Antarctica
The Antarctic Continent
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Antarctica is the world’s southernmost continent, and is completely surrounded by the Southern Ocean. It is the fifth largest continent in the world, with an area of 14 million km². The continent of Antarctica is a rocky landmass of islands, but most of this landmass is covered by a thick layer of ice called the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Because of the thickness of the ice sheet, Antarctica has the highest average elevation of any continent.
Antarctica is a land of extremes, as it is the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth. Air temperatures vary greatly over the continent, with an average annual air temperature of -57 °C in the interior of Antarctica, compared to an average annual temperature of -20 °C at Scott Base in the McMurdo Sound region. The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica at the Russian Base Lake Vostok in 1983, where the temperature reached -89.2 °C!
The average precipitation also varies greatly over Antarctica. Though some coastal regions of Antarctica experience more than 1000 mm of precipitation a year, the interior of Antarctica is considered a desert as it receives very little precipitation. On average, the continent of Antarctic receives 166 mm of water equivalent precipitation each year. Wind speed, direction, and temperature vary greatly in different areas of Antarctica, and are mostly controlled by air pressure, the rotation of the earth, and the ice and snow on the land.
Among the most notable winds in Antarctica are the katabatic winds that flow down off of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and reach very high speeds. Antarctic winds have been recorded at up to 320 km/hour. Another interesting feature of Antarctica is the cycles of light and dark over the year. Antarctica experiences periods of 24 hour daylight in mid-summer and 24 hour darkness in mid-winter. At Scott Base, the sun sets in late April and does not rise again until the end of August. At the South Pole, the sun sets in late March and does not rise again until mid September.
The Antarctic Treaty
The influence of politics on science is more visible in Antarctic research than it usually is in other fields. Logistic support – tents, helicopters, food, clothing – is all administered through country-specific programs. Scientists stay at bases run by specific countries and (proudly) wear the flags of those countries on their ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. And yet no country owns Antarctica or its natural resources, thanks to The Antarctic Treaty, which was signed in 1959 by twelve founding nations, including New Zealand, Australia, the UK, USA, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Belgium, Japan, Norway, France, and South Africa. Ratified in 1961 in the midst of the cold war between the USA and Russia, the Antarctic Treaty was a somewhat unlikely event, especially since many of the signing countries had an active interest in claiming territory on the continent. The treaty, however, set aside Antarctica as a natural reserve for the pursuit of science and peace; and allowed science to be done there in an international, collaborative manner, despite the uncertainties of the political relations of the scientists’ respective countries.
On the ground, the treaty has a very visible impact on how we live and work in the field: extra provisions ratified during the 1990s protected special areas and sites on the continent from visitors without permits; limited the type and number of samples and specimens of flora and fauna we could take from the continent; and restricted acceptable waste disposal options. In other words, the treaty determined a large part of where we walked, what we collected, and how we cooked and went to the toilet. We sorted our rubbish in camp and helicoptered everything – poo buckets and all – out of the valleys. We carry permits with us into the field for collecting allotted amounts of samples.
We have to justify any potential stress we place on the environment in terms of the risk and impact as well as the potential benefits of doing our research in such a fragile environment. In short, the Treaty provides specific guidelines for managing science on the continent as well as general political principles for the kind of activities that can be done there. |
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The first person to reach the South Pole using motorised transport was Sir Edmund Hillary in 1958, using converted Massey Ferguson farm tractors.
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The Antarctic Ice Sheet covers 13.72 million km2 (98%) of the continent and can be up to 4 km in thickness! |
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