Antarctica
Introduction
fifth in size among the world's continents. Its landmass is almost wholly covered by a vast ice sheet.
Lying almost concentrically around the South Pole, Antarctica—the name of which means “opposite to the Arctic”—is the southernmost continent, a circumstance that has had momentous consequences for all aspects of its character. It covers about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km), and would be essentially circular except for the outflaring Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches toward the southern tip of South America (some 600 miles 【970 km】 away), and for two principal embayments, the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. These deep embayments of the southernmost Pacific and Atlantic oceans make the continent somewhat pear-shaped, dividing it into two unequal-sized parts. The larger is generally known as East Antarctica because most of it lies in east longitudes. The smaller, wholly in west longitudes, is generally called West Antarctica. East and West Antarctica are separated by the 1,900-mile-long Transantarctic Mountains. Whereas East Antarctica consists largely of a high, ice-covered plateau, West Antarctica consists of an archipelago of mountainous islands covered and bonded together by ice.
The continental ice sheet contains approximately 7 million cubic miles (29 million cubic km) of ice, representing about 90 percent of the world's total. The average thickness is about 1.5 miles (2.45 km). Many parts of the Ross and Weddell seas are covered by ice shelves, or ice sheets floating on the sea. These shelves—the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—together with other shelves around the continental margins, constitute about 10 percent of the area of Antarctic ice. Around the Antarctic coast, shelves, glaciers, and ice sheets continually “calve,” or discharge, icebergs into the seas.
Because of this vast ice, the continent supports only a primitive indigenous population of cold-adapted land plants and animals. The surrounding sea is as rich in life as the land is barren. With the decline of whaling and sealing, the only economic base in the past, Antarctica now principally exports the results of scientific investigations that lead to a better understanding of the total world environment. The present scale of scientific investigation of Antarctica began with the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957–58. Although early explorations were nationalistic, leading to territorial claims, modern ones have come under the international aegis of the Antarctic Treaty. This treaty, which was an unprecedented landmark in diplomacy when it was signed in 1959 by 12 nations, preserves the continent for nonmilitary scientific pursuits.
Antarctica, the most remote and inaccessible continent, is no longer as unknown as it was at the start of IGY. All its mountain regions have been mapped and visited by geologists, geophysicists, glaciologists, and biologists. Some mapping data are now obtained by satellite rather than by observers on the surface. Many hidden ranges and peaks are known from geophysical soundings of the Antarctic ice sheets. By using radio-echo sounding instruments, systematic aerial surveys of the ice-buried terrains can be made.
The ice-choked and stormy seas around Antarctica long hindered exploration by wooden-hulled ships. No lands break the relentless force of the prevailing west winds as they race clockwise around the continent, dragging westerly ocean currents along beneath. The southernmost parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans converge into a cold, oceanic water mass with singularly unique biologic and physical characteristics. Early penetration of this Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean, as it has been called, in the search for fur seals led in 1820 to the discovery of the continent. Icebreakers and aircraft now make access relatively easy, although still not without hazard in stormy conditions. Many tourists have visited Antarctica, and it seems likely that, at least in the short run, scenic resources have greater potential for economic development than do mineral and biological resources.
The term Antarctic regions refers to all areas—oceanic, island, and continental—lying in the cold Antarctic climatic zone south of the Antarctic Convergence, an important boundary with little seasonal variability, where warm subtropical waters meet and mix with cold polar waters. For legal purposes of the Antarctic Treaty, the arbitrary boundary of latitude 60° S is used. The familiar map boundaries of the continent known as Antarctica, defined as the South Polar landmass and all its nonfloating grounded ice, are subject to change with future changes of climate. The continent was ice-free during most of its lengthy geologic history, and there is no reason to believe it will not become so again in the probably distant future.
Physical geography
The land
Geologic record
Antarctica and continental drift
The geologic evolution of Antarctica has followed a course similar to that of the other southern continents. The earliest chapters in Antarctica's rather fragmentary record extend far back, perhaps as much as 3 billion years, into early Precambrian time. Similarity in patterns of crustal and biological evolution in the southern continents can be traced back some 150 million years, and evolutionary courses began to diverge conspicuously by about 70 million years ago, or the early Cenozoic Era. Plant and animal migration routes that apparently had interconnected all the southern continents were largely cut off by the outset of the Cenozoic. Antarctica became isolated at a time when land mammals diversified and flourished elsewhere, populating all the other continents of the world. Antarctica had long been thought to be a migratory path for marsupials moving between southern continents in early Cenozoic time. But documentation for the theory was not discovered until 1982, when the first mammal remains, a marsupial fossil, were found on Seymour Island in the Weddell Sea. The subsequent growth of Antarctica's ice sheets cut off any further migrations by land animals.
Now bathed by polar ice, Antarctica has abundant fossil evidence that its climate and terrain at one time supported far more populous flora and fauna than today's few seedless plants and primitive insects. Much of Antarctica was densely forested (forest) in Mesozoic (Mesozoic Era) times (251 to 65.5 million years ago), dominated by southern conifers of podocarps and araucarias, with undergrowth of rain-forest-type ferns. Angiosperm trees, particularly the southern beech, Nothofagus, appeared during the Cretaceous Period (145.5 to roughly 65.5 million years ago) and lingered in places until Pliocene time (5.3 to 1.8 million years ago) as Antarctica drifted poleward, cooled, and became glaciated. Remains of luxuriant extinct floras, as well as fossils of Mesozoic reptiles, dinosaurs, and amphibians, have been discovered, and these compare so closely to those of other southern continents that many geologists have postulated former contiguity of these lands in a single, giant continent called Gondwana. Continental stratigraphic evidence and the dating of seafloors seem to indicate that the supercontinent broke apart along Jurassic rift faults 180 to 160 million years ago, and fragments such as Africa and Australia separated from Antarctica in Jurassic to Cretaceous and early Cenozoic times. Early stages of rifting were marked by immense outpourings of plateau lavas (Kirkpatrick Basalt, on Mount Kirkpatrick) and by related sill intrusions (Ferrar Dolerites) across Antarctica, including one of the world's largest layered gabbroic igneous complexes, the Dufek intrusion, in the Pensacola Mountains.
Modern theory ties mobile zones to the interaction and jostling of immense crustal plates (see plate tectonics). Modern plate boundaries may be far different from ancient ones presumably marked by old fold belts. Ancient Antarctic mobile belts, such as are followed by today's Transantarctic Mountains, terminate at continental margins abruptly, as if sliced off, and seemingly reappear in other lands across young ocean basins. Much research has been concentrated on attempting to match intercontinentally the detailed structure of opposed coasts, such as between Antarctica and Australia, in an effort to learn whether they had been actually connected before the latest cycle of crustal spreading from intervening mid-oceanic ridges. Similarities between ancient mobile belts now suggest to some geologists that Antarctica may even have been connected to southwestern North America more than 600 million years ago, in late Precambrian time.
Structural framework
Most of the Antarctic geologic record lies hidden beneath the vast regions of snow and ice that make up more than 95 percent of the continent's surface terrain. No one knows what important segments of the record lie concealed in buried ranges such as the Gamburtsev Mountains, the topography of which has been mapped only by seismic reflections through the great East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The extraordinarily thick cover, the extremely difficult working conditions, and the tremendous expense of mounting expeditions into remote areas have long held geologic knowledge of Antarctica far behind that of other continents. Great advances by geologists of many Antarctic Treaty nations, however, have yielded geologic maps of at least reconnaissance scale for virtually all exposed mountain areas.
From results mainly of British expeditions early in the 20th century, the concept arose that Antarctica is made up of two structural provinces—a long, stable Precambrian shield in East Antarctica and a much younger Mesozoic and Cenozoic mobile belt in West Antarctica—separated by the fault-block belt, or horst, of the Transantarctic Mountains. East and West Antarctica have come to be known respectively as the Gondwana and Andean provinces, indicating general affinities of each sector with other regions—that is, the east seems to have affinity with the Gondwana region of peninsular India, and the west seems to represent a southerly continuation of the South American Andes. As new expeditions study and restudy each range in ever-increasing detail, concepts of the geologic structure are continually modified. Antarctica's structural record is now known to be more complex than that implied in the past.
The average thickness of the terrestrial crust for both East and West Antarctica approximates that of other continents. Although it has been postulated that West Antarctica might be an oceanic island archipelago if the ice were to melt, its crustal thickness of about 20 miles indicates an absence of oceanic structure. This thickness is similar to that of coastal parts of other continents. The crust thickens sharply along the Transantarctic Mountains front, possibly a deep crustal fault system, and averages about 25 miles thick in East Antarctica. Significant earthquakes are not recorded along this or other known faults in Antarctica, the most seismically quiet of all continents, in which mostly minor activity is associated with surrounding oceanic ridges or volcanoes. However, the occurrence of one unusually large earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in the Bellingshausen Sea in 1977 suggests that the Antarctic Plate may have greater seismicity than generally believed.
The ancient crust of Antarctica must have been highly mobile and the configuration of the continent many hundreds of millions of years ago in the Precambrian far different from today's. Ancient marine and lake basins were filled with a variety of sedimentary and volcanic debris eroded from primeval lands. During mountain-building episodes these materials were complexly deformed and recrystallized deep within the crust to form, particularly in East Antarctica, great crystalline-rock complexes. At the surface, rocks were uplifted and mountains were carved by erosion as sediments filled new basins and new folds of the Earth's crust were formed. Again and again this cycle was repeated during the evolution of Antarctica. Mobility ceased approximately 400 million years ago in the Transantarctic Mountains. Between that time, in the Devonian Period (416 million to 359.2 million years ago), and the middle part of the Jurassic Period (about 160 million years ago), a series of mainly quartzose sediments was laid down in ancient lakes and shallow seas in the sites of former mountain chains that had been carved away by erosion. Known as the Beacon Sandstone, this formation of platform sediments contains a rich record of extinct Antarctic life-forms, including freshwater fish fossils in Devonian-age rocks; ancient, temperate forests of trees known as Glossopteris in coal deposits of Permian age (about 245 to 286 million years old) and as Dicroidium in Triassic-age coals (those roughly 208 to 245 million years old); and large reptiles, such as Lystrosaurus, and amphibians in Triassic-age rocks. In 1990–91 the first dinosaur fossils were found in the Transantarctic Mountains near the South Pole; they resembled those of early Jurassic age known from China, and, together with associated plant fossils, they suggest the presence of mild climates at this time in Antarctica when this part of the continent is believed to have been at a latitude of about 65° S.
Tillites—rocks deposited by ancient glaciers—underlie Permian-age coal beds in numerous places in Antarctica just as they do in the other southern, including now tropical, continents. The widespread occurrence of glacial erratics, containing microfossils of Cretaceous and Cenozoic age, is an indication of the presence of rocks that are younger than the Beacon Sandstone lying underneath ice sheets near the Transantarctic Mountains. The youngest mountain chain in Antarctica is the southward extension of the Andes Mountains of South America that makes up the Antarctic Peninsula, Ellsworth Land, and part of Marie Byrd Land.Relief
There are two faces of the present-day continent of Antarctica. One, seen visually, consists of the exposed rock and ice-surface terrain. The other, seen only indirectly by seismic or other remote-sensing techniques, consists of the ice-buried bedrock surface. Both evolved through long and slow geologic processes.
Effects of glacial erosion and deposition dominate everywhere in Antarctica, and erosional effects of running water are relatively minor. Yet, on warm summer days, rare and short-lived streams of glacial meltwater do locally exist. The evanescent Onyx River, for example, flows from Lower Wright Glacier terminus to empty into the nondrained basin of Lake Vanda near McMurdo Sound. Glacially sculptured landforms now predominate, as they must have some 300 million years ago, in an earlier period of continental glaciation of all of Gondwana.
Antarctica, with an average elevation of about 7,200 feet (2,200 metres) above sea level, is the world's highest continent. (Asia, the next, averages about 3,000 feet.) The vast ice sheets of East Antarctica reach heights of 11,500 feet or more in four main centres: Dome A (Argus) at 81° S, 77° E; Dome C at 75° S, 125° E; Dome Fuji at 77° S, 40° E; and Vostok station at 77° S, 104° E. Without its ice, however, Antarctica would probably average little more than about 1,500 feet. It would then consist of a far smaller continent (East Antarctica) and a nearby island archipelago. A vast lowland plain between 90° E and 150° E (today's Polar and Wilkes subglacial basins) would be fringed by the ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains and of the Gamburtsev Mountains, 6,500 to 13,000 feet high. The rest might be a hilly to mountainous terrain. Relief in general would be great, with elevations ranging from 16,066 feet (4,897 metres) at Vinson Massif in the Sentinel Range, the highest point in Antarctica, to more than 8,200 feet below sea level in an adjoining marine trough to the west (Bentley Subglacial Trench). Areas that are now called “lands,” including most of Ellsworth Land and Marie Byrd Land, would be beneath the sea.
Ice-scarred volcanoes (volcano), many still active, dot western Ellsworth Land, Marie Byrd Land, and sections of the coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula and Victoria Land, but principal activity is concentrated in the volcanic Scotia Arc. Only one volcano, Gaussberg (90° E), occurs along the entire coast of East Antarctica. Long dormant, Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, showed increased activity from the mid-1970s. Lava lakes have occasionally filled, but not overspilled, its crater, but the volcano's activity has been closely monitored because Antarctica's largest station (McMurdo Station, U.S.) lies on its lower flank. One of several violent eruptions of Deception Island, a volcanic caldera, in 1967–70 destroyed nearby British and Chilean stations. Whereas volcanoes of the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc are mineralogically similar to the volcanoes typical of the Pacific Ocean rim, the others in Antarctica are chemically like those of volcanoes along the East African Rift Valley.
climate
The unique weather and climate of Antarctica provide the basis for its familiar appellations—Home of the Blizzard and White Desert. By far the coldest continent, Antarctica has winter temperatures that range from −128.6° F (−89.2° C), the world's lowest recorded temperature, measured at Vostok Station (Russia) on July 21, 1983, on the high inland ice sheet to −76° F (−60° C) near sea level. Temperatures vary greatly from place to place, but direct measurements in most places are generally available only for summertime. Only at fixed stations operated since the IGY have year-round measurements been made. Winter temperatures rarely reach as high as 52° F (11° C) on the northern Antarctic Peninsula, which, because of its maritime influences, is the warmest part of the continent. Mean temperatures of the coldest months are −4° to −22° F (−20° to −30° C) on the coast and −40° to −94° F (−40° to −70° C) in the interior, the coldest period on the polar plateau being usually in late August just before the return of the sun. Whereas midsummer temperatures may reach as high as 59° F (15° C) on the Antarctic Peninsula, those elsewhere are usually much lower, ranging from a mean of about 32° F (0° C) on the coast to between −4° and −31° F (−20° and −35° C) in the interior. These temperatures are far lower than those of the Arctic, where monthly means range only from about 32° F in summer to −31° F in winter.
International concern is increasing over the possibility of global warming (an amplification of Earth's greenhouse effect). The glaciers and ice sheets of Antarctica may document such change. Some investigators have reported recent disintegration of some of Antarctica's ice shelves, but others have found no long-term consistent change in other places.
wind chill—the cooling power of wind on exposed surfaces—is the major debilitating weather factor of Antarctic expeditions. Fierce winds characterize most coastal regions, particularly of East Antarctica, where cold, dense air flows down the steep slopes off interior highlands. Known as katabatic winds (katabatic wind), they are a surface flow that may be smooth if of low velocity but that may also become greatly turbulent, sweeping high any loose snow, if a critical velocity is surpassed. This turbulent air may appear suddenly and is responsible for the brief and localized Antarctic “blizzards” during which no snow actually falls and skies above are clear. During one winter at Mirnyy Station, gusts reached more than 110 miles per hour on seven occasions. At Commonwealth Bay on the Adélie Coast the wind speed averaged 45 miles per hour (20 metres per second). Gusts estimated at between 140 and 155 miles per hour on Dec. 9, 1960, destroyed a Beaver aircraft at Mawson Station on the Mac. Robertson Land coast. Winds on the polar plateau are usually light, with monthly mean velocities at the South Pole ranging from about 9 miles per hour (4 metres per second) in December (summer) to 17 miles per hour (8 metres per second) in June and July (winter).
The Antarctic atmosphere, because of its low temperature, contains only about one-tenth of the water-vapour (humidity) concentration found in temperate latitudes. This atmospheric water largely comes from ice-free regions of the southern oceans and is transported in the troposphere into Antarctica mostly in the 140° sector (80° E to 140° W) from Wilkes Land to Marie Byrd Land. Most of this water precipitates as snow along the continental margin. Rainfalls are almost unknown. Despite the tremendous volume of potential water stored as ice, Antarctica must be considered one of the world's great deserts; the average precipitation (water equivalent) is only about 2 inches (50 mm) per year over the polar plateau, though considerably more, perhaps 10 times as much, falls in the coastal belt. Lacking a heavy and protective water-vapour-rich atmospheric layer, which in other areas absorbs and reradiates to Earth long-wave radiation, the Antarctic surface readily loses heat energy into space.
Many factors determine Antarctica's climate, but the primary one is the geometry of the Sun-Earth relationship. The 23.5° axial tilt of the Earth to its annual plane of orbit, or ecliptic, around the Sun results in long winter nights and long summer days alternating between both polar regions and causing seasonal variations in climate. On midwinter day, about June 21, the Sun's rays reach to only 23.5° (not exact, because of refraction) from the South Pole along the latitude of 66.5° S, a line familiarly known as the Antarctic Circle. Although “night” theoretically is six months long at the geographic pole, one month of this actually is a twilight period. Only a few coastal fringes lie north of the Antarctic Circle. The amount of incoming solar radiation, and thus heat, depends additionally on the incident angle of the rays and therefore decreases inversely with latitude to reach a minimum at the geographic poles. These and other factors are essentially the same for both polar regions. The reason for their great climatic difference primarily lies in their reverse distributions of land and sea: the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean. The Arctic Ocean, a climate-ameliorating heat source, has no counterpart at the South Pole, the great elevation and perpetually reflective snow cover of which instead intensify its polar climate. Moreover, during Antarctic winters, freezing of the surrounding sea effectively more than doubles the size of the continent and removes the oceanic heat source to nearly 1,800 miles from the central polar plateau.
Outgoing terrestrial radiation greatly exceeds absorbed incoming solar radiation. This loss results in strong surface cooling, giving rise to the characteristic Antarctic temperature inversions in which temperature increases from the surface upward to about 1,000 feet above the surface. About 90 percent of the loss is replaced by atmospheric heat from lower latitudes, and the remainder by latent heat of water-vapour condensation.
Great cyclonic storms circle Antarctica in endless west-to-east procession, exchanging atmospheric heat to the continent from sources in the southern Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Moist maritime air interacting with cold polar air makes the Antarctic Ocean in the vicinity of the Polar Front one of the world's stormiest. Few storms bring snowfalls to interior regions. With few reporting stations, weather prediction has been exceedingly difficult but is now greatly aided by satellite imagery.
A major focus of upper atmospheric research in Antarctica is to understand the processes leading to the annual springtime depletion in stratospheric ozone—the “ozone hole.” Ozone depletion has been steadily increasing since it was first detected in 1977. Ozone is destroyed as the result of chemical reactions on the surfaces of particles in polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). These clouds are isolated within an atmospheric circulation pattern known as the “polar vortex,” which develops during the long, cold Antarctic winter. The chemical reactions take place with the arrival of sunlight in spring and are facilitated by the presence of halogens (halogen element) (chlorine and fluorine), which are mostly products of human activity. This process of ozone destruction, which also occurs to a lesser extent in the Arctic, increases the amount of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching Earth's surface, a type of radiation shown to impair photosynthesis in plants, cause an increase in skin cancer in humans, and damage DNA molecules in living things.
Antarctica, and particularly the South Pole, attracts much interest in astronomical and astrophysical studies as well as research on the interactions between the Sun and the upper atmosphere of Earth. The South Pole is a unique astronomical location (a station from which the Sun can be viewed continuously in summer) sitting at a high geomagnetic latitude with unequaled atmospheric clarity. It possesses a thick section of pure material (ice) that can be used as a cosmic particle detector. Automatic geophysical observatories on the high polar plateau now record information on the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that are critical to an understanding of Earth's response to solar activity.
The Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA) is a joint project facilitated by the United States and Germany with collaborators in other countries. CARA supports a submillimetre-wave telescope, several other telescopes, and a program to measure the properties of relict radiation left over from the big bang—useful in testing cosmological models.
One of the most unique astrophysical observatories on Earth is AMANDA, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. This involves an array of hundreds of optical devices set at depths of up to 1.2 miles (2 km) in the ice below the South Pole. It is essentially a telescope built within the ice sheet to detect high-energy neutrinos that pass through the Earth from distant sources.
Glaciers and seas
Glaciation
Antarctica provides the best available picture of the probable appearance 20,000 years ago of northern North America under the great Laurentide Ice Sheet. Mountain glaciers, which formed on such highlands as the Sentinel Range perhaps as early as 50 million years ago, advanced down valleys to calve into the sea. Fringing ice shelves were built and later became grounded as glaciation intensified. Local ice caps developed, covering West Antarctic island groups as well as the mountain ranges of East Antarctica. The ice caps eventually coalesced into great ice sheets that tied together West and East Antarctica into the single continent that is known today. Except for a possible major deglaciation as recently as 3 million years ago, the continent has been largely covered by ice since the first glaciers appeared.
