thu) & 27th (Fri) of April 2007 at Building G - Main Conference Room, SRI International in Menlo Park, California, USA. The primary purpose of this conference is to bring together polar scientists and technology groups for a planned technology development and to explain, discuss various technology issues they face during their projects.
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Team probes buried Antarctic lake
On the frozen Antarctic continent, subglacial lakes are a hot spot of scientific interest, but the information they contain remains untapped.
“The ice sheet in Antarctica can be as much as 5 kilometers thick, and at the bottom point, it can be quite warm, as warm as the melting point of ice,” said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, who led a science team to the South Pole this season to learn more about one lake that rests about 16 kilometers away from the U.S. Antarctic Program station.
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Scientists take on Antarctic mold
Even mold is tougher in the Antarctic.
Microbiologists from the University of Minnesota are still learning just how hardy several recently discovered species of molds are as part of an effort to preserve historic structures around the continent. P. I. Robert Blanchette and his team have found that indigenous Antarctic fungi have quite an appetite for wood introduced here by the explorers and expeditions of the early 20th century.
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Organization keeps memories alive for those away from the Ice
Its membership includes a scientist who first visited Antarctica nearly 60 years ago and officials from the National Science Foundation.
The Old Antarctic Explorer’s Association is possibly the largest organization of its kind dedicated to preserving the collective memory of Antarctica, a club of kindred spirits fascinated with life on the Ice. It doesn’t matter whether one worked on the seventh continent in the military or as a civilian, served a single season or 20.
The OAEA wants you.
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Vanished elephant seal colonies indicate Ross Ice Shelf survived warmer climate in recent past
As a geologist who studies paleoclimate, Brenda Hall generally uses glaciers to help her reconstruct climate change through history.
But the University of Maine researcher and three members of her team spent the month of January picking through the beaches between McMurdo Sound and Terra Nova Bay looking for the remains of long-dead southern elephant seals. Hall believes the presence of colonies along Victoria Land as recently as a thousand years ago indicate the region was warmer than it is today.
“We’re interested in them because they shouldn’t be there,” Hall said during an interview at McMurdo Station shortly before heading into the field for five weeks. “Elephant seals don’t live in the Ross Sea today.”
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United States Launches New International Polar Year
International Polar Year is a global research effort to better understand the polar regions and their climatic effect on the Earth. More than 200 scientific expeditions will take place over the next 2 years to study changes to permafrost, the melting of polar ice sheets, and marine life in the cold and dark. The research completed during IPY will provide a baseline for understanding future environmental change.
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Landmark Completion of South Pole Telescope to Help Scientists Learn What the Universe Is Made of and How it Got Here
Just days before nations around the world were set to begin a coordinated global research campaign called the International Polar Year (IPY); scientists at the South Pole aimed a massive new telescope at Jupiter and successfully collected the instrument's first test observations.
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Cruise ship runs aground in Antarctica
A cruise vessel with almost 300 passengers on board, including 12 Australians, has limped into a safe harbour after running aground off an Antarctic island.
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Antarctica - A test bed for Global Warming
As top scientists meet in the comfort of Paris to hammer out a major report on climate change, a handful of their confreres hunker down on a frozen plateau in the middle of Antarctica, painstakingly gathering warning signs of global warming.
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Antarctic hill surprises experts
Near Rutford Ice Stream, Antarctica - For the first time, a drumlin - a mound of sediment and rock - has been observed mid-formation, in Antarctica. While many relic drumlins are well known features in once ice-covered areas, this is the first time an active one has been observed.
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PALMER: Royal visit at Palmer Station
Palmer received an important visitor on Jan. 20 – Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh. The princess was visiting Palmer Station for the first time.
Princess Anne, patron of the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust, was on an eight-day tour of the Antarctic Peninsula aboard the British Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance.
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Scientists traverse East Antarctica for ice cores
Antarctic science requires many different methods in the pursuit of knowledge about the seventh continent and its place in the global ecosystem. The deeply browned face and ruddy cheeks of Paul Mayewski tell a story of scientists who understand the value of spending extended time in the environment they study.
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Edge of Discovery
MOUNT EREBUS is famous for its persistent but low-level activity as the world’s southernmost active volcano. But last year it threw one of its biggest recorded tantrums during its last 165 years. For the second half of 2005, Erebus erupted as much as six times a day, throwing what volcanologists call “bombs,” hot rocks, out of the crater and onto the sides of the 3,794-meter-high volcano.
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Airdrop a success at Pole
It is not a question of whether there will be another emergency necessitating a winter airdrop at the South Pole. The questions are when will there be such an emergency and whether the responding agencies will be prepared to answer the call.
An affirmative answer to the readiness question was underlined recently when a new aircraft proved it could handle the task.
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Three Prong Attack:Three teams are using three very different tactics on the hunt for one of nature’s most elusive creations — neutrinos.
The dream of unlocking neutrinos’ secrets has kept scientists tossing and turning since the subatomic particles were first theorized in the 1930s. The vision has been there, but the technology to materialize that vision has not.
Three teams of scientists are now preparing to use Antarctic ice as the key to open the strongbox that has contained extraterrestrial neutrinos’ mysteries since the early universe — even though no one is sure what they will reveal.
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Mayo Clinic Takes Study to New Heights
Scientists and support personnel have been traveling to the South Pole for nearly 50 years now, taking that giant leap from sea level to nearly 3,000 meters on the polar plateau to further our understanding of the continent, the world and the universe.
Dr. Bruce D. Johnson wants to better understand, in part, why that jump in altitude affects some people more severely than others.
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On the Verge of the International Polar Year, NSF Commemorates the 50th Anniversary of First Flight To Land at the South Pole
From the United States' Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, astronomers use sophisticated telescopes to peer into the depths of space and create images of the universe in its infancy. Scientists use of one of the world's most sensitive seismic stations to record rumbles through the Earth's crust produced by earthquakes. And they can use samples of the Earth's purest air as a baseline to study atmospheric chemistry.
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Ozonehole Breaks Two Records
It’s not the sort of record you like to see broken, particularly if you live in the Southern Hemisphere.
Scientists from various agencies and universities measuring ozone depletion over Antarctica say this year’s annual ozone hole not only matches the largest hole in area on record, but it is also the deepest that’s ever formed. On Sept. 24 of this year, the Antarctic ozone hole reached a one-day record of 29.5 million square kilometers, an area that spans the entire continent and spills over into parts of Australia and South America. That’s roughly the same size as the record-setting hole that appeared over the region in 2000.
But the vertical disappearance of ozone is even more pronounced than in previous years, particularly between about 14 and 22 kilometers above the Earth in the mid-section of the atmosphere known as the stratosphere, according to researchers.
“There is a huge section this year that is completely depleted to zero,” said Jennifer Mercer, co-principal investigator .
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Radar opens new window into the ice for Antarctic scientists
Scientists are getting their first glimpse into the inner secrets of an ice shelf, thanks to the innovative application of a new radar technique developed by British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Getting a clearer view of how ice behaves is important because it will help scientists predict more accurately how the ice sheet will respond to future climate change. The results are published this week in the Journal of Glaciology.
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International Polar Year Funds Research and Exploration by Teachers, Students and the Public
People worldwide now have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to research and explore the Arctic and Antarctic regions through the International Polar Year (IPY), which begins in March 2007. More than 100 countries will undertake projects involving students, teachers and the public to increase understanding of the Earth's polar regions. The aim is to create an indelible impression on future scientists, engineers, and educators and a lasting legacy of science.
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Antarctic Ice Marathon
Adventure marathoners and ultra athletes are always looking for the next big challenge. It could be a remote desert marathon, a high altitude mountain marathon or a jungle marathon. However, mainland Antarctica represents the last frontier, the final great wilderness to be conquered. And now adventure athletes like you can do it. Introducing the only footraces within the Antarctic Circle....
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Belgica found off Norwegian coast
Belgian radio is reporting that Adriaen de Gerlache's famous ship the Belgica has been found off the coast of Norway near Harstad where she sank after an attack in 1940.
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Chemical Cause of Antarctic Ozone Hole Discovered 20 Years Ago This Month
Twenty years ago this month, government and university scientists ventured to Antarctica to study the cause of a hole in the stratospheric ozone layer over the southernmost continent. Those observations were the first definitive demonstration that humans are capable of affecting the entire global climate system and led to the Montreal Protocol, the first treaty to address the Earth's environment.
