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....