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Antarctica's Hot Spot - area in Antarctica is warming faster than anywhere on earth

Discover, Nov, 1999 by Mary Roach

Braving hurrican winds and 40-foot waves, scientists aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer struggle to find out why one of the coldest places on Earth is heating up faster than anywhere else

NOT MANY SHIPS VENTURE INTO THE DRAKE PASSAGE, 500 MILES OF HEAVE AND BLOW between the fjords of southern Chile and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. At these latitudes, there is nothing but icy cold ocean, 360 degrees of it. With no landmass to break the wind's fetch, a ship can expect to run into waves that are two, three, even five stories high. Sailing crews consider these the most treacherous seas on the planet.

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This afternoon, the Drake is living up to its reputation. As near-hurricane-force winds slam growing swells into the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, scientists below deck scurry to lash down computer terminals and plaster lab equipment with bubble wrap. Off the starboard side, hulking waves line up to take a swing at the ship. Deckhands pelted by frozen sea-spray stagger like drunks. The barrage of these ice bullets comes in horizontally; so fierce it's impossible to keep my eyes open for more than a moment. In that moment, I glimpse the frenzied ocean over my shoulder. I have read that people drown in seas like these because there's so much wind-whipped water in the air that even if you can keep your head above the surface, you cannot draw a breath. Not that it matters. Without a survival suit, after one and a half minutes you lose consciousness in seas this cold.

On the bridge deck, Second Officer Paul Jarkiewicz is telling stories. He recalls a brutish wave that once hurled the chart table out of its mounts and down the hall. Another time, the marine projects coordinator was sighted on the aft deck, clinging to equipment, his legs blown straight out behind him like a flag in the wind. Eventually the conversation turns to the fear that lives in the consciousness of every sailor who ventures into these waters: the rogue-wave scenario. In a storm at sea, wind-driven waves line up perpendicular to the wind's direction. The helmsman can steer the ship to take the waves head-on, the bow pointed right at the heart of the wind. Or he can maneuver the ship to take the waves broad on the bow, at a 45-degree angle; ships are designed to withstand seas this way But one in every 10,000 waves or so doesn't get the message to line up with the others. That so-called rogue wave comes at the ship from a completely unexpected direction, from the side or aft. "Rogue wave comes along and breaks a ship's back," says Jarkiewicz, fiddling with his radar controls. "She's gone in a matter of minutes. And so are you."

What kind of science justifies the risk of men and women swept overboard and a $50 million ship lost at sea? What could be as important as the lives of the 60 people on the Nathaniel B. Palmer? In short, the future of the planet. The one we live on. The ultimate goal of this trip is to gather clues about global warming. The more immediate goal concerns a regional warming trend in Antarctica. Nobody knows exactly what this trend means for the rest of the world, but the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula is warming up faster than anywhere on earth. Comparisons of climate records from just a half-century ago show that temperatures here have risen, on average, 2 1/2 to 3 degrees Celsius. Between 1966 and 1989, most of the Wordie Ice Shelf, 502 square miles, disappeared. And over the past i8 months, two of the peninsula's largest ice shelves, the Larsen B and the Wilkins, have lost nearly 1,100 square miles of their total area, a sheet of ice about the size of Rhode Island. That's five to 10 times the average annual loss over the past 10 years. At that rate, much of the Wilkins Ice Shelf will be gone in a few years, says glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Nobody expected it to happen this fast."

Although most scientists agree that global warming is upon us, no one yet knows how much of it--if any--could be due to a recurring natural temperature cycle. The answer to that crucial question lies in the ancient past. To find it, one must go back and look at what was happening with temperatures hundreds to thousands of years ago. One way to do that is to study long-buried, centuries-old marine sediment: mud from the ocean floor.

And so a team of marine sediment experts has set up shop on the Nathaniel B. Palmer, hoping to sink great hollow cores deep into the ocean off Antarctica. It is a pilgrimage some of them have been making for more than a decade. Nothing about this kind of research is easy--not the getting there, not the doing. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs, the scientists will spend two weeks on board. If all goes well, they will haul up 10-, 20-, and 80-foot columns of green muck. It will tell them the story they're looking for: the story of ancient climates. For the ocean floor is a record, an eons-old accumulation of whatever has sunk down through the water to the bottom of the sea.

Antarctica's Hot Spot - area in Antarctica is warming faster than anywhere on earth

Discover, Nov, 1999 by Mary Roach

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