Antarctica, Mars and Captain Kirk - How they are Related and the Danger of Rising Seas
Editor's Note: Our southernmost correspondent, Patricial Ballou, after having previously introduced the ANDRILL project - today continues on to entertain us with insights into what it's like to sleep in a 'quinzhee', and shares an inspiring interview with Dr. Stephen Pekar, an explorer in the fullest sense of the word.
It's Happy Camper time here at McMurdo Station and I get to play survivor on the Ross Ice Shelf. Two of my best friends, Leah and Sarah, are traveling with me - each looking for some adventure, whilst thinking Antarctica would bring about some solitude from the hustle and bustle of corporate life. We are loaded into a massive vehicle and about 20 participants are wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to stay on the ice overnight....Weather is optimum and I’m ready for the challenge. After some classes and a snack we set up camp. Leah has dreamed of living in an igloo type dwelling called a quinzhee. She volunteers the three of us for a true Antarctic experience. The physics behind a quinzhee is you dig the entry way lower than the actual mound of snow. Cold air sinks and moves away from the occupant(s) while warmer air produced by your body remains trapped in the higher level of the dwelling. Sounds plausible so, after victoriously getting dug out we layer sleeping bags and mats across the snowy floor. The dimensions of our frozen palace? About 28 sq/ft (2.6 sq/m) and roughly 4 ft (1.2m) high - enough room for a good sized pet but not necessarily three adults.
It is a vault and no sounds can be heard from the outside. If something happens, screams will fall faint to anyone outside our ice world. Our bodies can’t keep up with the cold dense air as it wraps around us in a blanket of frigidness. We bundle and talk about our day to forget where we are and what we are doing. It isn’t working. Sarah is claustrophobic and watches as Leah’s boots hit the side walls nervously. To ease her anxieties of collapsing snow we placed a shovel in the entry way. Leah’s stomach didn’t agree with our freeze-dried dinner and intestinal fortitude is needed. Eventually she would have to go outside and blow a gasket. Sarah and Leah have intense headaches from dehydration. I’m shivering and having flashbacks of being in the mountains of Afghanistan. I have an easy way to trick myself into believing I can come out of this alive by saying I survived it then, I’ll make it now. Simple but effective.
The night was filled with intense emotions. Sarah had to conquer her fear of small spaces and Leah found that using a pee bottle isn’t for amateurs. There were times of shear emotional rawness and then quiet conversations about family and life. The night went by incredibly slowly. At one point Sarah had had it, “…stick a fork in it, I’m done” was all we heard as she slid down the rabbit hole to relieve herself. I wasn’t sure if she would come back, but out of shear anger she forgot her fears and nestled up between Leah and I and took upon the role of mom and insured we were wrapped in our sleeping bags. Finally Leah started radiating a little heat from her head so I gravitated toward the heat source and became her Siamese twin - attached by a will to survive.When all else failed Leah would remind us of this fact: “We are in an igloo….in Antarctica!” The laughter would roar through our cave and we would bump our heads on the ceiling forgetting where we were. Isn’t that what it is about? No matter what you are doing, you are doing it in Antarctica.
Interview with Dr. Stephen F. Pekar:
Dr. Stephen F. Pekar |
Stephen is in his second season on the ice and took some time to give an interview about the work being done in Antarctica and how he uses his background in sea level amplitude estimations to further our understanding of higher oceans and waterways due to ice melt.
Patricia Ballou: You recently held a lecture entitled Resolving Climatic Conundrums from the Greenhouse to Icehouse Worlds: Future ANDRILL Projects. Can you give a synopsis and how important is it to educate the public?
Dr. Stephen Pekar: The reason I did this kind of talk was to illustrate to the community at McMurdo why it is so important to have these scientist come down here and work. It is much easier to get records far away from Antarctica to understand Antarctica. These distal records always have multiple variables of which ice volume from Antarctica is one. These variables complicate remote study of this continent if you are far away and not taking into account such things as ice volume, climate or other factors that are unique to this area. So from far away we try to isolate these variables and match information to Antarctica and sometimes it is too difficult or we just don’t get it right. The picture of this region isn’t very clear when you rely solely on distal records. I like to use the analogy of understanding Mars. You can have the best telescope in the world but if you really want to understand what Mars is like; whether there is life on the planet or was there an ocean, you really have to go there and take samples. It is the only way.
PB: You made reference to this being the closest you are ever going to get to traveling to another planet. How so?
SP: Yes, I consider being an Antarctic scientist the closest to being Captain Kirk. It has terrain made of ice and rock. The frigid temperatures and sudden storms have made this continent unavailable for scientific research until the early 70s. Since it is a vast and differing world at the bottom of the earth, we have to be down here to unlock the data and understand a place separated from civilization by its environment alone.
PB: Explain the difference between obtaining stratigraphic records from an easily accessible region to acquiring the same data here and why are you pursuing more drill cores?
SP: First off, it is extremely remote and only the occasional cruise ship ventures here to show tourists penguins. The reason why we need to physically be here is we have pretty good coverage of what climate is like all over the world except Antarctica. Take for instance this example of the amount of data for a section in Antarctica in comparison with a normal data sample from a more accessible region of the world. We have approximately eight cores that extend a hundred meters or more from the Ross Sea. The Ross Sea is larger than France. I can assure that there are more than eight cores for France and the climatology is well documented. To really bring to light the lack of data from this region the Ross Sea is the best studied area in Antarctica and it only has eight cores of climatic data sets. East Antarctica is the best studied in terms of getting cores. Of course there have been explorers who have studied the surface geology and climbed the mountains but in terms of getting marine signals there is only eight and yet this is the best we have so far. Imagine having that many for the entire Mediterranean Sea. It would be nothing.