Causal factors leading to the birth and development of these continental ice sheets and then to their decay and death are, nevertheless, still poorly understood. The factors are complexly interrelated. Moreover, once developed, ice sheets tend to form independent climatic patterns and thus to be self-perpetuating and eventually perhaps even self-destructing. Cold air masses draining off Antarctic lands, for example, cool and freeze surrounding oceans in winter to form an ice pack, which reduces solar energy input by increasing reflectivity and makes interior continental regions even more remote from sources of open oceanic heat and moisture. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has grown to such great elevation and extent that little atmospheric moisture now nourishes its central part.
The volume of South Polar ice must have fluctuated greatly at times since the birth of the ice sheets. Glacial erratics and glacially striated rocks on mountain summits now high above current ice-sheet levels testify to an overriding by ice at much higher levels. General lowering of levels caused some former glaciers flowing from the polar region through the Transantarctic Mountains to recede and nearly vanish, producing such spectacular “dry valleys” as the Wright, Taylor, and Victoria valleys near McMurdo Sound. Doubt has been shed on the common belief that Antarctic ice has continuously persisted since its origin by the discovery reported in 1983 of Cenozoic marine diatoms (diatom)—believed to date from the Pliocene Epoch—in glacial till of the Beardmore Glacier area. The diatoms are believed to have been scoured from young sedimentary deposits of basins in East Antarctica and incorporated into deposits of glaciers moving through the Transantarctic Mountains. If so, Antarctica may have been free or nearly free of ice as recently as about 3 million years ago, when the diatom-bearing beds were deposited in a marine seaway; and the Antarctic Ice Sheet may have undergone deglaciations perhaps similar to those that occurred later during interglacial stages in the Northern Hemisphere. Evidence of former higher sea levels found in many areas of the Earth seems to support the hypothesis that such deglaciation occurred. If Antarctica's ice were to melt today, for example, global sea levels would probably rise about 150 to 200 feet.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet seems to be approximately in a state of equilibrium, neither increasing nor decreasing significantly according to the best estimates. Snow precipitation is offset mainly by continental ice moving seaward by three mechanisms—ice-shelf flow, ice-stream flow, and sheet flow. The greatest volume loss is by calving from shelves, particularly the Ross, Ronne, Filchner, and Amery ice shelves. Much loss also occurs by bottom melting, but this is partly compensated by a gain in mass by accretion of frozen seawater. The quantitative pattern and the balance between gain and loss are known to be different at different ice shelves, but melting probably predominates. The smaller ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula are currently retreating, breaking up into vast fields of icebergs, likely due to rising temperature and surface melting.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been the subject of much recent research because it may be unstable. The Ross Ice Shelf is largely fed by huge ice streams descending from theWAIS along the Siple Coast. These ice streams have shown major changes—acceleration, deceleration, thickening, and thinning—in the last century or so. These alterations have affected the grounding line, where grounded glaciers lift off their beds to form ice shelves or floating glacier tongues. Changes to the grounding line may eventually transform the WAIS proper, potentially leading to removal of this ice sheet and causing a major rise in global sea level. Although the possibility of all this happening in the next 100 years is remote, major modifications in the WAIS in the 21st century are not impossible and could have worldwide effects.
These ice sheets also provide unique records of past climates from atmospheric, volcanic, and cosmic fallout; precipitation amounts and chemistry; temperatures; and even samples of past atmospheres. Thus ice-core drilling, and the subsequent analysis of these cores, has provided new information on the processes that cause climate to change. A deep coring hole at the Russian station Vostok brought up a climate and fallout history extending back more than 400,000 years. Although near the bottom, drilling has stopped because a huge freshwater lake lies between the ice and the bed at this location. Lake Vostok has probably been isolated from the atmosphere for tens of millions of years, leading to speculation of what sort of life may have evolved in this unusual setting. Research is being conducted on how to answer this question without contaminating the water body. Lake Vostok has also attracted the attention of the planetary science community, because it is a possible test site for future study of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede possesses a layer of liquid water beneath a thick ice cover and thus has a potential for harbouring life.
Thousands of meteorites (meteorite) have been discovered on “blue ice” areas of the ice sheets. Only five fragments had been found by 1969, but since then more than 9,800 have been recovered, mainly by Japanese and American scientists. Most specimens appear to have landed on Antarctic ice sheets between about 700,000 and 10,000 years ago. They were carried to blue ice areas near mountains where the ancient ice ablated and meteorites became concentrated on the surface. Most meteorites are believed to be from asteroids and a few from comets, but some are now known to be of lunar (Moon) origin. Other meteorites of a rare class called shergottites had a similar origin from Mars. One of these Martian shergottites has minute structures and a chemical composition that some workers have suggested is evidence for life, though this claim is very controversial.
The surrounding seas (Southern Ocean)
The seas around Antarctica have often been likened to the moat around a fortress. The turbulent “ roaring forties” and “Furious Fifties” lie in a circumpolar storm track and a westerly oceanic current zone commonly called the West Wind Drift, or Circumpolar Current (Antarctic Circumpolar Current). Warm, subtropical surface currents in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans move southward in the western parts of these waters and then turn eastward upon meeting the Circumpolar Current. The warm water meets and partly mixes with cold Antarctic water, called the Antarctic Surface Water, to form a mass with intermediate characteristics called Subantarctic Surface Water. Mixing occurs in a shallow but broad zone of approximately 10° latitude lying south of the Subtropical Convergence (at about 40° S) and north of the Antarctic Convergence (between about 50° and 60° S). The Subtropical Convergence generally defines the northern limits of a water mass having so many unique physical and biological characteristics that it is often given a separate name, the Antarctic, or sometimes the Southern, Ocean; it contains about 10 percent of the global ocean volume.
The two convergences are well defined and important oceanic boundary zones that profoundly affect climates, marine life, bottom sedimentation, and ice-pack and iceberg drift. They are easily identified by rapid changes in temperature and salinity. Antarctic waters are less saline than tropical waters because of their lower temperatures and lesser evaporational concentration of dissolved salts. When surface waters move southward from the Subtropical Convergence zone into the subantarctic climatic belt, their temperatures drop by as much as about 9° to 16° F (5° to 9° C). Across the Antarctic Convergence, from the subantarctic into the Antarctic climatic zone, surface-water temperature drops further.
Whereas the pattern of surface currents, controlled largely by the Earth's rotation, winds, water-density differences, and the geometry of basins, is relatively well understood, that of deeper water masses is more complex and less well known. North-flowing Antarctic Surface Water sinks to about 3,000 feet beneath warmer Subantarctic Surface Water along the Antarctic Convergence to become the Subantarctic Intermediate Water. This water mass, as well as the cold Antarctic Bottom Water, spreads far north beyond the Equator to exchange with waters of the Northern Hemisphere. The movement of the Antarctic Bottom Water is identifiable in the Atlantic as far north as the Bermuda Rise. Currents near the continent result in a circumferential belt of surface-water divergence accompanied by upwelling of deeper water masses.
Two forms of floating ice masses build out around the continent: (1) glacier-fed semipermanent ice shelves, some of enormous size, such as the Ross ice shelf, and (2) an annually frozen and melted ice pack (pack ice) that in winter reaches to about 56° S in the Atlantic and 64° S in the Pacific. Antarctica has been called the pulsating continent because of the annual buildup and retreat of its secondary ice-fronted coastline. Pushed by winds and currents, the ice pack is in continual motion. This movement is westward in the coastal belt of the East Wind Drift at the continent edge and eastward (farther north) at the belt of the West Wind Drift. Icebergs (iceberg)—calved fragments of glaciers and ice shelves—reach a northern limit at about the Subtropical Convergence. With an annual areal variation about six times as great as that for the Arctic ice pack, the Antarctic pack doubtless plays a far greater role in varying heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere and thus probably in altering global weather patterns. Long-term synoptic studies, now aided by satellite imagery, show long-period thinning in the Antarctic ice-pack regimen possibly related to global climate changes (climate change).
As part of the Deep Sea Drilling Project conducted from 1968 to 1983 by the U.S. government, the drilling ship Glomar Challenger undertook several cruises of Antarctic and subantarctic waters to gather and study materials on and below the ocean floor. Expeditions included one between Australia and the Ross Sea (1972–73); one in the area south of New Zealand (1973); one from southern Chile to the Bellingshausen Sea (1974); and two in the Drake Passage and Falkland Islands area (1974 and 1979–80). Among the ship's most significant findings were hydrocarbons discovered in Tertiary sediments (those 2.58 to 65.5 million years old) in the Ross Sea and rocks carried by icebergs from Antarctica found in late Oligocene sediments (those roughly 23.7 to 36.6 million years old) at numerous locations. Researchers inferred from these ice-borne debris that Antarctica was glaciated at least 25 million years ago.
Internationally funded drilling operations began in 1985 with the Ocean Drilling Program, using the new drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution to expand earlier Glomar Challenger studies. Studies in the Weddell Sea (1986–87) suggested that surface waters were warm during Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic time and that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet did not form until about 10 million to 5 million years ago, which is much later than inferred from evidence on the continent itself. Drilling of the Kerguelen Plateau near the Amery Ice Shelf (1987–88) entailed the study of the rifting history of the Indian-Australian Plate from East Antarctica and revealed that this submerged plateau—the world's largest such feature—is of oceanic origin and not a continental fragment, as had been previously thought.
plant life
The cold desert climate of Antarctica supports only an impoverished community of cold-tolerant land plants that are capable of surviving lengthy winter periods of total or near-total darkness during which photosynthesis cannot take place. Growth must occur in short summer bursts lasting only a few days, a few weeks, or a month or two, depending upon such diverse factors as latitude, seasonal snowpacks, elevation, topographic orientation, wind, and moisture, in both the substrate and the atmosphere. Moisture is the most important single variable and is provided mainly by atmospheric water vapour and by local melt supplies from fallen snow, drift snow, and permafrost. Stream runoff is exceedingly rare. Extreme cold, high winds, and aridity inhibit growth even in summer in most areas. There are, however, certain areas at high latitude and high elevation that have local microclimates (microclimate) formed by differential solar heating of dark surfaces, and these areas are able to support life. The importance of such microclimates was demonstrated by the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition (1933–35), which found that lichens (lichen) in Marie Byrd Land grow preferentially on darker-coloured heat-absorbing rock.
Antarctic plants total about 800 species, of which 350 are lichens. Lichens, although slow-growing, are particularly well adapted to Antarctic survival. They can endure lengthy high-stress periods in dormancy and almost instantly become photosynthetic when conditions improve. Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), totaling about 100 species, predominate in maritime regions, but mosses can grow nearly everywhere that lichens grow. Liverworts are reported only from coastal and maritime regions. Numerous species of molds, yeasts, and other fungi, as well as freshwater algae and bacteria, complete the listing of Antarctic plants. These forms are extremely widespread and are reported as far as latitude 87° S. In addition, Antarctic seas are highly productive in plankton plant life, particularly in near-shore, nutrient-rich zones of upwelling. Diatoms, a type of algae, are especially abundant.
