Montshire Minute: Antarctica

Originally aired during the week of November 27, 2000

Monday

Australia may be the "land down under." But at the absolute bottom of the earth is Antarctica, the coldest, windiest, driest place on our planet. The continent is almost completely covered with ice and snow all year round. Not your idea of the perfect mid-winter getaway, huh? Of course as the Northern Hemisphere moves into winter, it's spring in Antarctica. This time of year, researchers descend on Antarctica to try and unlock some of the secrets this continent holds. One of the researchers is Dr. Bert Yankielun of the Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory in Hanover. We'll be getting some dispatches from "Dr. Bert" as his team does research that may help us understand more about the earth's geological history. More on that later. This week, we're taking a closer look at the continent and the extreme conditions researchers often have to work in.

Tuesday

Imagine yourself walking across the Antarctic landscape on a sunny day. There is a flat expanse of snow and ice everywhere you look. Everything is white--you're wearing "glacier glasses" to prevent the sun's glare from damaging your eyes. Only a few mountain peaks and some other bare rocky areas indicate that there is land here. But Antarctica is indeed a continent, covered by a huge ice sheet that is almost three miles thick in some places. At least 75% of our planet's fresh water is locked up in the glacial ice underneath your feet. In a sense, though, you might as well be walking on a desert. Only about two inches of precipitation fall here every year, about the same as the Sahara! Of course, it's much colder here. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth was in Antarctica - 129 degrees below zero. No doubt about it. This is a pretty extreme place.

Wednesday

Dress in layers. Lots and lots of layers. Because it's cold here in Antarctica! Besides subzero temperatures, the landscape (or icescape) is blasted by winds that come off the continent's inland plateau to the sea. Sometimes the wind gusts up to 200 miles per hour, sculpting rock and ice into strange shapes. Because we're at the very bottom of the world, the sun makes itself scarce during the winter. I mean, it's "lights out" for months at a time. In summer, the sun never sets. It goes around the sky, just above the horizon. In Antarctica sunrise takes about 3 weeks - in other words, it takes that long for the sun to fully rise above the horizon. Researchers working in the summer months have to get used to sunlight that shines 24 hours a day. When they are working outside, they need special sunglasses with ultraviolet coating to prevent snowblindness.

Thursday

The ice cap over Antarctica holds the largest body of fresh water in the world. There's about 30 million cubic kilometers of it - of course it's mostly frozen. Think of the ice cubes you could get out of that! If all of this ice were to melt, the sea level would rise as much as 200 feet. An ice sheet didn't always cover Antarctica, however. Fossils of trees, plants, dinosaurs and small mammals have been found there. Scientists believe Antarctica originally belonged to a large supercontinent called Gondwana, which included present-day Africa, Australia, India and part of South America. Around 160 million years ago, this landmass began to break apart - Antarctica became a separate continent and drifted to the South Pole. Glaciers began to form there about 40 million years ago and the ice cap has buried the continent for the last 5 million years.

Friday

With freezing temperatures, high winds, acres of ice, and months at a time without sunlight, Antarctica appears to be as cold and lifeless as a frozen food locker. But it is a continent teeming with life. Here and there are moss, lichens, grasses, and even some insect-like animals. The ocean waters surrounding Antarctica are rich in plankton, the main course for many whales. Seabirds, fish, penguins, and seals have found ways to thrive in this environment. Even people have discovered how to live in Antarctica and conduct scientific studies in the dead of winter. Next week, we'll be listening in on dispatches from one such researcher, Dr. Norbert Yankeilun, of the Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory in Hanover. He's in Antarctica right now, helping a research team collect data that can tell us a lot more about the earth's geological history.