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Overall Antarctic Snowfall Hasn't Changed in 50 Years
The most precise record of Antarctic snowfall ever generated shows there has been no real increase in precipitation over the southernmost continent in the past half-century, even though most computer models assessing global climate change call for an increase in Antarctic precipitation as atmospheric temperatures rise.
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Studying Extremes Above and Below
How did the universe evolve? Will the universe continue to expand? Astronomers use a year-round observatory at the South Pole to answer these questions, taking advantage of the Pole's natural features: the dark, dry, and cold environment makes for easier detection of infrared wavelengths and small particles. Infrared and submillimeter radio telescopes at the South Pole detect wavelengths obscured at most other observing sites. NSF-funded researchers use the Antarctic ice sheet to capture invisible, subatomic particles called neutrinos in order to gain insight into violent astrophysical events such as black hole collapses and supernova explosions.
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A Suprising Abundance of Life
Both the Arctic and Antarctic seem beyond life: icy, treeless, hostile places. Yet these polar regions host a surprising abundance of life, ranging from the microbial to the awe-inspiring, from bacteria to bowhead whales.
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Antarctica Freezing Led to Evolution of Deep Sea Octopuses
Sydney: If researchers are to be believed, the cold Antarctic climate was responsible for the evolution of the deep sea octopuses.
Australian researcher Dr Jan Strugnell of Queen's University Belfast and the British Antarctic Survey has said that formation of ocean currents around the Antarctica, some millions of years ago provided the right conditions for ocean creatures to evolve.
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Earth Observation Satellites Contribute to International Polar Year 2007-2008
Thousands of scientists from 60 countries will be conducting research during International Polar Year 2007-2008 and will, for the first time during an International Polar Year, be armed with satellite measurements offering complete coverage of the polar regions, which play a vital role in the Earth's climate and ecosystems.
Having access to near-continuous satellite data of these regions over long periods of time is important for scientists to identify and analyze long-term climatic trends and changes. ESA will provide current and historical data, dating back 15 years, from its ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat satellites as well as data collected from a number of non-ESA satellites.
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Ozone Recovery is Going Slowly
Although the Earth’s ozone layer is on the mend, the recovery is going more slowly than expected. Scientists have developed a new computer model that takes existing atmospheric data and correctly reproduces the size and shape of the ozone hole above Antarctica for the past 27 years. The model then predicts into the future, forecasting that the ozone hole will stick around until 2068, and not 2050 as scientists originally believed.
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Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings 2006
Director British Antarctic Survey and member of the Joint Committee for the International Polar Year 2007-2008
It’s a pleasure to be here in Edinburgh to support the UK in hosting the 29th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. Lord Triesman has already referred to the importance of the Polar Regions, and has mentioned the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 which is due to start on the 1st March next year. I would like to expand a little on his points and to draw attention to the importance of the IPY.
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New Model Suggests Antarctic More Dynamic Than Previously Believed
Through dated geological records scientists have known for decades that variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun – subtle changes in the distance between the two – control ice ages. But, for the first 2 million years of the Northern Hemisphere Ice Age there has always been a mismatch between the timing of ice sheet changes and the Earth's orbital parameters.
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Mid Winter Greetings - from around the frozen continent
From the South Pole to SANAE station, isolated winter overs extend warm greetings to family, friends and fellow Antarcticans as they welcome the turning point in their cold dark winter.
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Big Bang in Antarctica - Killer Crater Found Under Ice
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Planetary scientists have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.
The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.
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Good News and a Puzzle
Think of the ozone layer as Earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the harmful glare of the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and other maladies.
While the ozone hole over Antarctica continues to open wide, the ozone layer around the rest of the planet seems to be on the mend. For the last 9 years, worldwide ozone has remained roughly constant, halting the decline first noticed in the 1980s.
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New job, day one - designed Antarctic base
On the first day of her first job after university, when most people would still be working out how to use the photocopier, Gemma Clarke began designing the world's largest toboggan.
Miss Clarke, 24, had to help create a building that rests on skis to prevent it slipping into the Antarctic sea.
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Ozone Recovering, But Unlikely To Stabilize At Pre-1980 Levels, Says CU-Boulder Study
While Earth's ozone layer is slowly being replenished following an international 1987 agreement banning CFCs, the recovery is occurring in a changing atmosphere and is unlikely to stabilize at pre-1980 levels, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.
