8 years later, January 2023.
The memories are of course hazier now, but the place has maintained a hold within them. The wildlife has only come close to being matched by the Galapagos Islands, tellingly another ocean nature reserve. The respect you gain for the natural world in visiting these places is enormous.
The sense of journey that Antarctica gave to me is also as of yet unparalleled. Geographically, I’d barely scratched the surface of the continent, but I had time to get swept up with the stories of the first pioneering explorers. And personally, it was also a key stage in my own journey of that year, as I went on to finish visiting all seven continents a few months later.
It’s now 8 years later. I’ve asked myself why it’s taken so long to finish these short Antarctica chapters? While occasionally I’ve revisited my notes and typed some more, progress has mainly felt as frozen as Antarctica itself. Since this journey, I’ve taken busy jobs. And it turned out that multitasking across corporate projects, and with a frequent feeling of weekend dread at behind schedule, was sufficient to squeeze out my habit for writing my own tales.
I tried to pick this up again during the 2020 outbreak of Covid-19. This was a period when work temporarily slowed down, and the social schedule stopped. With so much free time, we were encouraged to pick up new hobbies or restart old ones. But it wasn’t hard to find new stresses during this time, and desperate for connection I found myself with a rabidly increase cell-phone addiction. My mind was a creative wreck.
In March 2022 there were a couple of big news stories on Antarctica. The remains of Shackleton’s ship The Endurance had been found at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Now 107 years after the voyage, remotely operated submarines had found the ship at a depth of 3km below the frozen sea’s surface. The videos showed a remarkably preserved boat. Colonised by small sea life, yet otherwise intact. Under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty the remains of the ship can’t be moved and could well remain for centuries to come.
Just a few days later, a very different story above the waters. Record temperatures had been recorded within the heart of the Antarctic Continent. While -10C is still cold by most accountants, for the site of Dome C in the East Antarctic plateau it was a huge 38.5C higher than the average, a clear global record for excess temperatures. Movements in atmospheric currents had created conditions for an incredible weeklong heatwave. To the extent that this was a once in a lifetime anomaly, or something we may see again due to climate change trends, is under continued research.
Yet these two stories came shortly after Russia had invaded deep into Ukraine. I was devouring books about Russia and Putin at the time, and work was hectic as we sought to understand the impacts.
Now at the start of 2023, I’ve at least carved out some time to complete the Antarctic narrative. I look back fondly to the trip where for 10 days I was so free of network connection and daily distractions.
As I finished writing the last couple of chapters, I have also been listening to a few podcasts on Antarctica, of interviews of scientists and explorers that have recently been to the continent, their own stays of months at a time. Their thrill for the place is palpable, a life changing and life affirming place. And alongside all these superlatives, the continent is a bellwether for the changing climate. The amount of ice locked up on this continent has risen and fallen with Co2 concentrations in the atmosphere over the millennia. The theory goes that typically volcanos have been the main culprit at releasing it into the atmosphere, whereas the natural lifecycle of plants and animals steadily locks it back into the land and seabed. Yet now our civilisation is spewing it into the atmosphere faster than super volcanos. Even if we went net zero today, pausing at 415 parts per million of Co2, the size of the icesheets today is still commensurate with 300 parts per million. It will keep melting, it’s primarily a question of speed.
There is excellent research ongoing at the Thwaites’s glacier, advanced sea robots being sent deep under the ice to measure conditions. In likelihood this will continue melting, eventually rising sea levels by about 60cm. The question is then focused on what would happen to the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheets, containing 3-4m of sea level rise. It’s expected to take centuries, yet the speed of this will have a colossal bearing on economics and geopolitics.
It’s also impacting the penguins. Declining sea ice heavily reducing many penguin populations. But there are survivors too. The affable Adelie penguins, while declining in some areas, are thought to be increasing in number in East Antarctica. The ecosystems around this content are delicate and vast, a fundamental force to the rest of the planet’s oceans. It requires understanding and respect, essential to our understanding of a changing world, yet always sublime.
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Recommended Reads / Listens:
Books:
• ‘Worst Journey In the World’, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
• ‘South: The Story of Shackleton’s 1914 – 1917 Expedition’, by Ernest Shakleton
• ‘Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence, and Emperor Penguins’ by Gavin Francis
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Podcasts:
• ‘A Voyage to Antarctica’ two series podcast (find in Spotify and Apple). Especially the episode with Dame Jane Francis, of the British Antarctic Survey
• BBC ‘In our Time’: Antarctica episode
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Articles on some topics touched upon in these final chapters: