Scientists spending Christmas in Antarctica to help save the world

For many this Christmas Day will mean sitting in a warm home spending time with family and opening presents after a good meal.

But Midlands green energy expert Ron Fox said we should raise a glass to 27 experts who are spending their festive day digging deep into the Antarctica in temperatures of-10C to predict the Earth’s future.

The group of scientists, engineers and logistical staff will spend two months camping on the Ross Ice Shelf to drill deeper than anyone has drilled deeper before. They are hoping to work out what our planet will look like in the years to come.

Ron said people know that the temperatures are rising and the ice is melting. But the question is how much ice will the earth lose and how fast will it happen as it will have a bearing on everyone.

The West Antarctic ice sheet alone holds enough frozen water that, if it was all converted into liquid form, it would raise average sea levels globally by up to five metres.

But scientists are unclear about what sea levels might do by the end of this century, whether it will rise in the best scenario by 30 centimetres, or in the worst case, by two metres.

To put that in perspective, said Ron, half a metre of sea level rise won’t be a major problem in the UK with the Thames Barrier protecting the country. But if you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific that could be a huge problem.

One of the co-leaders is Professor Tina van de Flierdt, 50, an isotope geochemist at Imperial College London who, with her team, are aiming to delve deep into the continent’s geological history.

They want to work out the patterns of melting and freezing in the interglacial periods some 125,000 years ago, when planetary temperatures were at roughly the level projected if climate change continues.

They are hoping to find actual geological evidence as to what happened in the past so they can use the Earth’s history as an insight into the world’s future.

To do this they will have to blast through nearly 600 metres of ice, using jets of hot water, then drop through 55 metres of ocean, before finally cutting 200 metres into the sediment on the ocean floor.

It is here that they hope the layers of rock, fossilised algae and other chemical fingerprints will tell them what Antarctica looked like in the past, and at what temperatures.

This is second consecutive Christmas that Professor Tina and her co-chief scientist, Professor Richard Levy from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, have spent in Antarctica.

Last year, despite testing their mining equipment in New Zealand, conditions proved more challenging in Antarctica. They took 1,000 metres of glass-reinforced epoxy piping, which had to be flown eight and a half hours by plane from New Zealand and then hauled by tractor-towed sledges for 500 miles across the ice.

The team got down as far as the seabed last year, which was a record in itself, and managed to take out two metres of sediment. The problem was the piping kept slipping and they couldn’t get the 200 metres of sediment necessary for the scientific research. This year they will repeat the flight and sledge journey, but this time with stronger steel piping.

The team hope their findings this December will give them more accurate projections about what could happen at different degrees of warming and help them to avert climate change.

“I wish them all the best and hope that their sacrificing of Christmas will lead to a better and safer world,” said Ron Fox, of Noreus Ltd on the University of Keele Science Innovation Park.

He added: “If you want any energy advice, contact me call Ron on 0845 474 6641 or go to www.noreus.co.uk – but do have a green and happy Christmas.”

Caption: Life in the Antarctica.