The recovery is a result of the 1987 Montreal Protocol banning chlorine pollutants from the atmosphere, said Betsy Weatherhead, a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But by the end of the century, ozone levels could be slightly higher or slightly lower than before 1980 because of high natural variability and human caused changes like warming temperatures, said Weatherhead.
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Discovery Of Antarctic Subglacial Rivers May Challenge Excavation Plans
Plans to drill deep beneath the frozen wastes of the Antarctic, to investigate subglacial lakes where ancient life is thought to exist, may have to be reviewed following a discovery by a British team led by UCL (University College London) scientists at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM).
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Crewmember Not Found
The formal search for Joshua Spillane, marine technician, ended at 1800 (EDT) on April 19. Joshua was discovered missing from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould on April 17. The ship was in routine transit from Palmer Station, Antarctica to Punta Arenas, Chile.
An exhaustive search has been underway since it was determined that Joshua was not onboard by the R/V Laurence M. Gould crew and passengers. In addition, the search has been augmented by a P3 aircraft flown by the Argentinean Air Defense search and rescue force. There has been no sighting of Joshua.
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Students, Faculty Depart For Antarctica
Month-long Expedition will be Chronicled through Daily Journal Entries From the Ship
After the spectacular 2002 collapse of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, Eugene Domack, professor of geosciences at Hamilton College, led the first team of scientists into the area that had been undisturbed for nearly 10,000 years. Domack, who was investigating the cause for the shelf's collapse as well as the Antarctic Peninsula's response to warming, made a serendipitous discovery in 2005, a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed ice shelf made up of a thriving clam community, mud volcanoes and bacterial mats.
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Antarctic birds 'breeding later'
Antarctic seabirds may be breeding later in response to climate change, according to a scientific study.
French researchers analysed records stretching back to the 1950s and think the breeding delays are linked to changes in East Antarctic sea ice
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Arctic, Antarctic Melting May Raise Sea Levels Faster than Expected
Ice sheets covering both the Arctic and Antarctic could melt more quickly than expected this century, according to two studies that blend computer modeling with paleoclimate records. Led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Arizona, the studies show that by 2100, Arctic summers may be as warm as they were nearly 130,000 years ago when sea levels rose to 20 feet (6 meters) higher than they are today.
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Polar Neutrino Observatory Takes a Big Step Forward
During the recent austral summer, an international team of scientists and engineers took a major step forward in building a subglacial instrument known as IceCube, which is designed to detect high-energy subatomic particles called neutrinos. The team harnessed a sophisticated hot-water drill to install hundreds of basketball-sized optical modules in the South Pole ice sheet that will eventually form a detector encompassing a cubic kilometer of ice.
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Space impact clue in Antarctica
Evidence for what may be a large and relatively recent impact crater has been found off the coast of Antarctica.
Scientists say the evidence, if correct, points to a space rock some 5km across having crashed into the Ross Sea about three million years ago.
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Space mission finds significant Antarctic ice loss
Scientists were able to conduct the first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet using data from the joint NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). This comprehensive study found the ice sheet's mass has decreased significantly from 2002 to 2005.
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Operation Deep Freeze
Ski-equipped cargo aircraft rack up several records during this season's science support missions in Antarctica
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NASA Survey Confirms Climate Warming Impact on Polar Ice Sheets
In the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the massive ice sheets covering both Greenland and Antarctica, NASA scientists confirm climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in Earth's largest storehouses of ice and snow.
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Concern over plans to drill Lake Vostok
Concern has been expressed by US scientists over Russia's plans to drill into Lake Vostok and start investigating the lake, which has been trapped and sealed for millions of years.
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Icy Overland Trip May Add Ground Vehicles to South Pole Supply Missions
A four-year project to test the possibility of transporting scientific equipment and material by ground from a field station located on Antarctica's coastal edge to another deep in the continent's center has ended in success. The National Science Foundation (NSF) convoy returned to NSF's McMurdo Station on Jan. 14, after logging more than 2,056 miles (3,300-kilometers) during its roundtrip.
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Cargo, Fuel Safely Unloaded at Antarctic Research Station
Overcoming challenging ice conditions, a ship has safely delivered cargo needed to supply National Science Foundation research stations in Antarctica through the coming austral winter and into the next research season.