Although soils are essentially not of humic type, they commonly are not sterile either, in that they may contain such microorganisms as bacteria or a variety of blue-green algae. The blue-green algae Nostoc locally contribute minor organic compounds to soils.
Today's barren Antarctic landscape little resembles ancient Paleozoic and Mesozoic ones with their far greater floral displays. Antarctic glaciation, probably beginning 50 million years ago, forced the northward migration of all vascular plants (ferns, conifers, and flowering plants). Only nonwoody forms have again populated subantarctic regions and have scarcely repenetrated the Antarctic zone.
Unlike Antarctica, lying south of the Antarctic Convergence, the islands north of the Convergence in the subantarctic botanical zone—including the South Georgia, Crozet, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands—are characterized by an abundance of vascular plants of many species, at least 50 being identified on South Georgia alone. Whereas plants reproducing by spores are characteristic of Antarctica, seed plants chiefly characterize subantarctic regions.
Humans have greatly influenced the natural ecosystem in many Antarctic and subantarctic regions. Alien species of vascular plants near whaling stations have been introduced, and doubtless many alien microorganisms exist near all Antarctic stations. Alien herbivores, chiefly sheep and rabbits, have decimated plant communities on many subantarctic islands. Rabbits have exterminated the native cabbage Pringlea antiscorbutica over wide areas on Kerguelen, and sheep have decimated tussock communities on South Georgia. Increasing numbers of tourists will have an impact on Antarctica's fragile ecosystem.
animal life
Land fauna
The native land fauna is wholly invertebrate. Apparently climatically less tolerant and less easily dispersed, the fauna follows plant colonization of newly deglaciated regions and therefore is not as widely distributed. The Antarctic microfauna includes heliozoans, rotifers, tardigrades, nematodes, and ciliate protozoans. The protozoans dominate soil and freshwater communities. The terrestrial macrofauna consists entirely of arthropods, many species being parasitic on birds and seals. The principal arthropod groups represented include Acarina (mites), Mallophaga (biting lice), Collembola (springtails), Anoplura (sucking lice), Diptera (midges), and Siphonaptera (fleas). Two species of beetles, probably alien, are known from islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. The dominant free-living forms, mites and springtails, live under stones and are associated with spore-reproducing plants.
Birds (bird)
About 45 species of birds live south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three—the emperor penguin (see photograph-->), Antarctic petrel, and South Polar (McCormick's) skua—breed exclusively on the continent or on nearby islands. An absence of mammalian land predators and the rich offshore food supply make Antarctic coasts a haven for immense seabird rookeries. Penguins (penguin) (see photograph-->), of the order Sphenisciformes, symbolize this polar region, though they live on seacoasts throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Of the 18 living species (of which two may be only subspecies), only the Adélie and emperor live along the Antarctic coastline. The habitats of five other polar species—king, chinstrap, gentoo, rockhopper, and macaroni—extend only as far south as the northern Antarctic Peninsula and subantarctic islands. The evolution of these flightless birds has been traced to the late Eocene Epoch, about 40 million years ago, using fossils found on Seymour Island, off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and at a few other places. The largest modern penguin, the emperor, standing between three and four feet in height, would be dwarfed by some of its extinct New Zealand and Seymour Island relatives, the fossil bones of which indicate that they reached heights up to five feet seven inches. Some authorities believe that penguins may have a shared ancestry with other birds of Antarctica, capable of flight, from the order Procellariiformes. Birds of that order, mainly species of petrels but also a few of albatrosses, make up more than half of the Antarctic and subantarctic breeding species. Other birds of the region include species of cormorants, pintails, gulls, terns, sheathbills, and pipits.Banding and recovery studies show that some Antarctic birds travel (migration) throughout the world. Rare sightings of skuas and petrels far in the continental interior, even near the South Pole, suggest that these powerful birds may occasionally cross the continent. Experiments show that Antarctic birds, including the flightless penguin, have strong homing instincts and excellent navigational capability; they apparently have a highly developed sun-azimuth orientation system and biological clock mechanism that functions even with the sun remaining continuously high. Adélie penguins released as far as 1,900 miles from their nests, for example, are known to have returned within a year.
Feeding (feeding behaviour) habits vary widely from species to species. Most depend on the abundantly provisioned larder of the sea. The seabirds feed mainly on crustacea, fish, and squid, mostly at the surface or, in the case of cormorants and penguins, at depths of up to about 150 feet. Shorebirds forage for mollusks, echinoderms, and littoral crustacea. Sheathbills, the southern black-backed gull, giant petrels, and skuas feed occasionally, as allowed, on other birds' unguarded eggs. The voracious skua and giant petrel are even known to attack the young or weak of other species, particularly penguins.
Dependent upon seafood, most birds leave the continent each autumn and follow Antarctica's “secondary” coastline as the ice pack builds northward. The emperor penguins, however, are the exception and remain behind as solitary guardians (other than humans) of the continent through the long winter night. The emperors, once thought rare, are now estimated to number more than one million in about 25 known colonies.
Sea life
The prolific zooplankton of Antarctic waters feed on the copious phytoplankton and, in turn, form the basic diet of whales, seals, fish, squid, and seabirds. The Antarctic waters, because of their upwelled nutrients, are more than seven times as productive as subantarctic waters. The most important organism in the higher food chain is the small, shrimplike krill, Euphausia superba, only an inch or two in length when mature. But for their habit of congregating in vast, dense schools, they would have little food value for the large whales and seals. Their densities are great, however, and a whale, with built-in nets of baleen (baleen whale) and hairlike fibres, can strain out meals of a ton or more in a few minutes. During the three to four months spent in Antarctic waters, the original population of baleen whales alone could consume an estimated 150 million tons of krill. Animals on the sea bottom of the nearshore zone include the sessile hydrozoans, corals, sponges, and bryozoans, as well as the foraging, crablike pycnogonids and isopods, the annelid worm polychaeta, echinoids, starfish, and a variety of crustaceans and mollusks. Winter and anchor ice, however, keep the sublittoral zone relatively barren to about 50 feet in depth.
Of the nearly 20,000 kinds of modern fish, no more than about 100 are known from seas south of the Antarctic Convergence. Nearly three-fourths of the 90 or so sea-bottom species belong to the superfamily Notothenioidea, the Antarctic perches. At sea bottom there are also the Zoarcidae, or eel-pouts; the Liparidae, or sea snails; the Macrouridae, or rat-tailed fishes; and the Gadidae, or codlike fishes. Rare nonbony types in the Antarctic zone include hagfish and skates. Many species of deep-sea fish are known south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three, a barracuda and two lantern fishes, seem to be confined to this zone. Antarctic fishes are well adapted to the cold waters; the bottom fish are highly endemic, 90 percent of the species being found nowhere else. This supports other biological and geologic evidence that Antarctica has been isolated for a very long time.
Antarctic native mammals (mammal) are all marine and include seals (seal) (pinnipeds), porpoises, dolphins, and whales (cetaceans). Only one otariid, or fur seal, breeds south of the Antarctic Convergence; four species of phocids, or true seals—the gregarious Weddell seal, the ubiquitous crabeater seal, the solitary and aggressively carnivorous leopard seal, and the rarely seen Ross seal—breed almost exclusively in the Antarctic zone, and another, the southern elephant seal, breeds near the Convergence at South Georgia, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands. The sea lion, an otariid, is plentiful in the Falkland Islands but probably never ventures into the cold Antarctic waters. The fur seal and the elephant seal are now regenerating after near extinction. Weddell seals are thought to number about 500,000, the crabeater about 5,000,000 to 6,000,000, and the Ross seals about 50,000. Weddell seals are unique in being able to survive under fast ice, even in winter, by maintaining open breathing holes with their teeth. The leopard seal, armed with powerful jaws and huge canines, is one of the few predators of adult penguins. A number of mummified seal carcasses, chiefly crabeaters, have been found at distances of nearly 30 miles from the sea and elevations up to about 3,000 feet in the McMurdo dry valleys. Finding no food in such inland wanderings, the crabeaters eventually died, and their leathery carcasses were preserved by the coldness and aridity of the climate.
Whales (whale) and their cetacean relatives, porpoises and dolphins, range widely from Arctic to Antarctic waters and are found in all oceans and seas. A number of species range to, but generally not across, the Antarctic Convergence and so are considered only peripheral Antarctic types. Among the fish- and squid-eating toothed whales, or odontocetes, are a few peripheral Antarctic porpoises and dolphins and the pilot whale. More typical of Antarctic waters are the killer whale, sperm whale, and rare bottle-nosed, or beaked, whale. Seven species of baleen, or whalebone, whales also inhabit Antarctic waters, subsisting on the plentiful krill; these include the southern right whale, the humpback whale, and four kinds of rorqual—the blue whale, fin whale, sei whale, and lesser rorqual, or minke. The pygmy right whale is endemic to Antarctic and subantarctic waters. The killer whale, one of the most intelligent of marine animals, hunts in packs and feeds on larger animals, such as fish, penguins and other aquatic birds, seals, dolphins, and other whales. Despite its name, there have been no authenticated accounts of attacks on humans near Antarctica. Excessive slaughter in the past has drastically decimated stocks of the larger whales, particularly the giant blue whales. Near extinction, the blue whales have been protected by international agreement.
Alien mammals that now reside semipermanently in Antarctic and subantarctic regions include sheep, rabbits, dogs, cats, rats, mice, and human beings. Effects on local ecosystems are great, from pollution of station areas by human wastes to erosion from overgrazing by sheep and to decimation of bird populations by dogs and cats and of whale and fur-seal stocks by humans. Even so, Antarctica remains by far the least contaminated land on Earth. Under the Antarctic Treaty, it is designated as a special conservation area, and many former human activities have been prohibited in an attempt to preserve the natural ecological system of the unique environment.
Economic resources
Exploration for resources
Antarctica, it has been suggested, may have become a continent for science because it was useful for nothing else. Certainly, the great success of the Antarctic Treaty and of the political experiment in international cooperation is in no small way attributable to the fact that exploitable mineral resources have not been found. Articles of the original treaty (signed in 1959; entered into force in 1961) did not exclude economic activities, but neither did they set up jurisdictional procedures in the event that any were undertaken (see below History (Antarctica)).
Increasing economic pressures have forced mineral and petroleum exploration into more and more remote regions as resources have gradually become depleted in other, more accessible lands. It is likely that market and technological conditions will make it economically feasible to carry the search to Antarctica and its continental shelves. The political volatility of the resource question, especially the problems of rights of ownership and development, has prompted proposals that range from sharing any found mineral wealth equally among nations to establishing the continent as a world park.
Most early Antarctic expeditions through the 19th century were directly or indirectly of economic incentive. For some, it was the search for new trading routes; for others, it meant the opening of new fur-sealing grounds; still others saw a possibility of mineral riches. The exploitation of natural resources has centred in the subantarctic and Antarctic seas, and virtually none has yet occurred on the continent. In one analysis of resource potentials, “Antarctic natural resources” were defined as “any natural materials or characteristics (in the Antarctic region) of significance to man.” By this broad definition, the term includes not only biological and mineral resources but also the land itself, water, ice, climate, and space for living and working, recreation, and storage. “Economic” resources are those that can be used or exported at a cost that is less than their value. Any attempted appraisal must therefore be continually reevaluated in terms of current market values, logistical costs, and technological developments. Few known Antarctic resources have any economic importance in terms of present-day estimates of these factors. The factors are complexly interrelated and difficult to assess for the present, let alone the future. For example, technological advances that could allow development in Antarctica might instead allow development of what are considered marginally economic resources in other regions. Moreover, by the time it might become feasible to develop an Antarctic resource, such as petroleum, other suppliers for the market might be found, such as, in this case, fusion reactors or solar or geothermal energy, which would greatly change cost factors.
Mineral (mineral deposit) resources
The geology of Antarctica is known sufficiently well to allow rather certain prediction of the existence of a variety of mineral deposits, some probably large. The fact that none of significant size, besides coal in the Transantarctic Mountains and iron near the Prince Charles Mountains of East Antarctica, is known to exist is largely the result of inadequate sampling. With the amount of ice-free terrain in Antarctica estimated at somewhere between 1 and 5 percent, the probability is practically nonexistent that a potential ore body would be exposed. Moreover, whereas generations of prospectors have combed temperate and even Arctic mountains, Antarctic mountains have been visited mostly by reconnaissance parties on scientific missions since the IGY.
The high degree of certainty that mineral deposits do exist is based on the close geologic similarities that have been observed between areas of Antarctica and of mineral-rich provinces of South America, South Africa, and Australia and on the consensus that has been reached on the configuration of the Gondwanaland (Gondwana) landmass during Mesozoic times. The gold-producing Witwatersrand beds of South Africa may correspond to the terranes of western Queen Maud Land. The young mountain belt of the copper-rich South American Andes continues southward, looping through the Scotia Arc into the Antarctic Peninsula and probably beyond into Ellsworth Land. The mostly ice-covered areas of Wilkes Land may parallel the gold-producing greenstone belts and platinum-bearing intrusions of southwestern Australia. The Dufek intrusion, an immense layered gabbroic complex in the northern Pensacola Mountains, is geologically similar to, though much younger than, the Bushveld complex of South Africa, which is a leading producer of platinum-group metals, chromium, and other resources. Mineral occurrences have been found in some of these Antarctic areas, including antimony, chromium, copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, tin, uranium, and zinc. None approaches a grade or size warranting economic interest. Also noneconomic are the very large deposits of coal and sedimentary iron. Because of the high costs of polar operations, few conceivable resources—excepting those with high unit value such as platinum, gold, and perhaps diamonds—have any likelihood for exploitation.
Offshore resources of petroleum, however, are a different matter. The finding of gaseous hydrocarbons in cores drilled in the Ross Sea by the Glomar Challenger in 1973 aroused considerable international interest. Cruises of the U.S. research vessel Eltanin had by then made a number of reconnaissance geophysical studies investigating the nature of the Antarctic continental margin. Since the late 1970s oceanographic research ships of many nations, including those of France, Germany (West Germany until 1990), Japan, and the United States, have undertaken detailed studies of the structure of the continental margin, using the sophisticated geophysical techniques of seismic reflection and gravity and magnetic surveys. Thicknesses of sedimentary rock needed for sizable petroleum accumulations may occur in continental-margin areas of the Ross, Amundsen, Bellingshausen, and Weddell seas and perhaps near the Amery Ice Shelf; and some may also exist in inland basins covered by continental ice, particularly in West Antarctica. It seems unlikely, however, that fields of a size needed for exploitation are present. If they should be found, any petroleum extraction would be difficult but not impossible in the offshore areas, as technologies have been developed for drilling for and recovering petroleum in Arctic regions. Drill ships and platforms would be more severely affected by iceberg drift and moving ice packs than in the Arctic. Icebergs are commonly far larger than those in the Arctic and have deeper keels; they scour the seafloor at deeper levels and would be more likely to damage seafloor installations such as wellheads, pipelines, and mooring systems. These problems, though great, are far fewer than those that would be encountered in developing inland mineral resources of any kind. Thus, although petroleum is generally considered to be the most likely prospect for exploitation in Antarctica, there is little potential for its development before reserves are consumed from more accessible areas throughout the world. Even if accidentally found through scientific studies, mineral resources cannot now be commercially explored or exploited under a 1991 agreement by the United States and other Antarctic Treaty nations (see below History (Antarctica)).
Biological resources
Resources of the sea first attracted people to Antarctica and provided the only basis for commercial activity in this region for many years. Commercial fur sealing began about 1766 in the Falkland Islands and rapidly spread to all subantarctic islands in the zeal to supply the wealthy markets of Europe and China. Immense profits were made, but the toll was equally immense. Early accounts relate that millions of skins were taken from the Falklands during the mid-1780s. Within a century, however, the herds of fur seals had disappeared. Elephant seals were then hunted for their oil, and, as their numbers dwindled, the sealers turned to whaling. During the 20th century herds of some whale species (notably blue, fin, and sei) were largely driven from Antarctic waters, but commercial whaling was not effectively curtailed until catch quotas were imposed in the 1970s and 1980s. Populations of many species of seals and whales have been regenerating. In 1994 the 40-nation International Whaling Commission permanently banned whaling in all waters south of Australia, Africa, and South America, a ruling that assures population increases and creates an immense sanctuary covering nearly one-fourth of the world's oceans.
commercial fishing, although little developed before 1970, has been rising in significance since then, especially with the increased use of factory ships, which can catch and process large quantities of fish. Catches of one species of Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii) have been as high as 400,000 tons, prompting concerns about overfishing in Antarctic waters. Fishing for Antarctic krill, which live in almost unfathomable abundance in the nutrient-rich polar waters, has shown only minor commercial activity.
Other resources
A rich imagination can see many possible uses of Antarctica and its materials. The continental ice sheet contains nearly 90 percent of the world's glacial ice—a huge potential supply of fresh water—but any economic value is precluded by delivery costs. Antarctica has been proposed as a long-term deep-freeze storage site for grain and other foods, but calculations show that such usage cannot be economic, because of excessive shipping, handling, and investment costs. The Antarctic Treaty prevents the continent from being used as a site for radioactive-waste disposal and storage. Antarctica and its nearby islands could play an important role in wartime, particularly in the Scotia Sea region and Drake Passage, for control of interocean shipping. In 1940–41, for example, German commerce raiders made considerable use of Kerguelen Island for this purpose. The Antarctic Treaty rules out military use, however, and the increasing capability of long-range aircraft, rocketry, and satellite surveillance and reentry decreases the possible military importance of Antarctica.
Antarctica contains abundant scenic resources, and these have been increasingly exploited since the late 1950s. The tourist industry began in a modest way in January and February 1958, with tours to the Antarctic Peninsula area arranged by the Argentine Naval Transport Command. Since January 1966, yearly tourist ships have plied Antarctic coastal waters, stopping here and there for visits at scientific stations and at penguin rookeries. The number of visits by cruise ships has increased, and in the mid-1970s sightseeing flights by commercial airliners were inaugurated. Tourist overflights lost popularity, however, after the November 1979 crash of a New Zealand airliner into Mount Erebus (Ross Island), with the loss of all 257 passengers and crew. The 1990–91 summer season alone saw more than 4,800 tourist visitors. Some 40,000 tourists had visited Antarctica by the mid-1990s, principally by tour boats to the northern Antarctic Peninsula. A handful of more adventurous tourists have ventured into or across the continental interior by ski, dog team, or private aircraft.
Polar visionaries once imagined an all-weather landing strip for wheeled jet aircraft at Marble Point near McMurdo Sound; one or more hotels nearby, perhaps in one of the McMurdo dry valleys and served by helicopter from the jet runway; and possibly even a centre for skiing and mountaineering. With such facilities, they believed, greatly increased numbers of tourists could be brought to the continent. New technologies for landing large wheeled aircraft on inland ice sheets have opened possibilities for tourist facilities in many parts of Antarctica. Permanent accommodations for tourists ashore seem inevitable, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula. The flourishing tourist industry, however, has few controls under present Antarctic Treaty regulations. Parties to the treaty are studying effects of tourism in order to provide regulations for ensuring protection of Antarctica's highly sensitive ecosystem. Safeguarding penguin rookeries that particularly attract tourist photographers is of special concern. Problems created by the increasing tourism include sewage and waste disposal, the need for search and rescue facilities (a few tourist ships have gone aground or have been trapped in ice, requiring help), and a system for handling the civil and criminal cases that will inevitably arise.
History
A great many nations, large and small, played important roles in the discovery and exploration of Antarctica. Who first saw the continent is controversial. The Russian expedition leader Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (Bellingshausen, Fabian Gottlieb von), the Englishman Edward Bransfield (Bransfield, Edward), and the American Nathaniel Palmer (Palmer, Nathaniel) all claim first sightings in 1820: Bellingshausen sighted a shelf edge of continental ice on January 20; two days later Bransfield caught sight of land that the British later considered to be a mainland part of the Antarctic Peninsula; and on November 18 Palmer unequivocally saw the mainland-peninsula side of Orleans Strait.
About AD 650, however, long before European geographers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were to conjecture about the mythical Terra Australis, Maori legend tells of a New Zealand Polynesian war canoe, under the command of one Ui-te-Rangiora, that sailed at least as far south as the frozen ocean. The legendary vast size of the continent shrank to nearly its present one when in 1772–75 the Englishman James Cook (Cook, James) circumnavigated the globe in high southern latitude, proving that Terra Australis, if it existed at all, lay somewhere beyond the ice packs that he discovered between about 60° and 70° S.
Early scientific progress
The period from the 1760s to about 1900 was one dominated by exploitation of Antarctic and subantarctic seas, particularly along Scotia Ridge. Sealing vessels of many nations, principally American and British but including Argentine, Australian, South African, New Zealand, German, and Norwegian, participated in hunting that eventually led to near extinction of the southern fur seal. Many also hunted whales, and the less profitable whaling industry climaxed following World War I after the decline of sealing. Among the few geographic and scientific expeditions that stand out during this period are those of Bellingshausen, commanding the Russian ships Vostok and Mirny, in the first close-in circumnavigation of Antarctica in 1819–21; Bransfield, on a British expedition charting part of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1819–20; Dumont d'Urville (Dumont d'Urville, Jules-Sébastien-César), on a French expedition in 1837–40, when Adélie Land was discovered and claimed for France; Charles Wilkes (Wilkes, Charles), on a U.S. naval expedition in 1838–42 that explored a large section of the East Antarctic coast; and James Clark Ross (Ross, Sir James Clark), on a British expedition in 1839–43 that discovered the Ross Sea and Ross Ice Barrier (now called Ross Ice Shelf) as well as the coast of Victoria Land.