PB: How is your model data related to questions surrounding climate change today?
SP: These models have an indirect view of today’s climate. The time period I mentioned, 34-23 million years, was the last time CO2 levels were as high as what they are predicted for this century. Mother Nature is not prepared for this and neither is humanity.
PB: Is there a general consensus in the science community in regards to the accuracy of that statement and the ability to measure previous CO2 levels with surety?
SP: There is a new approach to measuring carbon dioxide levels developed by Mark Pagani, Associate Professor, Yale University. It is called the alkenone isotope method and we are hoping it will be robust with no problems or surprises. Thus far, the records show a data overlap with previous techniques for measuring past CO2 and they agree fairly well. All-in-all, it looks really promising. However the other caveat is the resolution is very low and scientists are trying to constrain error bars and uncertainties of this exciting new method. The data does show a general trend which overlaps with the Boron isotope method. What these methods confirm is during the middle Eocene (about 45 million years ago) when there were no ice sheets or perhaps an ephemeral ice sheet on the plateaus, CO2 levels were about 1000-2000 parts per million. Today levels are at 380 parts per million. By the time Oligocene ice sheets are forming and contracting there is a resulting sea level change between 100-150 feet (30-50m). The CO2 levels that occurred during the Oligocene are similar to what we are predicting by the end of this century. In the end, using both the boron and alkenone isotope approaches can only strengthen the argument for elevated CO2 levels and the resulting climate change that occurred during these periods.
PB: Why is it important to understand and predict sea level amplitudes in regards to a warming planet?
SP: The configuration of the earth’s orbit and tilt were different 20,000 years ago and change on a regular basis, about every 20-40 thousand years. Carbon dioxide levels were 100 parts per million lower than today’s estimations and we had a huge ice sheet over North America, Europe, Asia and so on. The result was that sea levels were 400 feet lower (120m). So what happened when the ice melted and sea levels rose? What happened to the cavemen? They pulled up their tents and moved inland. What happened to the trees? Well they drowned and eventually sprang up inland. The mastodons and mammoths moved inland. We can’t move our cities. We can’t move the farms from Nebraska to Southern Canada. Desert belts are going to expand while other places will have more rain. Think of all the real-estate lost and the trillions of dollars in Manhattan alone if it were under water. All this would be replayed in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai; and repeated all over the world.
PB: If there were periods in earth’s history that had higher levels of CO2 than today’s or even future predictions why should humanity be alarmed about putting vast amounts of the gas into the atmosphere?
SP: Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere it stays there for centuries. We don’t get this perspective in American press but there was an article by BBC about the oceans taking in less and less CO2. The seas have cut the consumption by half which is really serious because Mother Nature has been trying to help us. The earth gives off a lot of CO2. Estimates are 90% of the CO2 is from the earth itself while humans contribute the rest. Unfortunately the media gets a hold of a statistic like that and tells the public we produce so little CO2 compared with the rest of the earth but they fail to mention whatever the earth emits in CO2 it also ingests the same amount. This results in a zero balance of CO2 emitted in the atmosphere. The earth has been helping mankind out by not only ingesting its own production of CO2 but taking on a sizable portion of human produced CO2 through oceans and plants. The oceans have been doing an amazing job but it seems they are taking in less and less.
PB: Do you feel coming to Antarctica and researching past climates is the key to unlocking the unknowns about our future?
SP: Unequivocally, yes. If we can understand Antarctica better then we will understand ocean circulations and tie climate records from Antarctica into the global puzzle to gain a better understanding of what was going on.
PB: Has the media been fair when representing and reporting global-environmental issues?
SP: What really controls society is the media and the media has completely failed us. Teachers and scientists are a minority and the media does not promote the heroes of research or give priority to science education. ANDRILL is working with media outlets, schools and scientists to ensure we are not discovering and drilling without the full support of children and educators around the world. We have an education coordinator that specifically addresses these issues and focuses the media on science education.
PB: Can you give an example of how the media has been for or against the idea of climate change?
SP: The best journal in the world contains anything and everything about science, including other areas such as medical, atmospheric and space. It is called Science and its equivalent in the U.K. is called Nature. These are the two top rated journals and the world’s best, most pressing and highest impact science gets put into either Science or Nature. The amount of science articles that have been entered in the past 15-20 years is approaching 1000 and not one them disputes that climate is changing. If you go to the United States major media outlets and watch, listen or read their view on climate nearly 60% of the reported information were saying it was controversial, or they would show two sides of the story. There are two sides no more. Climate is warming, CO2 is in the atmosphere and the excessive amounts have been generated by man. There hasn’t been a scientist that will publish a paper to disprove climate change. You might have a person from a University go on television and give a viewpoint saying climate change isn’t happening but when it comes to being part of the record and being published they won’t do it. This bias is only in the United States media but in other first world countries climate change is an accepted scientific fact and is reported as such.
The other thing that is upsetting in the media is they will ask the question, “Do you believe in climate change?” As if it was a religion. This is science. You either accept and understand or reject and refute but it is not a belief system. In science you take in the data, interpret it and accept the interpretations.
PB: How are you passing on to future generations the passion about science and the endless possibilities ahead especially when there are so many unanswered questions about our planet’s path?
SP: I have traveled all over the world and worked in six different countries. I feel that one of the keys to getting students interested in science and becoming scientists is inject energy and enthusiasm into the lessons and to instill in students a feeling of confidence and wonder. This is especially important to me as I used to be a second grade school teacher and would bring all of my passions and knowledge to the classroom. If you can get children excited about global-environmental topics you can almost stop teaching because their wonderment will cause them to want to learn on their own.
