Some reasons to perform scientific research in the Antarctic

1. Largest ocean current.  The Antarctic Circumpolar Current transports 130 million cubic meters of water per second towards the east, making it the mightiest of the ocean’s currents.  It influences formation of cold, dense, and nutrient-rich bottom water that extends throughout much of the world ocean and is a key to understanding change in world ocean circulation and its influence on global climate.[1]


2. Marine ecosystem.  Research on the marine ecosystem around Antarctica helps to understand levels of harvesting that can take place without damaging the ecosystem and is providing an understanding of the strong coupling in the Southern Ocean between climate processes and ecosystem dynamics.[2]


3. Sea ice.  The annual eightfold growth and decay of sea ice around Antarctica has been termed the greatest seasonal event on Earth.[3]  It affects regional climate and the global heat budget. Particularly near the edges, it nurtures some of the world’s most productive ecosystems.[4]


4. Ozone hole.  Starting in 1979, ozone in the stratosphere over Antarctica has been observed almost to disappear every austral spring.  Everywhere else, stratospheric ozone depletions are only incremental.  Stratospheric ozone keeps much of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface, and the ozone hole has received widespread attention.
   
   
   1. Finding the cause.  Research in Antarctica, particularly at McMurdo, was key to explaining how antarctic natural phenomena conspire with the global buildup of manmade chemicals to cause the ozone hole.[5]
   
   
   2. Removing the cause.   The research led to an international decision (the Montreal Protocol) to reduce production of the destructive chemicals.  Annual consumption of CFCs dropped from 1,100,000 tons in 1986 to 150,000 tons in 1999.  Without the protocol, consumption would have reached 3,000,000 tons by 2010.[6]
   
   
   3. Monitoring the recovery.  While atmospheric concentrations of the harmful manmade chemicals are in decline, it might take another 10 years of observation before we can be sure the antarctic ozone hole is shrinking. Current antarctic research is providing further understanding of the ozone hole.[7]
   
   
   4. Effect on life.  The ozone hole lets abnormally high levels of the Sun's ultraviolet-B radiation penetrate to the Earth's surface and into the sea. Scientists have documented how UV-B affects bacteria, phytoplankton, and the embryos of antarctic invertebrates and fish.[8]
   
   
   5. Effect on climate.  Research indicates that the ozone hole has increased the winds around Antarctica and reduced rainfall in Australia and elsewhere.[9]
   
   
   6. Awards.
      1. The 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three professors who explained that the ozone layer is sensitive to anthropogenic emissions.[10]
      
      
      2. The 1999 National Medal of Science (the Nation's highest scientific honor) was awarded to Dr. Susan Solomon, who led U.S. Antarctic Program expeditions in 1986 and 1987 giving the first direct evidence that anthropogenic chlorine depletes stratospheric ozone.
      
      
      3. The 2002 National Medal of Technology (the Nation's highest honor for technological innovation) was awarded to the Dupont Company for leadership in the phaseout and replacement of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).[11]
         
         
5. Polar adaptations of biota.  Antarctic cold, desert conditions, and annual light cycles have led to molecular, biochemical, and physiological adaptations that have enabled biota to survive, reproduce, and indeed thrive under environmental extremes not experienced elsewhere.  Studies provide basic understanding of these unique adaptations and are leading to understanding how changes in populations can shed insight into changing climate.[12]


6. Atmospheric background levels.  Antarctica is the planet’s farthest region from human population centers and records the world’s background levels of atmospheric constituents.  Measurements since 1956 at the geographic South Pole have documented changes in world levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Measure­ments in the data-sparse Southern Hemisphere are important to understanding and predicting world levels of these gases and their impact on (or forerunner to) climate change.[13]


7. Weather and climate.  The unbroken collection of weather data from manned and unmanned stations in Antarctica, now exceeding 40 years for some locations, provides a data base and real-time information from which to make operational forecasts, study the dynamics of the antarctic atmosphere, and chart the progress of human-induced global warming.[14]


8. Ice sheets and ice shelves.  Antarctica’s ice sheets contain 90 percent of the world’s ice.  This ice is 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.  Melted, it would raise sea level 65 meters (200 feet).
   