The “heroic era” of exploration
During the first two decades of the 20th century, commonly called the “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration, great advances were made in not only geographic but also scientific knowledge of the continent. The Englishmen Robert F. Scott (Scott, Robert Falcon) and Ernest Henry Shackleton (Shackleton, Sir Ernest Henry) led three expeditions between 1901 and 1913, pioneering routes into the interior and making important geologic, glaciological, and meteorologic discoveries that provided a firm foundation for present-day scientific programs. This era was preceded by two events that proved the feasibility of Antarctic overwintering: (1) the Belgian ship Belgica, under command of Adrien de Gerlache (Gerlache de Gomery, Adrien-Victor-Joseph, baron de), became the first vessel to winter in Antarctic waters when, from March 1898 to March 1899, it was trapped and drifted in pack ice of the Bellingshausen Sea, and (2) a scientific party under Carsten E. Borchgrevink spent the next winter camped at Cape Adare, for the first planned overwintering on the continent.
Sledge probes deep into the interior were made by Scott on the British National Antarctic Discovery Expedition (1901–04) and by Shackleton on the British Antarctic Nimrod Expedition (1907–09) from base camps on Ross Island. New southing records were set by Scott, in company with Shackleton and E.A. Wilson, who reached 82°17′ S on Ross Ice Shelf on Dec. 30, 1902, and by Shackleton in a party of five, which reached 88°23′ S, a point about 97 nautical miles from the pole, on Jan. 9, 1909. The aerial age in Antarctica was presaged by Scott in 1902, who went aloft in a captive balloon for aerial reconnaissance, and the mechanical age by Shackleton in 1908, who used an automobile at Cape Royds, Ross Island. The experimental use of hardy Manchurian ponies and the pioneering of a route up the great Beardmore Glacier to the polar plateau by Shackleton paved the way for the epic sledging trip of Scott in 1911–12 to the South Pole.
Discovery of the Antarctic poles
National and personal prestige in attaining the Earth's poles, as well as territorial acquisition and scientific inquiry, provided strong motivation for polar exploration in the early 1900s. The south magnetic pole, the point of vertical orientation of a magnetic dip needle, which was predicted by the German physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss to lie at 66° S, 146° E, inspired the unsuccessful quest, about 1840, of the seafarers Wilkes, d'Urville, and Ross (Ross had earlier discovered the north magnetic pole). The point was later reached, on Jan. 16, 1909, at 72°25′ S, 155°16′ E, on the high ice plateau of Victoria Land by T.W.E. David (David, Sir T W Edgeworth) and Douglas Mawson (Mawson, Sir Douglas) on a sledge journey from Cape Royds. The pole has migrated more than 550 miles since then to its present location near the Adélie Land coast. The South Pole of the Earth's rotation was the unattained goal of Shackleton in 1908–09 but was eventually reached on Dec. 14, 1911, by Roald Amundsen (Amundsen, Roald) of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition of 1910–12 and, a month later, on Jan. 17, 1912, by Scott of the British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition of 1910–13. Whereas Amundsen's party of skiers and dog teams, using the Axel Heiberg Glacier route, arrived back at Framheim Station at Bay of Whales with little difficulty, Scott's man-hauling polar party—Scott, E.A. Wilson, H.R. Bowers, L.E.G. Oates, and Edgar Evans—using the Beardmore Glacier route, perished on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Two other related discoveries were accomplished during the IGY. The south geomagnetic pole, the theoretical pole of the Earth's magnetic field, on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet at 78°28′ S, 106°48′ E, was reached by a Soviet IGY tractor traverse on Dec. 16, 1957. The pole of relative inaccessibility, the point most remote from all coasts, at 82°06′ S, 54°58′ E, was reached by a Soviet IGY tractor traverse on Dec. 14, 1958.
After Amundsen and Scott attained the South Pole, the idea that particularly haunted people's minds was that of an overland crossing of the continent. Conceived earlier by the Scotsman W.S. Bruce and the German Wilhelm Filchner to test the thought that a channel might exist connecting the Ross and Weddell seas, a trans-Antarctic expedition was finally organized in 1914 by Shackleton. His ship, the Endurance, was caught and crushed, however, in pack ice of the Weddell Sea, thus aborting one of the most ambitious polar expeditions theretofore planned. The idea lay dormant for several decades and came to fruition during IGY with the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Vivian Fuchs (Fuchs, Sir Vivian Ernest). Using tracked vehicles and aided by aerial flights, the party left Shackleton Base on Filchner Ice Shelf on Nov. 24, 1957, and by way of the South Pole reached the New Zealand Scott Base on Ross Island on March 2, 1958. The continent was again crossed (1979–81) as part of the British Transglobe Expedition that undertook the first polar circumnavigation of the Earth. Antarctica again was crossed in 1989–90, on a 3,741-mile trek by ski and dog team, supported by aircraft, on the privately financed international Trans-Antarctica Expedition led by the American Will Steger.
From World War I to IGY
Technological advancements in exploration
The period between World Wars I and II marks the beginning of the mechanical, particularly the aerial, age of Antarctic exploration. Wartime developments in aircraft, aerial cameras, radios, and motor transport were adapted for polar operation. On Nov. 16, 1928, the first heavier-than-air flight in Antarctica was made by the Alaskan bush pilot C.B. Eielson and George Hubert Wilkins (Wilkins, Sir George Hubert) in a wheel-equipped Lockheed Vega monoplane. This flight was quickly followed by the better-equipped, aircraft-supported expeditions of the American naval officer Richard E. Byrd (Byrd, Richard E.) (1928–30, 1933–35, 1939–41, and 1946–47), in which progressively greater use was made of ski-planes and aerial photography. Byrd, on Nov. 29, 1929, was first to fly over the South Pole (after having flown over the North Pole in 1926). His fourth expedition, called “Operation High Jump,” in the summer of 1946–47, was the most massive sea and air exploratory assault theretofore attempted in Antarctica and involved 13 ships, including two seaplane tenders and an aircraft carrier, and a total of 25 airplanes. Ship-based aircraft returned with 49,000 photographs that, together with those taken by land-based aircraft, covered about 60 percent of the Antarctic coast, nearly one-fourth of which had been previously unseen. Innovations by Byrd included the use of an autogiro in 1933–34 and six helicopters in 1946–47. Meanwhile, the courageous flight of Lincoln Ellsworth (Ellsworth, Lincoln), an American, and Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, a Canadian pilot, across uncharted lands and icefields on the first aerial crossing of the continent from Nov. 23 to Dec. 5, 1935, clearly demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft landings and takeoffs for inland exploration. These early aerial operations and the extensive use of ship-based seaplanes in Norwegian explorations of coastal Queen Maud Land during the 1930s were forerunners of present-day aerial programs.
National rivalries and claims
The early discoveries led to a few controversies not only for territorial claims but also in geographic nomenclature. The struggle for national influence was especially acute in the slender peninsular landmass south of Scotia Sea that became known as O'Higgins Land (Antarctic Peninsula) (Tierra O'Higgins) to Chileans and San Martin Land (Tierra San Martín) to Argentines, named for national heroes who helped in gaining independence from Spain. To the English it was known as Graham Land, for a former first lord of the admiralty, and to Americans as Palmer Peninsula, for the sealer and explorer Nathaniel Palmer. By international agreement, the region is now known simply as the Antarctic Peninsula, Graham Land its northern half and Palmer Land its southern half.
The first half of the 20th century is the colonial period in the history of Antarctica. Between 1908 and 1942, seven nations decreed sovereignty over pie-shaped sectors of the continent. Many nations—including the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, and Germany—carried out Antarctic exploration without lodging formal territorial claims, even though claims may have been announced by some of their exploratory parties. The U.S. government, for example, has never taken up the claims made in 1929 by Richard Byrd's expedition in the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land (an area presently unclaimed), nor those made by Lincoln Ellsworth on aerial landings on Nov. 23, 1935, in Ellsworth Land (an area now claimed by Chile) and on Jan. 11, 1939, in the American Highland near the Amery Ice Shelf of East Antarctica (an area now claimed by Australia). The German Antarctic Expedition of 1939 aerially photographed an extensive segment of Princess Astrid and Princess Martha coasts of western Queen Maud Land and, dropping metal swastikas over the region, claimed it for the Hitler government (the area is now claimed by Norway). Other claims were transferred, such as that made in 1841 by James Ross, who, after discovering and naming the coastal Ross Sea region after Queen Victoria, claimed it for the British crown; the area was later transferred to, and is now claimed by, New Zealand.
After the French claim of Adélie Land (Adélie Coast) caused Americans to demand retaliatory action, the United States' official position was announced in 1924 by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes:
It is the opinion of this Department that the discovery of lands unknown to civilization, even when coupled with a formal taking of possession, does not support a valid claim of sovereignty, unless the discovery is followed by an actual settlement of the discovered country.
This policy has been reiterated many times since.
Few combative activities have marred the history of Antarctica. World War II brushed the continent lightly, only in that its nearby seas were used by Nazi commerce raiders. The threat of increased activity, however, prompted British warships to keep the northern Antarctic Peninsula under surveillance. On one visit to Deception Island in January 1943, it was discovered that Argentine visitors had been there the year before, leaving a brass cylinder with notice of claim to the peninsular region. The British obliterated the Argentine signs, hoisted the Union Jack, posted a notice of crown ownership, and returned the cylinder to the Argentine government. Reaction was swift. In London, growing concern that the territory might possibly be lost and that a pro-German Argentine government might control both sides of the vital Drake Passage linking Atlantic and Pacific sea routes resulted in a secret military plan, code-named “Operation Tabarin,” to establish a base on Deception Island for closer watch. When the British returned to the island in February 1944, they found their earlier sign gone and an Argentine flag painted in its place. This they soon replaced with their own flag, and their base was established to back up the British claims to the region. Several other stations were built, and, with the conclusion of the war, the United Kingdom decided to maintain a continued presence in Antarctica.
Argentina and Chile both were stimulated to increase activities to back up their claims to the Antarctic Peninsula as a result of the British occupancy. (Chile had expressed a claim in 1940.) The Argentines had maintained a weather station in the South Orkney Islands continuously since 1903, and after 1947 they and the Chileans constructed bases at several sites. With the coming of the U.S. Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (RARE) in 1947–48 to the old U.S. Antarctic Service East Base camp on Marguerite Bay, the peninsula protagonists—British, Argentine, and Chilean—became concerned that the United States might rejuvenate its claims. Any antagonism was soon overcome, and the Americans and British joined forces for an arduous sledging journey down the east side of the peninsula.
Military violence has flared on two occasions in the region and in both instances has involved Argentina and the United Kingdom. The first incident took place in 1952, when Argentine navy small-arms fire chased a British meteorologic party that had landed at Hope Bay (at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula) back to its ship. The matter was resolved when the Argentine government agreed not to interfere with the party. The second, much more serious confrontation took place in 1982 in the Falkland Islands (Falkland Islands War), a British colony that is also claimed by Argentina (called the Islas Malvinas by the Argentines). Argentine forces invaded the Falklands and South Georgia Island in early April. The British responded by sending a military task force, reoccupying the islands, and forcing the Argentines to surrender on June 14.
By the mid-1950s, many nations had active Antarctic interests, some commercial and some scientific but generally political. In 1947–48 Australia had established stations on Heard and Macquarie islands and in 1954 built Mawson Station on the mainland coast of Mac. Robertson Land as a basis for its vast territorial claim. South Africans raised their flag over Prince Edward and Marion islands. France established permanent bases by 1953 in the Kerguelen and Crozet islands and surveyed much of the Adélie Land coast. In 1955, with icebreaker aid, Argentina established General Belgrano Station on the Filchner Ice Shelf. A profusion of British, Chilean, and Argentine bases had been built in such proximity to one another on the peninsula and nearby islands that their purpose seemed more for intelligence activities than for science. The international Norwegian-British-Swedish Expedition of 1949–52 carried out extensive explorations from Maudheim Base on the Queen Maud Land coast in the territory claimed in 1939 by Norway. The United States had shown little interest in Antarctica since the Ronne expedition and the U.S. naval “Operation Windmill,” both in 1947–48 (the latter expedition was to obtain ground checks on the aerial photography of the previous season's “Operation High Jump”), but it continued its policy of nonrecognition of any claims. The Soviet Union had shown little interest, other than whaling, in Antarctica since Bellingshausen's pioneer voyage. On June 7, 1950, however, the Soviet government sent a memorandum to other interested governments intimating that it could not recognize any decisions on the regime for Antarctica taken without its participation. Such was the political climate on the continent during the organizational years for the coming International Geophysical Year of 1957–58.
IGY and the Antarctic Treaty
The importance of coordinating polar science efforts was recognized in 1879 by the International Polar Commission meeting in Hamburg, Ger., and thus the 11 participating nations organized the First International Polar Year of 1882–83. Most work was planned for the better-known Arctic, and, of the four geomagnetic and meteorologic stations scheduled for Antarctic regions, only the German station on South Georgia materialized. The decision was made at that time to organize similar programs every 50 years. In 1932–33 the Second International Polar Year took place, with 34 nations participating, but no expeditions were mounted to Antarctica.
The development of IGY
The idea for more frequent programs was born in 1950, when it was proposed that scientists take advantage of increasing technological developments, interest in polar regions, and, not the least, the maximum sunspot activity expected in 1957–58. (The earlier, second polar year was a year of sunspot minimum.) The idea quickly germinated and grew: a formalized version was adopted by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), and in 1952 ICSU appointed a committee that was to become known as the Comité Spécial de l'Année Géophysique Internationale (CSAGI) to coordinate IGY planning. Plans widened to include the scientific study of the whole Earth, and eventually 67 nations showed interest in joining. Plans were laid for simultaneous observations, at all angles, of the Sun, weather, the aurora, the magnetic field, the ionosphere, and cosmic rays. Whereas in the first polar year observations were confined to ground level and in the second to about 33,000 feet by balloon, during IGY satellites were to be launched by the United States and the Soviet Union for exploration of space. Several international data centres were established to collect all observations and make them freely available for analysis to scientists of any nation.
Two programs, outer space and Antarctica, were especially emphasized at an ICSU committee meeting in Rome in 1954. Antarctica was emphasized because very few geophysical studies had yet been made on the continent, because the south geomagnetic pole focuses auroral and cosmic-ray activity in the Southern Hemisphere, and because on the eve of IGY almost half the continent had not yet even been seen by humans. The First Antarctic Conference was held in Paris in July 1955 to coordinate plans for expeditions, the advance parties of which were soon to set sail for the continent. Early tensions, due in part to overlapping political claims on the continent, were relaxed by the conference president's statement that overall aims were to be entirely scientific. Plans were laid for extensive explorations: 12 nations were to establish more than 50 overwintering stations on the continent and subantarctic islands; the first regular aircraft flights to the continent were to be inaugurated (by the United States); massive tractor traverses were to be run in order to establish inland stations in West Antarctica (Byrd Station for the United States), at the south geomagnetic pole (Vostok Station for the Soviet Union), and the pole of relative inaccessibility (also for the Soviet Union); and an airlift by giant cargo aircraft was to be established in order to set up a station at the South Pole itself (Amundsen–Scott Station for the United States). Several major scientific programs were scheduled for Antarctica, dealing with the aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, glaciology, gravity measurement, ionospheric physics, meteorology, oceanography, and seismology. Biology and geology were not primary studies of IGY.
Coastal bases were established in the summer of 1955–56 and inland stations the next summer for the official opening of IGY on July 1, 1957. For 18 months, until the end of IGY on Dec. 31, 1958, a frenzy of activity not only in Antarctica but all over the world and in space resulted in a multitude of discoveries that revolutionized concepts of the Earth and its oceans, landmasses, glaciers, atmosphere, and gravitational and geomagnetic fields. Perhaps the greatest contribution was the political moratorium by the governments and the cooperative interchange between scientists of participating nations.
The Antarctic Treaty
With the ending of IGY the threat arose that the moratorium too would end, letting the carefully worked out Antarctic structure collapse into its pre-IGY chaos. In the fall of 1957 the U.S. Department of State reviewed its Antarctic policy and sounded out agreements with the 11 other governments with Antarctic interests. On May 2, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued identical notes to these governments proposing that a treaty be concluded to ensure a lasting free and peaceful status for the continent. Preparatory talks by the 12 governments were held in Washington, D.C., beginning in June 1958 and continuing for more than a year. A final conference on Antarctica convened in Washington on Oct. 15, 1959. Agreement on the final draft was reached within six weeks of negotiations, and the Antarctic Treaty was signed on Dec. 1, 1959. With final ratification by each of the 12 governments (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), the United Kingdom, and the United States), the treaty was enacted on June 23, 1961.
The achievement of the Antarctic Treaty was an unprecedented landmark in political diplomacy: an entire continent was reserved for free and nonpolitical scientific investigation. Article I of the treaty provides for the peaceful use of Antarctica; Article II for international cooperation and freedom of scientific investigation; Article III for free exchange of plans, scientific results, and personnel; Article IV for the nonrenunciation of prior claim rights and for the prohibition of new claims and the citation of any activities during the treaty term as a basis for past or future claims; Article V for prohibition of nuclear explosions or waste disposal; Article VI for application of the treaty to all areas south of latitude 60° S, excluding the high seas, which come under international law; Article VII for open inspection of any nation's Antarctic operations by any other nation; Article XI for reference of disputes to the International Court of Justice if they cannot be settled by peaceful negotiation or arbitration by involved parties; and Article XII for a review of the treaty after it has been in force for 30 years, if such a review is requested by any contracting party.
As stated in Article IV, the many territorial claims that existed before the signing of the treaty were not abrogated by signatory nations. Multiple claims in some regions have never been resolved by international courts, and a number of countries, including the United States, recognize the validity of no claims in the absence of permanent habitation and settlements on the continent. An important provision of the treaty requires periodic meetings of representatives of signatory nations to take up occasional problems. Such meetings have agreed upon important measures for conservation of Antarctic flora and fauna and for the preservation of historic sites. The granting of consultative status within the Antarctic Treaty, permitting full participation in its operation with that of the original 12 contracting states, began in 1977 with the addition of Poland, followed by West Germany (1981), and Brazil and India (1983). Several other nations have also acceded to the treaty and have been granted partial status.
Post-IGY research
In order to continue and coordinate the international Antarctic scientific effort in the post-IGY period, ICSU in September 1957 organized the Special Committee on Antarctic Research, or SCAR. (In 1961 the word Scientific was substituted for Special.) The foundations for the committee were laid at its first meeting in The Hague in 1958. SCAR, a nonpolitical body, coordinates not only research activities in Antarctica itself but also, through ICSU, those Antarctic programs that relate to worldwide projects, such as the International Years of the Quiet Sun, the World Magnetic Survey, the Upper Mantle Project, the International Biological Program, and the International Hydrological Decade. Member nations send representatives to periodic meetings of “working groups” for the various scientific disciplines. International scientific symposia are organized by SCAR for exchange of latest research results, on a timetable depending upon progress in the discipline. The great success of the political venture of the Antarctic Treaty depends in no small way on the achievements of SCAR and of the scientific and support teams in the field and laboratory.
Scientific knowledge of Antarctica has increased steadily. Many important problems relating to knowledge of the entire Earth are best resolved in the polar region, such as studying the stratosphere's apparently endangered ozone layer. About half the topics of modern polar research could not even have been guessed at in the early 20th century. At that time no one could have foreseen the advent of jet aircraft, turbine-powered helicopters, ski-planes, data-recording machines powered by radioactive isotopes, and polar-orbiting satellites that automatically collect meteorologic and upper atmosphere data across the continent and transmit it to a base collection station. The polar knowledge gained in the decades during and after IGY have far outweighed that learned in the preceding millennia. The incredible advances in modern Antarctic science have only been possible by adapting to polar operation the great technological advances in aircraft, oceanographic technique, and remote data acquisition and telemetry systems (unmanned weather stations, satellite surveillance, and the like). For example, advances in airborne radio-echo sounding methods now allow routine mapping of Antarctica's ice-covered bedrock surface by aircraft, a task that previously required laborious seismic surveys from tracked vehicles across the ice sheets.
During the period of the Antarctic Treaty there has been a steady growth in the number and nature of cooperative international scientific projects (the International Antarctic Glaciological Project, Dry Valley Drilling Project, Biomass 【Biological Investigations of Antarctic Systems and Stocks】, International Weddell Sea Oceanographic Expedition); of the various SCAR working groups; and, notably, of projects at the interface of astronomy and atmospheric physics (the International Magnetospheric Study, Antarctic and Southern Hemisphere Aeronomy Year).
In addition to these internationally supported programs, there have been major increases in individual national programs, mostly among those countries with territorial interests in the continent but also among countries that had not for decades (or never) supported programs there. This latter group includes Italy, which mounted its first expedition during 1975–76; Uruguay, which made its first land expedition in 1975; Poland, which established marine and land programs during 1976–77; West Germany, which first undertook large-scale operations in 1980–81; India, which began work in the early 1980s; and China, which established its first station in 1984.
