Features

On the Move in Antarctica

After two weeks of training, final organization and preparation of gear, the ITASE team is finally ready to leave McMurdo Station for the field. But departure is delayed several times because of weather. These final days of delay are just one more chapter in an expedition that has required months of preparation and attention to detail.

Securing funding for research in Antarctica, the world's harshest lab, demands more than sound science. The research must be logistically feasible. Mark Twickler '85, associate director of UNH's CCRC, is one of those responsible for these logistics. Unlike "stationary research" conducted out of a single base camp, the ITASE scientists will be constantly on the move. "We have to be self-sufficient," says Twickler, who is also ITASE's assistant field leader.

Twickler oversaw the design and manufacture of a special insulated storage system for the ice cores, which are towed on 20-foot-long Swedish sleds with Teflon runners. He also calculated the precise amount of fuel--twenty 55-gallon drums, each weighing 450 pounds--and the necessary food for the six-week journey. Rations include lamb, beef, fish and chicken, as well as freeze-dried vegetables, a gorp mixture of dried fruit, granola and nuts, and chocolate bars. It adds up to seven pounds per person per day, or about 10,000 calories each.

A Tucker Sno-Cat pulls 20,000 pounds of gear and supplies across the central plateau of Antarctica during the International Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

By early November, every scientific instrument, every ounce of food and fuel, each piece of clothing and rescue equipment is packed and ready at McMurdo Station. The planning is over; the adventure is about to begin. As soon as the weather clears. Finally, on Nov. 22, the ITASE team lifts off from McMurdo, flies three hours southeast and lands on a glistening runway of ice and snow at Byrd Surface Camp. The team members step off the C-130 and into the arctic silence.

The ITASE expedition travels single file, a giant mechanical caterpillar creeping across the ice at five miles per hour. The two Sno-Cats haul the 20-foot sleds; the four snowmobiles pull smaller sleds with extra gear. Team members ride inside the Sno-Cats and aboard the snowmobiles. A few perch on sleds. The machines are roped together, and every expedition member is roped to the person before and behind him, constantly watching for the signal to halt—an arm straight in the air, palm forward, indicating trouble. This year, the ITASE team will cover 200 miles, stopping along the way to drill 100 to 300 feet down into the ice, extracting several cores from different sites. At one site, the team will drill a core as tall as a 60-story building. Michael Gerasimoff, a driller from Yukon Territory, Canada, runs the $100,000 drill. As he brings up each core, in three-foot chunks, Souney and Tyler Cruickshank, another UNH graduate student, help to extract each section from the barrel of the drill, log the depth registration, then carefully package the precious specimen in plastic tubing and stow it in the insulated box. "When you're looking at chemical concentrations of parts per billion, you can't just lay these things on the ground," Souney says. "You have to handle them extremely carefully to prevent contamination of the chemistry within the ice."

When they're not on core duty, Souney and Cruickshank, along with several others, dig deep snow pits and then spend hours taking samples. Using a small hand saw, they work their way down the wall, carefully cutting out chunks just large enough to fit in narrow Tupperware containers. Each one is filled with dimethyl phthalate (DMPL), a liquid chemical designed to preserve the snow's microstructure.

The need to understand the message of this place has gained urgency with the discovery of the ozone hole and, more recently, with the steady break-up of the continent itself. Jagged fragments of floating ice fill the open waters. Some loom against the horizon like a fantastic fleet of frozen ships. Many are as big as city blocks; one was as big as the state of Rhode Island. Their harsh beauty carries a sobering scientific message: the climate is changing. "The last three decades have been warmer than anything we've seen in the past 600 years," says Mayewski.

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