Antarctica Research Stations: Science in the Extreme

There are currently seventy permanent research stations on the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands; they represent twenty-nine countries from all continents. Many are seasonal, but most are staffed year-round. The first permanent base established in Antarctica was named the Omond House, built by the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition on Laurie Island in the South Orkney Islands. It is still in use, known today as Orcadas Base. It was transferred to Argentina in 1904 and has been operated by them since then.

The United States maintains three permanent research stations in Antarctica. McMurdo is the largest base on the continent, and today its population swells to over 1,000 in the austral summer. Although the primary goal of the research station is science, most of the personnel are support staff with jobs ranging from cook and dishwasher to fuel line maintenance to helo ops pilot. A second station the United States permanently maintains is Palmer Station, on Anvers Island near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The third US station is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, established in 1956 and located at 90°S, named after the leaders of the first two teams to reach the South Pole. South Pole Station research is primarily focused on astrophysics, and approximately fifty scientists and staff overwinter to take measurements during the dark months. It is the most remote research station on Earth, and conditions in winter are brutal, with temperatures routinely below -60°C. These challenging conditions require interested scientists to undergo comprehensive physical and psychological evaluations before they are cleared to overwinter.

McMurdo and Palmer Stations have extensive marine research programs, including polar diving staff who can collect samples under the sea ice after the pack ice is bored through. They also have overwinter crews, but relatively few ongoing science experiments are done there due to the inaccessibility of the environment during the winter months. The United States partners with New Zealand to fly to McMurdo and with Chile to reach Palmer Station due to their relatively convenient proximity to the research stations.

Besides research stations, many countries, including the United States, routinely conduct research cruises to the Southern Ocean—working with universities, governmental agencies such as the National Science Foundation, and even with intergovernmental organizations such as the IWC, which runs the Southern Ocean Research Partnership in conjunction with eleven countries. Much of the research in the Southern Ocean currently focuses on the changing climate and the effects that it may have on ocean chemistry, currents, sea level, biological diversity, and abundance.

Southern Ocean Environmental Threats: Climate Change & Acidification

The Southern Ocean is remote but not immune to the environmental concerns that face all oceans. In fact, some threats—such as climate change, ocean acidification, and ozone depletion—are exacerbated in the Southern Ocean due to its polar location. Conversely, several concerns, such as overfishing, deep-sea mining, and oil spills, are mitigated by the protection of several international agreements, including most significantly the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Ultimately, the Earth operates as a global system, and all marine bodies are connected, so threats facing any ocean are a concern in the Southern Ocean as well.

One unique threat faced by the Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystem is the ozone hole that continues to form each winter over the continent within the polar vortex. At its maximum, over 50 percent of lower stratospheric ozone is destroyed by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other halocarbons that have been released into the atmosphere. The good news is that since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, the input of CFCs has decreased and it is expected the ozone hole may disappear by the middle of this century. Many large-scale effects have already occurred, however. Increased UVB radiation has directly decreased phytoplankton activity in the Southern Ocean and has the potential to mutate DNA. More concerning still is that ozone loss leads to a lowering of localized atmospheric temperature, which in turn intensifies the westerly winds around Antarctica and leads to increased Ekman transport and upwelling effects. This has the result of bringing more CO₂-rich water to the surface and altering and accelerating circulation patterns. Currently, the relative effect of ozone depletion on the Southern Ocean climate greatly exceeds that of climate change.

The threat of ocean acidification and climate change is a pressing concern in the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is very important to the global climate, as it takes up more than 60 percent of all anthropogenic heat and 40 to 50 percent of all anthropogenic CO₂. Additionally, with the increased upwelling effects from ozone depletion, the Southern Ocean is acidifying more quickly than other oceans, which has a negative effect on its acid buffering capacity. The polar pH is decreasing at twice the rate of tropical waters. The Southern Ocean is also warming, and in some areas (e.g., the peninsula) may be among the fastest warming waters on the planet. Further, seasonal variability appears to be increasing as well, and these changes are also affecting wind patterns, with increased cyclonic conditions found in the northern Weddell Sea associated with a strengthening midlatitude jet stream. In general, however, scientists expect to see a warmer and fresher (less saline) Southern Ocean in the coming century.

This will be due to a decrease in the total volume of sea ice due to warmer sea surface temperatures.

These large-scale environmental threats are already affecting the biology of the Southern Ocean. Organisms that need calcium for hard parts are being challenged by the decreasing pH. This includes species such as cold-water corals and Antarctic pteropods (pelagic snails), among many others. Ecosystems have a ripple effect, so animals that depend on corals for habitat or pteropods as food will be affected as well. Moreover, krill are being affected by the decreasing formation of sea ice during late summer and fall. Krill depend on sea ice for protection as well as a nutrient source, that is, as a surface on which to feed on growing algae before the return of the dark winter months. Without enough food and shelter in the late season, krill populations have decreased by 70 percent in the past forty years (also due to increased human impact from fishing). Krills are the central link in the Antarctic food web, and thus the threats to the krill population may have a wide-ranging impact on the Southern Ocean ecosystem in the twenty-first century. Geoff Dilly.

FURTHER READING:
Amundsen, Roald. 2012. The South Pole. Ebook. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/4229/4229-h/4229-h.htm. Accessed April 6, 2017.

Barnes, David K. A. and Andrew Clarke. 2011. “Antarctic Marine Biology.” Current Biology 21 (12): R451-7.

Constable, Andrew J., Jessica Melbourne-Thomas, Stuart P Corney, Kevin R. Arrigo, Christophe Barbraud, David K. A. Barnes, . . . Nathaniel L. Bindoff. 2014. “Climate

Change and Southern Ocean Ecosystems I: How Changes in Physical Habitats Directly Affect Marine Biota.” Global Change Biology 20 (10): 3004-25.

Daniels, Paul C. 1970. “The Antarctic Treaty.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 26 (10): 11-15.

Ferreira, David, John Marshall, Cecilia M. Bitz, Susan Solomon, and Alan Plumb. 2015. “Antarctic Ocean and Sea Ice Response to Ozone Depletion: A Two-Time-Scale Problem.” Journal of Climate 28 (3): 1206-26.

Glasgow Digital Library. 2017. “Voyage of the Scotia 1902-04.” http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/scotia/ index.html. Accessed April 7, 2017.

Griffiths, Huw J. 2010. “Antarctic Marine Biodiversity-What Do We Know about the Distribution of Life in the Southern Ocean?” PloS One 5 (8): e11683.