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Two more lakes near Vostok
Scientists have discovered two more subglacial lakes, raising renewed speculation of the existance of living ecosystems below the ice.
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Antarctic krill provide carbon sink in Southern Ocean
New research on Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp-like animal at the heart of the Southern Ocean food chain, reveals behaviour that shows that they absorb and transfer more carbon from the Earth's surface than was previously understood.
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Sea Levels Rising: Studies
THE world's worst fears about global warming and rapid sea-level rise will be realised or exceeded, according to two new reports.
Australian climate change research published yesterday found the average level of the oceans had risen 19.5cm since 1870 and the rate was increasing.
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Japanese Drill for Climate Clues in Antarctic Ice
TOKYO -- Japanese scientists have gone back in time to study the earth's climate by drilling more than 3 kilometres into Antarctica's ice sheet, a researcher said on Tuesday.
Yoshiyuki Fujii said the cores are among the oldest samples yet extracted by scientists and hoped bubbles of gas, such as carbon dioxide, trapped in the core samples will offer clues to past patterns of global climate change.
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RNZAF Orion Lands in Antarctica
For the first time a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion has landed on the ice runways of Antarctica.
The P3-K Orion, from No. 5 Squadron was conducting a trial flight to the region. The trial flight will determine the feasibility of conducting patrols from Antarctica in support of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
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Chippy McNish Polar Medal Campaign
Henry "Chippy" McNish sailed with Shackleton in the ship Endurance on the 1914 Imperial Trans–Antarctic Expedition. He was an invaluable member of the party, fitting out the boat "James Caird" which set out on an 800 mile journey to get help for the stranded party. The Endurance story is one of the greatest survival stories of all time, yet McNish was denied the Polar Medal by Shackleton for apparently questioning his authority.
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Boehlert gets close look at Antarctic program
U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert and 12 other U.S. lawmakers are getting a firsthand look at U.S. research facilities in the South Pole.
The group wants to gauge the return on the U.S. investment of more than $1 billion in facilities and research under the U.S. Antarctic Program, a scientific research program.
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Mars Via Antarctica
A few weeks before leaving for the Antarctic Concordia Station, the Italian-French crew that will spend over one year in one of the harshest, isolated environments on Earth, attended two days of preparatory training at ESA's Headquarters in Paris, France. During their stay at the research station the crew will participate in a number of ESA experiments – the outcome of which will help prepare for long-term missions to Mars.
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Hunt on for Minke Idol
WHILE the Japanese whaling fleet continued its hunt for more than 930 minke whales in the Southern Ocean, researchers sailed for Antarctic waters yesterday to record the songs of the minke for the first time.
More 60 scientists from 12 nations, including Japan, are taking part in a $7 million research voyage aboard the Australian Antarctic Division's Aurora Australis.
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Norman Vaughan Never Quits
Norman Vaughan was a member of Byrd's expedition to the South Pole in 1928. He didn't make it back to the mountain named after him as he had hoped, but he was able to celebrate his 100th birthday with about 100 friends and hospital employees present, just days before he passed away.
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Planet-savers, penguin researchers, planes on skis all part of Antarctica mission
It might be a 2,000-pound seal perched on the runway, zero visibility or the fact that your airplane has skis. The challenges presented to pilots and crew under Operation Deep Freeze are as steep as the glacial mountains enveloping the landscape.
For the past 50 years, the U.S. armed forces have supported the National Science Foundation’s mission to Antarctica, flying supplies onto an ice runway on massive C-17s, then ferrying them out to smaller, snow covered research stations aboard C-130s equipped with skis.
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Satellites Capture First-Ever Gravity Map Of Tides Under Antarctic Ice
Ohio State University scientists have used minute fluctuations in gravity to produce the best map yet of ocean tides that flow beneath two large Antarctic ice shelves. They did it using the twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center.
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Mosaic of Antarctica
Frigid, battered by hurricane-force winds, dark half of the year, and littered with steep mountains and deep crevasses that could swallow you whole, Antarctica isn’t a place you want to visit without a map. What’s more, you would want that map to be as detailed and up-to-date as possible. Of course, hostile conditions make thorough on-the-ground mapping dangerous, if not impossible. But thanks to NASA satellite data, scientists visiting or studying Antarctica after October 2005 will have a significantly better map of the continent’s surface than they have had before.
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