Return to the Home of the Blizzard
In January 1910, the
great scientist and explorer Douglas Mawson wrote in his diary ‘Arrival
in London. Interview with Captain Scott. He is surprised I am not just coming
to enlist with him. I ask him has he thought of the coast W. of C. Adare. He
said that he had not.’
As an Antarctic veteran only 27 years of age, Mawson was dubious of the scientific value of reaching the Pole. Turning the British leader Scott down, Mawson was determined to
explore the region south of Australia. There were so many questions, so little
data. Most atlases had the bottom third of the Southern Hemisphere as a blank,
white space, with ‘Unexplored’
stamped all over it. But the explorers, scientists and
cartographers of the early twentieth century did not battle sub-zero
temperatures and ice-scarred landscapes just to conquer land, bag a pole or
grow an impressive beard. These expeditionary teams—even those
intent on scoring a geographical first—went south to scientifically explore a new
continent.
Although often
overlooked in the popular press, Mawson is one of the great heroes of Antarctic
science. Raising an equivalent of $25 million from public and private
benefactors, Mawson led what was then the largest, most multidisciplinary team
to head south. The Australasian expedition was of a scale never previously
attempted: three bases, thirty-one land-based members, seven major sledging
journeys and a full oceanographic program. Mawson’s venture gave the world its first complete scientific snapshot of a
new continent. Setting up his main base at Cape Denison – which
they soon discovered to be the windiest place in the world – his
men explored a vast stretch of eastern Antarctica; discovered new bays,
mountains and glaciers; and linked up areas that had previously been discovered
only in isolation. The resulting 89 scientific volumes described Antarctica’s violent and extreme weather, its flourishing plant and animal
life, the ocean’s
fickleness. Unfortunately the price was high. On the
ice, a sudden turn of events led to tragedy, the death of two men, allegations
of cannibalism and with the return of winter sea ice, an extended stay in
Antarctica. If you’d like to learn more of Mawson’s remarkable
tale of survival, visit the following article at Adventure Journal.
The East Antarctic
remains to this day one of the last great wildernesses on our planet. Mawson
and his men worked in a region we now recognize as one of the key locations for
understanding how our planet works. Thanks to the efforts of the original
Australasian Antarctic Expedition we now know the vast continental ice sheet
acts as a thermostat for the regulation of our planet’s temperature, while the surrounding South Ocean plays a key role in
shuffling heat around the globe. The problem is this that all seems to be
changing.
In 2010, an iceberg the
size of Rhode Island, known as B09B, dramatically knocked a 60 mile long tongue
of ice off the Mertz Glacier into the Southern Ocean, setting off a cascade of
change across the region, including locking Cape Denison up behind a vast
expense of sea ice. Unfortunately, no government Antarctic program was planning
to visit the area to make sense of what was happening. What impact has there
been on ocean circulation? What effect was this having on the climate and ice
sheet? How is local wildlife responding? Thanks to the hard work undertaken a
century ago, we have a crucial baseline against which we can compare
observations today.
Ice coring at Cape Denison |
To make the
measurements so desperately needed today, co-leader and friend Dr
Chris Fogwill and I resolved to head south. Against a backdrop of falling investment in science in Western
countries, we used a funding model pioneered by Mawson and his
contemporaries. We received support from private corporations; we sold berths
on the vessel for volunteers to join the science team; and we advertised for
PhD students to help support the teams in the field. After two years of
preparation we had a large, ice-breaker– the MV
Akademik Shokalskiy – and a brilliant team. With a letter of
support from the then Australian Prime Minister, the Honourable Julia Gillard, we
publicly announced our intention to head south in June 2013.
We set out south in
late November 2013 and first worked our way across the wildlife havens of the
sub-Antarctic islands. The research programme started on our departure and
resulted in many firsts for the region. Although free of ice today, the islands
preserve a remarkable record of past glacial activity. Glaciological
reconstructions on the land and at sea are helping us understand how our
planet moved out of the last ice age.
Alongside these efforts, analysis of the wildlife, trees and peat bogs are
providing an invaluable record of climate change and its impact across this
vast region. Fighting our way across the ‘Roaring
Forties’ and ‘Furious Fifties’ wind belt of the Southern Ocean, we
deployed ocean drifters and automated probes to to investigate one of the
planet’s great ocean boundaries: the Antarctic Convergence, the division
between the warm subtropical waters and the frigid cold polar waters. Many of
these devices are continuing to collect data and will do so for the next 3-5
years, beaming their findings back home. You can visit
the US Scripps Institute of Oceanography website to see what our probes are
discovering (check out numbers 8183, 8184, 8185, 8186, 8189 and 8190).
Locals on the sea ice: Adelie penguins |
With 24-hour daylight
the norm, we made the first ever use of tracked vehicles in the
Antarctic to successfully cross 40-miles of 3-feet thick sea ice and
after five hours of heart-stopping travel through an iceberg graveyard, we reached Mawson’s Huts at 67˚S – a
time capsule from the Edwardian age. Passing convoys of
penguins along the way, we broadcast our progress in real time and delivered
two science teams and conservators from the Mawson's Huts
Foundation. Oceanographic, biological and glaciological work on and
around Cape Denison is providing invaluable insights into past, present and
future changes in the region. Our work largely completed, we set out for home
but became trapped by a major outbreak of sea ice, remobilised from along the
Antarctic coast. Sweeping into our path from the north and east, the sea ice trapped
us on the Shokalskiy for ten days.
Inspired by the great explorers and the events surrounding
1912, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 aimed to
excite the public about science, to show how science works and why it matters.
We used the lessons from a hundred years ago and took the latest satellite
technology to broadcast science and our findings – and our predicament – to the world. During the six weeks of the
expedition, we hosted numerous Google+ Hangouts on Air allowing us to broadcast
live footage and share the Antarctic with people at home in real time. (My personal favourite is the arrival of an Orca during filming on the sea ice edge; you can view the footage here). Our website, www.spiritofmawson.com, received more than 60,000
visits, driving traffic to the science reports, films and sound recordings we
posted on our social media
sites (G+, YouTube,
Twitter,
Vine,
Soundcloud
and Facebook).
Next Thursday evening I'll be talking at the Royal Institution in London about the scientific results of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 and the importance of engaging the public in how science works and why it matters (7 pm, 17 July). As the great Carl
Sagan once wrote, ‘If we teach only the findings and products of science – no
matter how useful and inspiring they may be – without
communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly
distinguish science from pseudoscience?’
Thirty years on, Carl
Sagan’s words remain frighteningly relevant.
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