In the 1970’s, an international effort to fly ice-penetrating radar over Antarctica resulted in the first rough maps of the sub-ice world.  A ski-equipped Navy LC-130 Hercules was outfitted with radar and flown for long distances.  This reconnaissance was invaluable, but the program went by the wayside after the specially modified airplane crashed doing other work.  The concept was largely put aside until the early 1990’s when glaciologists and geologists got together and tried again.  By this point, it was clear to some that critical additional information could be obtained by including other measurements, namely gravity and magnetics to help understand the geology beneath.  Incredibly, the scientists stuffed all these instruments and a laser altimeter (we didn’t have satellite laser altimeters then) into a much smaller aircraft, a deHavilland Twin Otter.  The Otter is much cheaper to operate and supportable at temporary field camps, so it was perfect for high-resolution studies of specific problems.  

A ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules with jet assisted takeoff (JATO).

Field camps were built each season and LC-130’s delivered fuel for the Twin Otter to use.  This went on until 2001 and then again in the 2004-05 season, and many discoveries were made; however, the Twin Otter just can’t reach the deep interior without heavy support, and this has become very expensive.  Such resources are also very limited.  LC-130’s are very costly to operate, are much larger than needed for this type of work, and require a huge ground crew to support.

The Twin Otter.

The Twin Otter flying over Thwaites Glacier Remote Field Camp.

Having outstripped the capacity of Twin Otters, what next? In my next dispatch, I’ll tell you about what might seem an unlikely platform for Antarctica research: a twin engine aircraft that first saw action during World War II.

Because being at high altitude can make some people sick, the science team has to be trained on multiple parts of the airplane’s science equipment.

During June this year, we tested our radar system in Greenland. We flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet, collecting data to image the ice down to 2.5 km (1.6 miles) below the lake-spotted surface. Now in Antarctica, we face the challenge of imaging more than 4 km of ice…. That’s 2.5 miles of frozen history between our science team and the Gamburtsev Mountains we came here to study! Because we have to reach further into the ice, we have more data than ever coming back after each flight. There’s so much data that the system chokes on it and gasps, “Help me, Adrienne. Help!”

I have escaped the office a few times this week. I got to go on a tour of the pressure ridges that form between the flowing ice of the Ross Ice Shelf and the rock that stands firm against it. And just last night, I escaped to Scott Base, the Antarctic Base that belongs to New Zealand, for some retail therapy. My Scott Excursion really took my mind off of the software for a while and had me refreshed and ready to go back to Radar World this morning. Not to mention I am well stocked on wooly base layers to fight the cold.

View of Scott Base from the Pressure Ridges.

An interesting formation in the Pressure Ridges. What do you think it looks like?

Today, I feel the same way I do when I am at the top of the big hill at the beginning of the ride. There’s that moment when you lift off your seat before powering down the steep hill, screaming your head off. I have been living there, in that emotional suspension for 3 days. Part of my jitteriness the last few days is undoubtedly rooted in the fact I’ll be going to the South Pole on Monday. According to our medical briefing, that means I’ll be perpetually short of breath, having trouble sleeping and going to the bathroom about every 20 minutes for 2 days…. The anticipation is almost too much to hold in! I have been to 10,000ft elevation before but that was after living at 6,500ft above sea level for 5 weeks… and that was in Utah. The transition from sea level here in McMurdo to 10,000ft is such a surprise to the system that everyone is prescribed a medication to help our bodies adjust to the lower oxygen levels. On top of that, we all have to fight off the adrenaline brought on by the fact we’re in Antarctica, at The South Pole, at 10,000ft—no offense to Utah, but it doesn’t compare! Just in case we don’t adjust to the elevation, everyone has been learning tasks outside their specialty. Hopefully, if someone gets sick, we’ll be able to keep the science moving forward, even if at a slower pace.

In the end, it’s not just where we’ll be a week from now. It’s what we’ll learn. The Gamburtsev Mountains have been enigmatic since their happenstance discovery in 1958. Soon, we’ll know them in a way only dreamt of until now. The people on this science team will learn more about the Mountains than the rest of the world has compiled in the last 50 years. This is the Eve of Discovery.

Click below to hear more about it.

Deverall Island, the southernmost island in the world. It is located at the western margin of the Transantarctic Mountains on the Ross Sea Ice Shelf.

The frame that holds all the electronics, weather stations, satellite modems to transfer data, and the solar panels and batteries used for powering the system continuously throughout the year.

The ski-equipped de Havilland Twin Otter aircraft that is used to transport science teams to field sites in Antarctica.

Scott tents at Happy Camper School.

We believe. When the winds blow, the snow flies, and the temperatures drop we hold tight to one thing: our purpose. All scientists seek data, a particular set of data that may allow for a better understanding of our world and universe. They seek an understanding beyond the textbooks they were taught from. Geologists have a particular reputation for unyielding determination and enthusiasm. I’ve been told by more than one biologist, “Yeah, you geologists like your stuff.” That’s right, we do.

Humans have lived on our planet only a short while. The processes that affect our planet and all living things on it may repeat only in cycles longer than our existence. It is only by looking deep into our planet’s past that we have a chance of understanding all of the complex processes that have lead to its development. That’s why geologists love their rocks. Each rock or sequence of rocks allow us the potential to look back in time. Rocks help us understand ancient ice ages, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, climate changes, biological evolution, ocean chemistry evolution, asteroid impacts and much more. Rocks yield clues to our past so we can define processes that may affect our future. We liken them to geologic time machines with the ability to transcribe earth’s past and shed light on its future.

