Anticipating Antarctica
By Julia Marks Peterson
Spring/Summer 2024
Editor’s note: Julia Marks Peterson is a doctoral student working with Ed Brook. This piece was adapted from her August 2023 entry in the blog “CEOAS Chronicles,” which shares the experiences of CEOAS graduate students. At the time, Julia was preparing for her second deployment to Antarctica with COLDEX.
I sent in my United States Antarctic Program deployment packet this week, and suddenly, returning to the field for another season feels right around the corner. Memories from last year sporadically surfaced as I answered the prompts asked in the packet.
“What dates will you need a hotel in Christchurch, NZ?” I filled out the same hopeful answer as before: The first two days of November, while reminiscing about the two weeks we were unexpectedly stuck there last time as McMurdo Station tried to reign in a COVID outbreak. “What size parka would you like?” brought me back to seeing my Big Red for the first time, with my name on the pocket and the reality sinking in that we were going to a very, very cold place.
I am heading back to Antarctica as a member of the COLDEX project. COLDEX (the Center for OLDest ice EXploration) is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center with the driving research goal of finding the oldest ice in Antarctica. This ancient ice contains critical data for examining climate change on our planet.
The COLDEX ice core drilling team will drill shallow cores from a place called the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area. Unlike the parts of an ice sheet where winter snowfall is preserved (like high points such as domes), the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area loses surface mass over the year due to a variety of physical processes. This net loss is balanced by ice flow from an accumulation area upstream, causing uplift of ice that was formerly in the ice sheet interior. Scientists have long had a hunch that the ice in this area is old because meteorites collected nearby were determined to have terrestrial ages of up to ~400,000 years. And they were right! Ice as old as 4 million years has been found at the Allan Hills BIA.
As a member of the ice drilling team, I will return to the Allan Hills BIA where we hope to collect even older ice. After a stopover in Christchurch and ten days of trainings at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, we will be flown to the Allan Hills in a small aircraft that flies so low that you feel like you’re weaving through the mountains. We will then set up camp and live at the Allan Hills, drilling ice for eight weeks before returning home.
I think that is what might be most remarkable about Antarctic fieldwork: it demonstrates so perfectly how adaptable we humans can be.
Antarctic fieldwork is a funny thing; every memory is an initial flood of positive emotions followed by a slightly uncomfortable aftertaste. It’s easy to remember all the fun camp games, the ridiculous jokes upon jokes, the stunning landscape, the products of our hard work and the beautiful friendships built. However, married to all these memories are the strenuous parts of life in the field. How gross your hair can get after weeks of living in a desert without a shower. How a task you could accomplish in one minute in your normal life would take you 20 (e.g., if you suddenly realize you really have to pee it’s already too late). How cold it would feel to open your sleeping bag in the morning and put on clothes that have equilibrated with Antarctic temperatures. Oh, and the constant wind! So much wind.
As I write this, remembering the negative parts of Antarctica while sitting in peak Corvallis summer temperatures, it is hard to imagine returning to that way of life. But these memories are never the first that come to mind. It actually takes work to remind myself of these tough details because the fond parts so easily eclipse them. I think that is what might be most remarkable about Antarctic fieldwork: It demonstrates so perfectly how adaptable we humans can be. And it’s this realization that makes me so excited to return for another season.
