FOR polar scientists, spending a winter at the South Pole is old hat. But
there will soon be a new challenge. For the first time in three decades,
researchers are planning to spend the winter of 1997/98 on the centre of the
Greenland icecap. The camp may become a permanent base, like those scattered
throughout Antarctica.
Glaciologists will live at Summit, a camp in the remote centre of Greenland
where American scientists extracted a 3044-metre ice core in 1992. By analysing
air bubbles trapped in the ice, glaciologists can determine the climatic
conditions at the time when the snow that formed the ice fell. But this depends
on several assumptions about how effectively snow traps gases and particulates
from the air鈥攁ssumptions which are largely untested.
鈥淩ight now, we measure the amount of calcium in the snow, and we鈥檇 like to
think it reflects something in the air,鈥� says Jack Dibb, a glaciologist at the
University of New Hampshire. 鈥淏ut we really don鈥檛 know what goes on for six or
eight months in the winter.鈥�
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Monitoring snowfall will require only four people. But if the camp
at Summit becomes permanent, other scientists may flock to Summit. The Danish
government, which manages Greenland鈥檚 foreign affairs, is backing the idea of
setting up a permanent winter camp, recognising its potential for monitoring
environmental changes such as ozone depletion in the Arctic, says J酶rgen
Taagholt of the Danish Polar Centre in Copenhagen.
However, Michael Ledbetter of the US National Science Foundation
says that the agency may have to turn away scientists until the NSF and
its main
contractor in Greenland, the Polar Ice Coring Office at the University of
Nebraska at Lincoln, have developed the base and the expertise to run it. 鈥淲e
don鈥檛 want to start out too big,鈥� he says.
At present, the only structure at Summit suitable for winter use is a
building called the Big House. Flights to Summit become virtually impossible
during the Arctic winter, so a domed structure will be built nearby where base
workers could move in the event of the Big House being destroyed by fire, says
Ledbetter. 鈥淚t would replicate everything that would be necessary for
蝉耻谤惫颈惫补濒.鈥�
