Columbia High School, Maplewood, NJ

Hi Ms. Biasucci’s Columbia High School Biochemistry class!

Thanks for all your great questions.  Eric and Kevin are busy working in the lab processing some samples that we collected the other day so I thought I’d fill in for them while they are working and try to answer your questions.

Corey asks: “How long is McMurdo Station open for research (out of the year)?
How much work do you do outside of Antarctica compared with that done in the field?”

McMurdo is open all year but is inaccessible for the winter months (typically from March until August).  So people who “winter-over” come down in February and stay on until at least August.

Our work focuses on the summer melt season, usually between November and early February when conditions allow the simple life-forms down here to be active – during this time of year temperatures are usually above freezing for most of the day, so it’s not that cold.  I’ve never been down here later than February or earlier than late October.  I hear it’s cold then – cold enough that you want to avoid exposing skin. That’s also when you can see the Southern Lights, something that I’ve only seen in photographs.

For the rest of the year we’re back at Virginia Tech teaching and working on the samples that we bring home.

Keely ask: “What kind of field resources and equipment do you have available to you for your research? Do you have to bring your own, or does the research station provide everything?”

This is a great question Keely. The station (run by the U.S. National Science Foundation) provides all of our logistical support and a lot of the equipment that we use. Everything from basic camping gear like tents, sleeping bags, stoves and parkas to the science equipment that we use to measure weather conditions and study the biota in soils and streams.  But sometimes we bring down specialized equipment from our university.

Sometimes when things go wrong (for example an important piece of equipment recently blew away in a wind storm) the people on station help us to find alternatives. You can think of McMurdo as a small town with lots of good neighbors to borrow things from.

Tim and Jack ask: “What does your diet consist of? How often do you get to eat? What kinds of foods are available to you? What's not available?”

This is one we get a lot and food is something that we definitely think about.  On station we eat cafeteria style.  The cooks do a really good job considering how many people they have to cook for (around 1000) and considering the ingredients that are available - this time of year cargo flights are very limited so the menu is limited to frozen, dried and canned food. So no freshies! Let me give you an example. Today was sausage day at lunch, with a vegetarian option of seitan sausage -I’m not sure what this is and I have been afraid to wiki it. Vegetable choices consisted of frozen green beans and mash potatoes. Here is tonight’s dinner menu:

We take turns cooking for ourselves when we’re out in the field camping. I’m a big fan of one-pot meals like stews, curries or lentils.  Eric specializes in bacon and we don’t let Kevin cook anymore since the incident with the gray icing.

Nigel asks: “What do you think are the most immediate consequences of climate change on Antarctica and globally”.

This is an excellent question Nigel and of course one that many of the researchers who work down here are studying intensively. I could tell you that climate change is associated with increased glacial melt, enhanced stream flow, and changes in soil communities and lake primary productivity (and it is).  But right now the change that everybody is really concerned with is the fact that we have a foot of slush over our ice runway and this is making it very difficult to get airplanes on and off the continent (all of the air transport around this part of Antarctica is on and off an ice runway on the Ross Ice Shelf).  This has been an issue for the past couple of years, but this year is worse than normal. It seems to be a combination of very warm conditions and a wind-storm that dumped a lot of dark volcanic soil on the runway. If you know about the concept of albedo you’ll know that a darker surface absorbs more energy, so a dirty runway is a slushy runway.

Of course the one thing we know for certain is that it will get colder here as the season wears on, so don’t worry. The runway will eventually refreeze and normal flight schedules will commence.

Nick ask: “How often do you interact with other researchers and is there often a language barrier?”

This is a really good question for at least two reasons. Reason number one is that Antarctica is not “owned” by any country.  This means that all the activity on the continent is coordinated by all the different countries that participate in the Antarctic Treaty.  Number two is that researchers from New Zealand, Italy, Korea and Russia regularly travel through McMurdo on the way to their stations.  So we interact with researchers from other countries a lot.  Most of my interactions have been with New Zealand, British or Italian scientists who speak English, but I’ve been down here when we could have used an English-Russian translator.

Jack ask: “Are the data (and techniques used to collect data) similar to that collected on Mars???”

This is great question Jack.  There are some similarities between Mars soils and the soils we study, and this has motivated NASA to test some of their equipment down here. The greatest similarity is probably the cold and dry conditions, so understanding how soils form and elements cycle in Antarctic soils may help us to interpret the results from the recent Mars rover missions.

Well it’s time to go to the galley (what we call the cafeteria) and check out that Tuscan Mixed Grill and Boca Parmesan.

Keep the questions coming!

Jeb