Antarctica (47 page)

That, in the end, is what I love most about it. Antarctica is bigger than all of us, bigger than our technologies, our human strengths and weaknesses, our eagerness to build and our capacity to destroy. Enough ice could slide into the sea to turn West Antarctica into an island archipelago, and to raise the sea to heights that would swamp coastal cities, without causing so much as a flutter in the continent's cool white heart.

And even when all of the ice finally does melt that will not be the end of Antarctica. The Sun is naturally warming as it ages, and some distant day, perhaps millions of years in the future, the white continent will turn green again no matter what we do. When this happens, as it must, we humans will probably not be there to witness it. But someone or something else surely will.

100 million years ago:
Antarctica drifts over the South Pole and settles there, as part of a massive supercontinent, which is already breaking apart. Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are much higher than those of today, and the Earth is about 18°F warmer.

66 million years ago:
dinosaurs become extinct following a massive asteroid strike, and mammals take over Antarctica's lush forests. Atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases are falling, and the Earth is gradually cooling.

40–35 million years ago:
Australia and South America are the last pieces of the supercontinent to break away from Antarctica. The continent is now isolated by circular oceanic currents, which encourage further cooling.

34 million years ago:
the first large ice sheets appear on the continent.

14 million years ago:
following yet more cooling, the ice sheets become extensive and permanent. From now on, in the interior of the Dry Valleys, time stands still.

1773:
Captain James Cook and his crew cross the Antarctic Circle.

1820:
Russian naval officer Captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and his expedition crews aboard the
Vostok
(‘East') and the
Mirny
(‘Peaceful') see the first Antarctic land.

1821:
sealer Captain John Davis is the first person to set foot on the continent.

1898:
Belgian naval officer Baron Adrien de Gerlache and his crew survive the first Antarctic winter on their trapped ship, the
Belgica.
On board is a young Norwegian explorer named Roald Amundsen, who will later return to the continent to lead the first team to the South Pole.

1899:
Anglo-Norwegian explorer Carsten Egeberg Borchgre-vink leads the first expedition to winter on the continental mainland. His glowing report of the endeavour does not match the secretly kept diaries of some of his discontented team members, who write in sarcastic terms of his leadership abilities. The expedition ends in acrimony.

1901–2:
British team comprising Captain Robert Scott, Edward Wilson and the Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton makes the first attempt to walk to the South Pole, but reaches only 82°17' S.

1909:
Shackleton and three other men are the first to climb up on to the Antarctica plateau and reach a new farthest south, but are forced to turn back through lack of food just a hundred miles from the Pole.

December 1911:
Amundsen and four companions become the first men to reach the South Pole.

January 1912:
Scott and his three companions reach the South Pole, having come second in the race.

February-March 1912:
all five members of Scott's polar party die on their way back to the coast.

1912:
Australian geologist and explorer Douglas Mawson leads a scientific expedition to Terre Adélie Land, which becomes the first to establish radio contact between Antarctica and another continent, and the first to find an Antarctic meteorite. During a sledging journey to the far east of the base, Mawson's two companions die, one of them by falling into a crevasse that also swallows most of the food and equipment. In a spectacular feat of endurance Mawson manages to survive and return to base, only to see his ship disappearing over the horizon, leaving him stranded on the continent for another winter.

1915–16:
Shackleton makes a new attempt on an Antarctic record, this time hoping to be the first to cross the continent on foot. However, his ship, the
Endurance,
is crushed in the Weddell Sea. Shackleton's men end up trapped on Elephant Island, while he and five others successfully sail to South Georgia in a small open boat to seek help—achieving one of the greatest boat journeys ever made. Shackleton then leads the rescue of all the remaining stranded men.

1929:
US Admiral Richard Byrd and three companions are the first to fly over the South Pole.

1934:
Byrd sets up a small inland base on the Ross Ice Shelf for meteorological studies, which he mans alone for the entire winter. He nearly dies from carbon monoxide poisoning, and although he tries to keep his illness secret from the team at the coast, they eventually rescue him just before the return of the sun.

1935:
Caroline Mikkelsen, the wife of a Norwegian whaling captain, goes ashore briefly and becomes the first woman to set foot on the continent.

1947–8:
Jennie Darlington and Edith (Jackie) Ronne, both wives of explorers, become the first women to spend a winter on the continent.

1954:
Australian Mawson base is established—now the oldest continuously occupied station south of the Antarctic Circle.

1956:
US station McMurdo founded on Ross Island, beside the site of Scott's first hut.

1957–8:
International Geophysical Year, a scientific project involving all major countries with the exception of China, triggers intense scientific interest in Antarctica. This is the dawn of the age of science on the continent. The Russian Vostok and American South Pole stations are both founded on the high plateau of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. During this period, the British Commonwealth Transantarctic expedition led by Vivian Fuchs finally succeeds in crossing the continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, via the Pole, more than forty years after Shackleton made his abortive attempt.

1961:
the Antarctic Treaty, initially signed by twelve nations, comes into force. The treaty puts all existing claims for land on hold, and pledges to use Antarctica only for scientific studies and peaceful purposes.

1969:
American researchers discover antifreeze in the blood of Antarctic fish. This is also the year that six women who have just been allowed into the American programme are flown from the coast to the South Pole for a photo opportunity. Stepping off the plane, they link arms so that all six of them become the ‘first' women there.

1978:
Emilio Marcos Palma is the first baby to be born on the continent, at Argentine station Esperanza on the Antarctic Peninsula.