Virtually all the physical sciences are represented in the studies carried out under these programs, often having direct impact on such disparate fields as meteoritics and planetary geology, continental drift, geophysics, astrophysics, meteorology and climate history, or biology and population studies. The biological programs reflect both the inherent interest of the Antarctic subjects themselves and the interest elsewhere in the world in ecology and conservation. The history of Antarctic whaling had made apparent to scientists the necessity of conserving biological populations, and the area below 60° S had long contained nature reserves of greater or lesser extent, but the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1982) gave special impetus to the principle.
As noted above, geologic and geophysical studies led to an expectation that Antarctica probably has a mineral and petroleum potential similar to that of other continents, though nothing of possible economic interest has ever been found. Environmental and political concerns over the commercial exploration and eventual development of such resources if found led, after six years of arduous negotiations, to the June 1988 signing in New Zealand of a new Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), also known as the Wellington Convention, by the representatives of 33 nations. CRAMRA was designed to manage the exploitation and development of Antarctica's nonrenewable resources, a subject not covered under the original 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Several nations soon raised strong objections, and the convention was short-lived. Ensuing consultative party meetings on the Antarctic Treaty in Paris (1989) and Chile (1990) overturned the CRAMRA agreements and called for a complete and permanent ban on all mineral-resource activities in Antarctica. An October 1991 meeting in Madrid finalized CRAMRA's defeat. Article VII of a new Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty states simply, “Any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited.” The protocol has been accepted by Treaty member nations. Treaty nations now plan for the protection of Antarctica under some regime such as a world park. In the United States, for example, the U.S. Congress proposed the Antarctica World Park and Protection Act of 1990. With the elimination of the threat of mineral resource exploitation, the regime of an Antarctica World Park seems assured, though many political hurdles remain for its establishment.
Additional Reading
General works
John Stewart, Antarctica: An Encyclopedia, 2 vol. (1990), emphasizes history and geography but includes entries on geologic features and scientific topics, as well as a lengthy, annotated bibliography. The most complete guide to literature about the Antarctic is the U.S. Library of Congress, Antarctic Bibliography (annual). Fred G. Alberts (compiler and ed.), Geographic Names of the Antarctic (1981), contains a compilation and derivation of Antarctica's place names up to 1979, with coordinates, details of discovery, and for whom each was named. E.I. Tolstikov, Atlas Antarktiki, 2 vol. (1966–69), is a comprehensive map collection in Russian, useful especially when complemented by the translation of legend matter and explanatory text from vol. 1, published as “Atlas of Antarctica,” a special issue of Soviet Geography: Review & Translation, vol. 8, no. 5–6 (May–June 1967).Louis O. Quam (ed.), Research in the Antarctic (1971); Richard S. Lewis and Philip M. Smith (eds.), Frozen Future: A Prophetic Report from Antarctica (1973); and D.W.H. Walton (ed.), Antarctic Science (1987), contain review articles by leading experts on most subjects of research, the latter two also with articles on resources, economics, politics, and the outlook for the future. Richard Fifield, International Research in the Antarctic (1987), introduces the various types of research undertaken in Antarctica. A general review, Raymond Priestley, Raymond J. Adie, and G. De Q. Robin (eds.), Antarctic Research (1964), emphasizes British scientific achievements, particularly in the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc. Semitechnical to nontechnical reviews of current projects and exploration are in summary articles in the Antarctic Journal of the United States (quarterly). A general nontechnical review of earlier research is provided in the still-useful work by H.G.R. King, The Antarctic (1969). G.E. Fogg, A History of Antarctic Science (1992), traces the development of scientific inquiry in Antarctica. Antarctic Science (quarterly) covers all fields of scientific research on the continent. American Geographical Society of New York, Antarctic Map Folio Series, 19 vol. (1964–75); and American Geophysical Union, Antarctic Research Series (irregular), provide modern maps and technical accounts of all phases of the research programs. A more recent compilation of data on Antarctica, displayed as maps and tables, is D.J. Drewry (ed.), Antarctica: Glaciological and Geophysical Folio (1983).F.M. Auburn, Antarctic Law and Politics (1982), provides a comprehensive discussion of the legal aspects of the Antarctic Treaty, jurisdictional problems of crime, ecology, and tourism. Gillian D. Triggs (ed.), The Antarctic Treaty Regime: Law, Environment, and Resources (1987), discusses current aspects of issues raised by the Antarctic Treaty. Anthony Parsons, Antarctica: The Next Decade (1987), addresses the history of the Antarctic Treaty and its future as well as current and projected uses of the continental region.
Physical geography
W.N. Bonner and D.W.H. Walton (eds.), Antarctica (1985); and R.M. Laws (ed.), Antarctic Ecology, 2 vol. (1984), discusses the continent's physical environment, fauna, flora, land and sea ecology, conservation, and exploitation. I.B. Campbell and G.G.C. Claridge, Antarctica: Soils, Weathering Processes, and Environment (1987), provides a summary of recent research.
Geologic record
Raymond J. Adie (ed.), Antarctic Geology (1964), and Antarctic Geology and Geophysics (1972); Campbell Craddock (ed.), Antarctic Geoscience (1982); R.L. Oliver, P.R. James, and J.B. Jago (eds.), Antarctic Earth Science (1983); and M.R.A. Thomson, J.A. Crame, and J.W. Thomson (eds.), Geological Evolution of Antarctica (1991), are records of international symposia describing Earth science research by many nations. J.C. Behrendt and C.R. Bentley, Magnetic and Gravity Maps of the Antarctic (1968); and Campbell Craddock et al., Geologic Maps of Antarctica (1969–70), provide maps and texts, the latter work covering most mountain regions at a 1:1,000,000 scale. Other works on the geology of Antarctica are Edmund Stump (ed.), Geological Investigations in Northern Victoria Land (1986); and W.E. LeMasurier and J.W. Thomson (eds.), Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans (1990). Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, vol. 28 (1975), 35 (1976), and 36 (1977), contain results of drilling by the Glomar Challenger in Antarctic waters. Results of drilling by the JOIDES Resolution are contained in Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program: Scientific Results, especially vol. 113 (1990), from the Weddell Sea, vol. 114 (1991), from subantarctic regions and the Falkland Islands, and vol. 119 (1991), from the Kerguelen Plateau. A.L. Graham and John O. Annexstad, “Antarctic Meteorites,” Antarctic Science, 1(1):3–14 (1989), reviews the findings and origins of meteorites in Antarctica. Many details of Antarctic meteorite investigations are also reported in volumes of the Proceedings of the NIPR Symposium on Antarctic Meteorites (annual), published by the National Institute of Polar Research.
Climate
Morton J. Rubin (ed.), Studies in Antarctic Meteorology (1966); S. Orvig (ed.), Climates of the Polar Regions (1970); W.S. Weyant, The Antarctic Atmosphere: Climatology of the Surface Environment (1967); and W. Schwerdtfeger, Weather and Climate of the Antarctic (1984), include topical studies and a few general review articles.
Glaciers and seas
Malcolm Mellor (ed.), Antarctic Snow and Ice Studies (1964); and A.P. Crary (ed.), Antarctic Snow and Ice Studies II (1971), are collections mainly of topical studies of greatly varied scope. John Mercer, Glaciers of the Antarctic (1967), provides a general review of Antarctica's glaciers. Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice (1986), investigates Antarctic ice and also describes other aspects of the region, including exploration, literature, and art. A.L. Gordon and R.D. Goldberg, Circumpolar Characteristics of Antarctic Waters (1970); and Joseph L. Reid and Dennis E. Hayes (eds.), Antarctic Oceanology, 2 vol. (1971–72), describe features of South Polar water masses, their currents, and their interactions with subtropical and subantarctic waters, as well as of the ocean floor and sediment carpet. George Deacon, The Antarctic Circumpolar Ocean (1984), includes a summary of early discoveries by explorers, sealers, and whalers and a review of modern knowledge of Antarctic waters. Other works include Martin Jeffries (ed.), Antarctic Sea Ice: Physical Processes, Interactions, and Variability (1998); and Stanley S. Jacobs and Raymond F. Weiss (eds.), Ocean, Ice, and Atmosphere: Interactions at the Antarctic Continental Margin (1998).
Plant and animal life
Eric Hosking and Bryan Sage, Antarctic Wildlife (1982), is an authoritative discussion of the fauna of Antarctica. Biology of the Antarctic Seas (irregular), contains technical accounts of Antarctic sea life; a more popular summary is Robert C. Murphy, “The Oceanic Life of the Antarctic,” Scientific American, 207(3):186–194 (September 1962). Technical accounts of terrestrial life are in J. Linsley Gressitt (ed.), Entomology of Antarctica (1967); and S.W. Greene et al., Terrestrial Life of Antarctica (1967); a nontechnical review is provided by George A. Llano, “The Terrestrial Life of the Antarctic,” Scientific American, 207(3):212–218 (September 1962). Oliver L. Austin, Jr. (ed.), Antarctic Bird Studies (1968), is a technical publication; whereas John Sparks and Tony Soper, Penguins, 2nd ed. (1987), comprehensively but nontechnically describes the characteristic flightless birds of subantarctic and Antarctic coasts. George Gaylord Simpson, Penguins: Past and Present, Here and There (1976), is an authoritative, popularly written account of penguins and their fossil record. David G. Campbell, The Crystal Desert (1992), evocatively portrays the natural history of the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands.
Economic resources
J.F. Lovering and J.R.V. Prescott, Last of Lands: Antarctica (1979), examines resources, discovery and exploration, political geography, and future prospects. Barbara Mitchell, Frozen Stakes: The Future of Antarctic Minerals (1983), presents an account of polar politics and minerals and discusses possible regimes for regulating resource development. Francisco Orrego Vicuña (ed.), Antarctic Resources Policy: Scientific, Legal, and Political Issues (1983), contains reports from the first symposium of its kind, a meeting of scientists, diplomats, and international lawyers at an Antarctic scientific station. More recent works are Deborah Shapley, The Seventh Continent: Antarctica in a Resource Age (1985); and John F. Splettstoesser and Gisela A.m. Dreschoff (eds.), Mineral Resources Potential of Antarctica (1990).
History
A thorough general account is in C. Hartley Grattan, The Southwest Pacific Since 1900 (1963). An interesting and thorough history is Walter Sullivan, Quest for a Continent (1957). Kenneth J. Bertrand, Americans in Antarctica, 1775–1948 (1971), recounts early U.S. explorations. Antarctica: Great Stories from the Frozen Continent (1985), offers a readable and profusely illustrated account of explorers from many nations, as well as a description of the physical environment. A complete list of expeditions, claims, treaties, discoveries, and meetings is found in R.K. Headland, Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events (1989).
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