A Piston Bully.

So when we set out for our five-hour journey over the ice of Antarctica in a convoy of five snowmobiles, one Piston Bully, a Challenger and multiple sleds, do not fear. No need to worry about us as we chisel away at 40 below in unheated Scott tents and no showers. Our beliefs will keep us warm. We are revealing earth’s past to define its future. What could be finer than that?

Me in skidoo training.

At first glance, Antarctica seems to turn a cold shoulder to geologists. How do you study minerals and landforms on a continent that’s almost entirely covered by ice? But dauntless geologists are using a full range of tricks to peer under the ice . . . and what they’re finding is a big surprise.

A Twin Otter aircraft casts its shadow as it emits ice-penetrating radar waves. These waves reflect off the bedrock back to the aircraft revealing information about the geology beneath the ice.

A map of the mountains beneath the ice.

Take the apparently flattish slab of ice that is east Antarctica. Hiding beneath is a mountain range to rival the Himalayas, a range known as the Gamburtsev Mountains. These mountains are completely buried by ice, but their presence was first signaled by telltale wobbles in the strength of gravity measured from above.

What’s most surprising about this hidden mountain range is that, by all rights, it shouldn’t be there. East Antarctica is understood to be an ancient continental shield, a stable, unchanging plateau at the center of a tectonic plate, far from the mountain-building phenonena—such as volcanoes and plate collisions—that occur at plate boundaries. The presence of a mountain range in the middle of a continental shield like east Antarctica is, geologically, astounding. Says geologist Robin Bell, “It’s almost as if an archeologist in Egypt opened up a tomb and found an astronaut inside.”

Bell hopes to solve the mystery of the Gamburtsev range using data from roughly 200 flyovers, including radar signals (which penetrate through ice to create an image of the land surface beneath), magnetic measurements, gravity measurements, and laser sounding of the surface ice. This massive data collection effort, called the GAMBIT project, should yield the clues necessary for Bell and other Antarctic geologists to figure out when—and how—the Gamburtsev Mountains formed.

Sediment coring is another method scientists use to study the geology of Antarctica. Analyzing cores like these—from the ANDRILL project on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—helps scientists understand Antarctica’s past climate and geologic history.

POLENET researchers have to find exposed rock to place their high-precision GPS units. The units are powered by solar panels during the summer and wind generators and batteries during the polar darkness.

Western Antarctica—younger and more geologically active than its eastern counterpart—holds its own share of mysteries. One stands out in literal stark relief: the Transantarctic Mountains. This craggy rock spine erupts from the ice in a line that marks the boundary between east and west Antarctica. The range seems to be associated with a period of rifting—stretching of the earth’s crust—that began in west Antarctica 180 million years ago, and may or may not be ongoing. Data from the POLENET project, mainly from seismic and GPS sensors drilled into coastal bedrock, will help establish whether rifting continues in west Antarctica. “I’m sure that when we get these instruments in place, there are going to be a lot of surprises,” says POLENET geologist Terry Wilson.

Already, GPS data have confirmed that Antarctica is rising (geologists say “rebounding”) from the loss of ice during the last ice age, which ended 12,000 years ago. The land itself is rising just a few millimeters a year. This may seem slight but it’s still enough to significantly impact calculations of the changing thickness of ice sheets. Scientists the world over are watching the Antarctic and Greeland ice sheets with keen interest, because as they melt in response to global warming, global sea level will rise, wiping out coastal communities.

The fate of the ice sheets may rest, literally, on what’s underneath them. Research by Slawek Tulaczyk and others suggests that the motion of ice sheets depends on interactions between the ice and the rock below. Lakes of melted water under the glaciers may reduce friction and cause ice sheets to flow faster to the sea. Meanwhile, the breakup of ice shelves around Antarctica means fewer buttresses to hold back ice sheets from advancing rapidly into the sea.

The Transantarctic Mountains.

Christina Riesselman is a geology Ph.D. student from Stanford working on the ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) Southern McMurdo Sound project at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. This multinational scientific drilling project is bringing up deep cores of sediment from under ice-covered seas at the edge of the Antarctic continent. Christina and fifty-five other scientists and educators on the ANDRILL team study these cores to investigate climate change millions of years in the past. Christina’s job is to scrutinize the ancient muddy sediments with a microscope, looking for diatoms. Diatoms are abundant, single-celled marine organisms that leave behind beautiful shells of silica in a wide array of shapes and sizes. Each species of diatom has a story to tell about past environmental conditions and climate during its little window of geologic time. Christina traveled to Antarctic in October 2007 and sent photos of diatoms and her reports from mid-November until the ANDRILL project completed its season in December 2007. View the ANDRILL Webcasts to see and hear Christina and other scientists talk more about their work and what it’s revealing about past and future climate change.

Andrill Drill Rig is located about an hour’s snowmobile ride from McMurdo Station. It’s sitting on top of 250 feet (85 m) of sea ice and the drill string itself must penetrate 2700 feet (900 m) of water and another 3855 feet (1285 m) of sediment to collect climate and geologic records that date back 15 million years.

The ANDRILL drilling rig is on sea ice, so the whole team went through “Happy Camper” school together and had some spare time to carve some ice. All scientists and support staff who travel from McMurdo Station out on the sea ice must go through an overnight training session on how to set up camp, build snow caves and walls, and prepare meals.

Ancient diatoms from Andrill sediment core. Diatoms are like time machines that reveal whether the climate was warm or cold in the past.