1979:
the first Martian meteorite is found on the continent—though it is not initially recognised as such.

1981:
the first lunar meteorite anywhere in the world is discovered on the continent. Until now, scientists had not believed that rocks could arrive on Earth from other large planetary bodies. This find triggers a re-evaluation of previous ones the world over, revealing that a whole category of previously unidentified meteorites have in fact come to us from the planet Mars.

1985:
British scientists working at Halley Station on the Ronne Ice Shelf report a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

1986:
the first dinosaur in Antarctica is found by Argentine scientists on James Ross Island.

1994:
the last dogs leave the continent. From now, in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty, the only non-native species permitted on the continent are humans.

1995:
American researchers report the discovery of buried ice in the Dry Valleys that is at least eight million years old and yet is still frozen solid.

1996:
Russian drillers at Vostok Station halt their ice core at a depth of 12,000 feet, to avoid contaminating the lake beneath. The longest ice core ever drilled—until it was surpassed in 2010 by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet core—Vostok contains the records of four full ice ages and shows a very tight correlation between temperature and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

1998:
American researchers report satellite results showing that ice in the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating at an alarming rate. A blizzard of papers follows, showing that this large area of the continent is indeed the ‘weak underbelly of Antarctica'.

2002:
the Larsen B Ice Shelf, an area of ice the size of the US state of Rhode Island, shatters in spectacular fashion, triggering fears that the Antarctic ice is responding to global warming. American researchers find that this has not happened for at least 10,000 years.

2004:
European consortium EPICA halts its ice core drilling at Dome C. Though the core is slightly shorter than that of Vostok, it goes back farther, through eight complete ice age cycles. Tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped in the core confirm the tight connection between higher levels of greenhouse gases and higher temperatures, and show that levels of CO
₂
in the atmosphere today are higher than they have been for at least 800,000 years. This is also the year that contract worker Jake Speed becomes the first person to spend five winters at the South Pole. Though his record has since been surpassed, he remains the only person to have spent five successive winters there.

2005:
French-Italian Concordia Station is occupied for its first winter. Concordia becomes the first new wintering station on the polar plateau in almost fifty years. Separately, American researchers discover that the continent has a hidden face. They find that the hundreds of lakes underlying the Antarctic ice are not isolated, but are interconnected by channels and waterfalls; many of the lakes appear to be continually filling and emptying, with rushes of water that could destabilise large parts of the ice sheet.

2005:
temperature records from many stations confirm that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by nearly 5°F over the previous fifty years, which is more than three times the global average.

2009:
China establishes a summer-only station called Kunlun at Dome A in the Antarctic interior, with the intention of drilling a new ice core to probe even further into Antarctica's buried climate records.

2011:
the American WAIS Divide project retrieves the continent's deepest ever ice core, and one of the few from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. They hope it will reveal much more about the history and likely fate of this highly vulnerable ice sheet.

ANSMET:
the Antarctic Search for Meteorites, a programme for seeking meteorites on the continent.

Antarctic 10:
a person of the opposite sex who would rate a 5 back in the real world.

Antarctic Treaty:
a treaty regulating ownership and use of the entire Antarctic continent, which came into force in 1961, and has now been signed by forty-nine nations. The treaty sets aside the continent as a scientific preserve and bans commercial exploitation and military activity.

Barrier:
early explorers' name for the Ross Ice Shelf.

Boomerang:
a flight from New Zealand to McMurdo Station that has to turn around at the Point of Safe Return because of poor weather at the landing site.

Bunny boots:
large white (or sometimes blue) boots that look like space boots and are adapted with layers of insulation for extremely cold weather.

Cat or snow cat:
snow dozer or tractor with caterpillar tracks.

Comms:
communications—a central part of Antarctic operations.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB):
the faint afterglow of the birth of the Universe, the Big Bang, which is invisible to human eyes but still pervades the sky.

DDU:
Dumont d'Urville, the main French base on the Adélie coast.

EPICA:
European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, involving two deep ice cores, one at Dome C and one in Dronning Maud Land.

Fingee:
the pronunciation of ‘FNG', which stands for ‘fucking new guy (girl)'.

Freshies:
fresh fruit and vegetables—which are worth more than gold in Antarctica.

Galley:
common name for dining area in bases and camps, derived from early naval logistics support on the continent.

Helo:
helicopter.

Here or Hercules:
C-130 military transport aircraft used extensively by the US programme in Antarctica for long-distance flights. Other operations use Hercs to fly on to the continent using wheels on sea-ice runways, but only the United States has the technology to attach skis to the planes, and therefore to use Hercs in the interior.

Ice sheet:
a thick layer of ice covering a very extensive area of land; currently the only remaining large ice sheets in the world are the three that lie on Greenland, East Antarctica and West Antarctica. If any or all of these melt substantially they would dump very large amounts of water into the oceans, raising sea levels significantly around the world.

Ice shelf:
a region of floating ice, where a glacier has spilled out into the sea but not yet broken up to form icebergs. Antarctica has large numbers of smaller ice shelves, and two very large ones—the Ross Ice Shelf (also known as the Barrier) and the Ronne Ice Shelf, which are each approximately the same size as France.

Ice stream:
very large and wide glaciers, typically more than a kilometre deep and up to 50 km wide, which move extremely quickly and drain ice from the centre of the ice sheets down to the sea.

Jamesway:
long half-cylindrical tent with two layers of tarpaulin and a wooden floor, usually heated with stoves. This is often used as a communal space in larger camps, or as sleeping accommodation.