Bundling Up!

Antarctica is one of the extremest environments on Earth. So it goes without saying that it takes extreme gear to survive here. Luckily, the NSF makes sure that every person deployed to the Ice has the proper gear. Most Antarctic voyagers deploy from the United States and are flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, where they await transport to one of the stations in Antarctica. While they are waiting, they are outfitted at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) with Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear. This gear includes all of the clothing we need to survive in the harsh, frigid environment. A sample of issued clothing can be seen below.

Appropriate clothing for the Antarctic consists of many layers.

Base layer: this layer is a soft, comfortable layer that does it’s best to keep you warm and dry. Generally, most people think of this as ‘thermal underwear.’ It is important that this base layer is not made of cotton because cotton tends to hold onto moisture, making you colder!

Insulating layer: this layer depends mostly on how cold the environment is. Generally, woolen sweaters, fleece, or thick shirts are appropriate insulating layers.

Outer shell: this layer protects you directly from the elements. Generally called a parka (see the red jacket to the far left in the image above). Depending on the environments, most outer layers are waterproof, but don’t necessarily have to be.

Hands and Feet: in extreme cold, your hands and feet feel very cold because of poor blood circulation and the fact that they have such large surface areas from which heat escapes. So, it’s very important to wear proper gear: wool or polyester socks work well, and layering gloves works very well as well.

Head: they say, ‘if your feet are cold, cover your head.’ You lose most of your heat through your head, so it’s very important to wear a hat to prevent unnecessary heat loss from your body.

So, what else do you bring for 4 weeks, living in a tent in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica? Well, although you are issued all of the necessary gear, most people also like to bring their own additional gear (this usually includes additional base layers and wool socks). I’m also bringing extra pairs of glasses and artic-grade prescription sunglasses to protect my eyes from intense UV exposure, as well as heavy duty sunscreen prescription (100+ SPF) to protect my skin from the UV exposure.

One thing that most people would not have guessed I’m bringing is baby-wipes! Four weeks in a tent, in the Antarctic, without a shower, and only 3 changes of clothes and no laundry, can be pretty dirty.....And because water is a scarce resource out in the Dry Valleys (melting ice is prohibited - in the effort to keep human impacts on the environment at a minimum), bathing is not really an option. In order to ‘shower,’ using baby-wipes is the next best option. I’ve never showered by ‘baby-wipe’ so this will be an interesting experience for me......we’ll see.....I’ll let you know how well it all works out!

And now, all that awaits are my deployment details......woohooo!!!!

Getting PQ’d

An arduous process....getting PQ’d (or Physically Qualified) to go to Antarctica consists of a series of medical and dental checks that ensure that you are physically healthy enough for a season in the extreme conditions in Antarctica, where medical facilities are limited in their ability to address major medical issues. Any serious medical problems would require patients to be airlifted or shipped by boat to the nearest capable medical facility, likely in New Zealand or South America. To avoid any costly and possibly fatal risky situations, getting PQ’d is a critical step in getting clearance to go to Antarctica.

Separate qualifications are required depending on whether you are a winter-over (Feb-Oct) or summer-over (Oct-Feb) traveller. A more extensive medical check is required for winter-over candidates, who will be spending nearly 6 months in complete darkness (due to the lack of incoming sunlight in the Southern Hemisphere during the austral winter). Winter-over candidates must also undergo psychological testing, which evaluates their ability to cope with these unique stresses.

As a summer-over candidate, I did not have to go for psychological testing, though I did have to complete a series of intensive medical checks, which included a full physical, a tuberculin skin test, a 12 Lead EKG, and a full blood and urine test. I also had to provide full dental x-rays to the contractor evaluating my health review. The whole process was actually quite straight-forward. I was provided with ‘Dear Doctor’ and ‘Dear Dentist’ letters to give to my care-providers, which contained information about what, why, and when all of these pieces of information were required. All of these tests need to be submitted 8 weeks before your supposed deployment date to Raytheon Polar Services Company, a contractor that works specifically with the Office of Polar Programs in the National Science Foundation, supporting the United States Antarctic Program (USAP).

After submitting your paperwork, you are reviewed by the Raytheon Medical Department. Luckily, I was just PQ’d for summer deployment! It’s always a little nerve-wracking to go through such extensive medical checks, especially since you never really know what you may find out. But, what a relief!!!

Now that I’m PQ’d, the next step is to wait for deployment details, which are generally received ~3 weeks before your supposed deployment date (Nov 27, 2010 for me!). But before then....it’s time to think about what I should bring....

Preparing for Antarctica

The preparations begin months in advance. Most research projects conducted in Antarctica are approved and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the major source of federal money supporting research in science and engineering in the United States. The NSF receives roughly 40,000 proposals a year, funding about 10,000 of these proposals after grants undergo an extensive merit review process. The National Science Foundation supports numerous collaborations and projects that promote the progress of science with the intention of advancing national safety, prosperity, and health. Without funding from the NSF, many of the advancements in science we have achieved today would probably still seem like science fiction we could only dream up in movies.  

Luckily, the National Science Foundation has supported and continues to support research in Antarctica. I will be heading out to ‘The Ice’ as they say, this austral summer 2010 with a group of geomorphologists to the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, a region located in the Transantarctic Mountain range (see image below).
I guess I should give you a little background as to who I am and what I do. I am a graduate student at Princeton University, studying paleoclimate using geochemical methods. Specifically, I analyze the trapped air preserved in ice from Antarctica with the intention of extending the record of atmospheric composition through time. Extending the current record, which goes back 800,000 years, could provide vital information about the climate-greenhouse gas forcing relationship, which can elucidate how humans may be affecting global climate today. I have been collaborating with several geomorphologists at Boston University, working specifically in a region called the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, where unique conditions allow ice of great antiquity (estimated to 4 Ma in our field region) to be preserved. I have been analyzing the air trapped in this ice to see whether paleoatmosphere as old as 4 Ma is actually well-preserved in these samples. If you want to know more, you can check out my research page for specifics (http://www.princeton.edu/~ayau/Audrey_M_Yau/Home.html).

The objectives of this field season are many. One of the overarching goals that is particularly interesting is to gather physical data with which to better understand the climate evolution of Antarctica over the Cenozoic (the last 65 Ma). Antarctica has not always been glaciated! Small, transient ice-sheets first began to appear in Antarctica roughly 34 Ma. At this time, Antarctica was more of a tundra type environment. Then approximately 14.1-13.8 Ma, full blown mega-glaciation of Antarctica occurred, associated with roughly an 8C cooling of the continent. This mega-glacier has been estimated to be roughly 1.5 times larger than today’s Antarctic ice sheet! Remnants of this mega-glaciation may still be found in the Dry Valleys, which is of particular importance to geomorphologists and climate scientists interested in reconstructing global climate processes.

I will be helping the team collect data that will help pull bits of this story together. I’m really excited to have this opportunity!!! I mean, not many people have the opportunity to go into the sciences and do research as ‘cool’ as this!!!

But, there’s still quite a few things I have to do before I can deploy to Antarctica. My deployment date is set for sometime around Nov 27, 2010. But before then, I still have a series of medical and dental checks to go through before I get my actual itinerary and finalized deployment date....