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By Julia Hall
Staff Reporter
A group of University of Maine students and faculty scientists are heading south for the winter. Way south. Antarctica, the continent of ice and snow, holds information that could help answer many questions about the Earth’s climate. These scientists will be spending several months trying to answer these questions, while keeping the folks back home updated through the Internet.
In early November, the team of 15 scientists will fly from New Zealand to McMurdo, one of three U.S. Antarctic stations. From then on, it’s a 2500 km round trip of snow, ice, and hard-core scientific research until the trip ends in January.
Paul Mayewski, a professor of geological sciences and co-director of the Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies at UMaine, will be the field leader on this expedition. Mayewski has been working in Antarctica for more than 30 years and is the founder of the International Trans-Atlantic Scientific Expedition, a program that involves scientists from around the world in doing scientific research in Antarctica.
“Antarctica is a major player in global ocean circulation,” said Mayewski.
The scientists are going to Antarctica to obtain data from ice core samples that might reveal how humans have impacted global climate changes over the past 200 years. Antarctica holds a lot of important information about global climate because the most biologically productive ocean in the world surrounds it. It also stores more freshwater than any other place on earth.
Fewer than 100,000 people have ever set foot on the icy continent, and only a few of those venture beyond the research bases to more remote sites. The ITASE team will be exploring the vast expanse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
On a typical day, the team will rise early in the “blue room,” a mobile living facility no bigger than the back of a small tractor-trailer. By eight in the morning, the scientists will be out in the field doing straight science for hours, stopping only for meals and to get warm. Snow and ice surround them everywhere in a vast, flat white plain that makes any perception of depth or distance nearly impossible. The team will spend the day drilling ice cores, taking samples and collecting data that will help them better understand the climate of the Earth. By 10 p.m., it’s time to get some sleep – not hard after the tiring pursuits of the day – and be ready for the next day.
Although it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere right now, temperatures are not exactly comfortable. Along the coast, Mayewski says temperatures can be pretty mild – meaning they climb a few degrees above freezing. Vandy “Blue” Spikes, a Ph.D. student who will be making his fifth trip to Antarctica this year, says it’s not too hard to get used to the dramatic change in temperature.
“You don’t have time to get used to it,” Spikes said.
Spikes will be working as a field assistant with Gordon Hamilton, a research assistant professor at UMaine. Hamilton will be the project coordinator for studying glacier dynamics.
Also going on the expedition will be masters students Daniel Dixon and Susan Kasperi. This trip to Antarctica will be the fourth for Kasperi, who says she loves to go south on these expeditions.
“You get so many optical illusions,” said Kasperi.
The illusions Kasperi refers to are the luminous “sun dogs” that appear when sunlight is reflected off snow particles. Although they form different patterns and have different colors, their aesthetic effect is something like that of a rainbow.
For Mayewski, the major benefit of this sort of expedition is being able to work with the students.
“I’ve done this for years, but I find it exciting each year to see yet another young student getting excited about it,” Mayewski said.
Although it’s difficult to be so far away from home on the expedition, the scientists will have ways to stay connected. To give interested web surfers a chance to follow the expedition, a daily log about the trip will be posted on www.secretsoftheice.org, a site about the expedition maintained by the Boston Museum of Science. The scientists will be checking in with the museum each week and visitors to the Web site can post questions for them.
