10 Things You Should Know About Antarctica

[Note: Due to my Antarctic outreach project, I will now have two types of questions. Feel free to answer them unless they are specifically labeled "student" questions. In those cases, I'm hoping one of the students in the groups that I'm working with will answer. There will be fun prizes to the student(s) or group with the most points when I return!]

I'm just starting to pack for Antarctica, so I've been doing some research about my destination. I'm already learning a lot!

Top 10 things you should know about Antarctica (and my trip)

1) Polar bears don't live in the Antarctic! On a similar note, polar bears and penguins can't meet because penguins don't live in the Arctic. Children's books that show polar bears talking to penguins are complete fiction ;)

Beautiful ice towers. Photo by Dave Parmelee.

2) Only ~2% of Antarctica is ice-free. We'll be camping on ice but working on mountains. There's a LOT more ice than there are bare mountains! We also won't be too far away from Mt. Vinson (Highest mountain in Antarctica at 4892 m). We'll only be some 200+ km away, but it's a little too far to travel. I think we're going to have enough of our own peaks to climb in the Patriot Hills, Marble Hills, and Independence Hills where we'll be working.

3) Antarctica is big. But is it bigger than the US? Is it bigger than Europe? NASA has a nice figure showing how the US and Antarctica would look if we overlapped the maps at the same scale. There's no comparable high-quality image of Europe superimposed on Antarctica, but it's about the same size as the USA.

Comparison of contiguous United States and Antarctica.
It doesn't look this way on many other maps because of the
projection (the way it's drawn).  Image source: NASA.

Helicopter on Mt. Erebus (background).
Photo by Dave Parmelee

Lava lake, Mt Erebus, Antarctica

4) There are volcanoes in Antarctica. There is some amazing research being done on Mt. Erebus, which is especially unique because of the persistent lava lake inside the volcano. Of course, this particular volcano (and my friends doing research over there) is on the other side of the continent from where I'll be (2049 km away). Check out this link for information on the volcano (the 'live imagery' page has live images of the lava lake) or check out this link for a cool dating project that I helped a friend with.


5) It gets cold in Antarctica. Of course it gets cold, but how cold is "cold"? It will be summer while we're there, so at least it will  be light and the warmest it gets all year. At Rothera, the summer temperatures can be quite pleasant, hovering around 0 degrees C. However, at our camp (away from the ocean), we expect much colder temperatures (last year, days were around -10 or -20 deg C, but it could be much colder).  However, this is nothing compared to the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth: -94 degrees Celsius! You can use the converter on my blog (to the right) to see what that would be in Fahrenheit. This is a recent record (2010) from scientists using remote sensing at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
For a point: what were the researchers studying when they discovered the record-setting temperatures?
For a student point: What is the new coldest temperature on earth in degrees Fahrenheit?

6) Antarctica is not a country and has no independent government. Many countries signed a treaty and its additional protocols, making Antarctica a 'natural reserve devoted to peace and science.' Although Antarctica may have reserves of minerals, oil, or diamonds, the agreement bans mining and preserves the natural environment. Military is also not allowed unless it is to support a scientific project or other peaceful mission. This is a very successful treaty and shows that nations can cooperate with one another. In Antarctica, the harsh environment helps to encourage this cooperation. When someone needs help, everyone works together, regardless of nationality.

7) Antarctica is a desert. Despite the thick ice sheet (which averages about a mile thick), the continent really doesn't receive much precipitation (water as either rain or snow).The average for the whole continent is a very small amount: only 6.5 inches of precipitation per year. However, in the center of the continent, it can be as small as 2 inches per year! Any area that receives <10 inches of rain is classified as a desert, so Antarctica surely counts. For comparison, New York gets an average of 36 inches of precipitation per year (3 feet) and Florida gets ~85 inches (7 feet!).

Camp on the flanks of Mt. Erebus. Photo by Dave Parmelee

8) We only get 31 kg of gear (plus our cold-weather kit bag). This is basically just one, 50-pound checked bag plus a small carry-on backpack. This needs to fit our science equipment (laptops and other fancy equipment for the geophysics, hammers & sample bags for the cosmogenic rock sampling). Hopefully, we will be able to fit all the creature comforts in there as well. At least we won't need too much shower stuff since there will be no bathing in the field! I will, however, need to find room for a small birthday cake...

9) It will take me one train ride, 4 plane fights, and about 3 days to get to Rothera (the base in Antarctica). I'll be spending a little while on the base as we pack for the trip and I get the rest of my "How to camp in Antarctica" training. It's a little ways away from home (listed from Cambridge because that's where the British Antarctic Survey is based, but I'm further North than that):
Cambridge (UK) to Rothera = 14435 km

Map of the important flying locations in Antarctica.
From British Antarctic Survey website.

Rothera to South Pole = 2492 km

For reference, New York to San Francisco is only 4126 km and takes approximately 6.5 hours on a plane.

10) Our camp will be >80 degrees south latitude. Needless to say, we're going to be in a very remote location.
Camp Location: -80.272587, -81.230101. Hint: If you copy those coordinates into Google Earth (free to download), you can see the location on the map! It's hard to find the right way to explain exactly how remote our camp will be, but here are a few indicators:

Some of the planes, called twin otters, have skis for
landing on snow and ice.
Photo from BAS www.photo.antarctica.ac.uk

• From the base (Rothera) to our camp, we will have to take at least 3 shorter plane rides (Rothera - Fossil Bluff - Sky-Blu - ? - Camp). Some of the planes will even have skis instead of wheels! 

• Rothera to our camp: 1468 km

• Finally, the best indicator of a remote location:
  Our camp to nearest McDonald's = 4336 km. 

It can be nice to get away from it all for a while :)

Student Question: How many kilometers from our base to the South Pole? Are we closer to Rothera (the base) or the South Pole? (You will probably want to use Google Earth for this - cool tool called the ruler measures distances).

Off to keep packing!