   
   1. Global process.  Antarctica’s ice—the world’s largest area of cold (the Arctic is 35oF warmer)—affects and responds to world climate change.  Just 20,000 years ago, for example, the ice sheet was far larger.  Sea level was 11 meters (36 feet) lower, that much water having been evaporated from the world’s oceans and precipitated onto Antarctica.[15]
   
   
   2. Climate history.  The ice, deposited annually as snow over millions of years, traps past atmospheric constituents that tell a climate history with a precision not equaled by other proxies such as ocean sediments and tree rings. The world's deepest ice core (3,650 meters) and another core containing the world’s oldest ice then sampled (possibly 1 million years old) both were drilled in Antarctica.[16]
   
   
   3. West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet if melted would raise sea level 5 meters.  It is less stable than the eastern one because its base is below sea level.  Its low-probability/high-impact collapse has stimulated vigorous research over the last 30 years indicating that it has largely or completely disappeared after it formed, but at an unknown rate. Portions of it are changing rapidly now, while averages over the whole ice sheet show little change.  Some models project stability, while others suggest the possibility of rapid change.[17]
   
   
   4. Ice shelf dynamics.  Ice shelves—extensions of continental ice sheets that are afloat on the ocean—can control the rate at which their parent ice sheets or glaciers move into the sea and can respond quicker than ice sheets to environmental change.  The Larsen Ice Shelf on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula lost massive sections in 1995 and 2002, possibly in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming over the last several decades.  Some scientists call it a model for what could happen to larger ice shelves farther south.[18]
   
   
   5. Meteorites.  Since 1969, teams from the United States, Japan, and the European Council have collected 30,000 meteorite specimens from the surface of the ice sheet representing many meteorite classes (including some from the Moon and Mars) and extending our knowledge of the solar system. Antarctica has yielded four-fifths of the meteorites known to science.[19]
   
   
   6. Neutrino detection. The ice sheet beneath the South Pole is 2,900 meters deep and is homogeneous and clear.  Investigators buried downward-looking detectors to observe light produced by neutrinos (ultra-high-energy particles created by cataclysmic collisions in deep space) when they on rare occasions collide with atoms of ice after they pass through the Earth.  The data help in descriptions of galactic centers, dark matter, and supernovae. The observatory in March 2001 became the first in the world to detect neutrinos.[20]
   
   
   7. Subglacial lakes.  More than 70 lakes lie beneath the ice sheet, most of them several kilometers long.  One, Vostok Subglacial Lake, is an order of magnitude larger and represents the closest analog to both Europa (a moon of Jupiter) and a Neoproterozoic (“Snowball Earth”) subglacial environment. Lake Vostok is oligotrophic—an environment with low nutrient levels and low standing stocks of organisms. Life there may depend on alternative energy sources and survival strategies.[21]
   
   
9. Polar landmass.  Almost 10 percent of the Earth's continental crust resides in Antarctica.  The continent is old and stable and has been in a near-polar position for over 100 million years.  It thus contains unique high latitude environmental records of a time when Earth changed from greenhouse to icehouse conditions. The landmass is different from the other continents in that Antarctica's crustal structure—or its underlying mantle—has allowed the continent to remain essentially fixed on Earth's surface for a long time.


10. Astronomy by balloon.  Antarctica's summer weather provides a stable ride for instruments suspended from a balloon, which floats around Antarctica at a steady height above most of the atmosphere, providing a cheap way to get scientific experiments into near-space.[22]


11. Astrophysics and astronomy from the surface.  The cold, clean, dry atmosphere over the South Pole provides viewing conditions that in some wavelengths are equal to those in space.  South Pole Station has become a major astronomy and astrophysics center.[23]


12. Mount Erebus — one of Earth’s few long-lived lava lakes.  The world’s southern-most active volcano, Mt. Erebus is one of the few volcanoes in the world with a long-lived (decades or more) convecting lava lake.  Although the volcano was discovered by James Ross in 1841, scientists still know relatively little about its geology because of extensive snow and ice cover, its remoteness, the extreme environment, and the short field season.[24]