It’s hard to imagine extreme cold, sub-zero temperatures, howling winds and a woarld cloaked in snow and ice when you’re sitting in 30°C-plus by a sparkling swimming pool bathed in South Africa’s trademark sunshine. But for an elite group of South African scientists ice is nice, and, more to the point, it is home.
The South African National Antarctic Programme (Sanap) has research stations way down south, and has had them for some time. The base in the Dronning Maud Land region of Antarctica, about 4Â 000km south of Cape Town, was taken over from Norway during the first South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE) in 1959/60. The bases on the edge of the ice shelf in this region have been replaced a number of times, and the current base, known as Sanae IV, is located on Vesleskarvet — a rocky outcrop jutting above the snowline.
South Africa also has a base in the Southern Ocean on Marion Island, a little more than 2Â 000km due south of Cape Town. Marion and Prince Edward form the Prince Edward Islands, which were annexed by South Africa in 1947. And there is a meteorological station on the otherwise uninhabited Gough Island, a British protectorate. This base is operated under an agreement between South Africa and the United Kingdom.
These days, Sanap plays an increasingly important role in helping to preserve Antarctica — the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth and a living laboratory. All of which carries considerable weight this year, which has been proclaimed International Polar Year (IPY).
IPY is a large scientific programme focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March this year to March next year. Organised through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organisation, IPY covers two full annual cycles to have extensive and equal coverage of both the Arctic and the Antarctic and will involve more than 200 projects, with thousands of scientists from about 60 countries examining a wide range of physical, biological and social research topics.
With global warming and climate change the buzz words, and awareness of humanity’s need to change its ways for the good of the planet on the increase and, thankfully, on political agendas around the world, South Africa’s presence in Antarctica has global significance.
According to Sanap, studies done in the Antarctic are inextricably linked to our understanding of our planet, and signals in Antarctica indicate past and future global changes.
It’s all a far cry from 1913, when the Royal Society of South Africa presented Robert Falcon Scott with a token 25 pounds towards scientific work on his expedition to the South Pole. Funding today is in the region of R10-million, and comes from the department of environmental affairs and tourism, which still provides logistic and infrastructure support to Sanap even though in 2003 the Cabinet approved the move of the research programme to the department of science and technology.
In 2005, the environmental affairs and tourism department and the science and technology department expanded the research being done by Sanap to include some creative ideas and new directions. This paved the way for researchers in the social sciences (politics, international relations, and sociologists), humanities (literary studies, visual arts and cultural studies) and law (law of the sea) as well as engineering to take part in the Antarctic programme.
And now, with the advent of IPY, the world’s scientific focus has shifted to Antarctica, not just for the incredible research opportunities it presents, or the findings current research groups, including Sanap, are making, but also because Antarctica represents a litmus test for our planet. Changes in Antarctica are an indicator of how global warming is affecting us all.
It’s also important to remember that the south isn’t the only pole under threat. The Arctic is also facing huge changes in its environment and where it differs from its southern counterpart is that it is extensively inhabited by people.
Indeed, the Arctic has communities dependent on it, with entire countries such as Iceland located within its bounds. These northern communities face changes in their natural resources and food systems; they also face the added pressures of commercialism and population growth.
All of these aspects of life in the Arctic will be under the spotlight during IPY, together with the environmental issues global warming presents.
IPY researchers will explore many different aspects of Arctic social systems to find out how resilient they are to internal and external change in an effort to develop strategies for adaptation and mitigation. They will also be investigating unique uses of language that have become part of individual communities’ understanding of sea ice conditions over generations.
Other important research on a social, rather than environmental level, will still help to assess the levels of dependency on the Arctic environment, assess economic and social impacts of natural resource management and energy and transportation developments. Even ways in which modern legal systems can help to protect the value of traditional knowledge will be examined.