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Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent
There have been many books about Antarctica in the past, but all have focused on only one aspect of the continent - its science, its wildlife, the heroic age of exploration, personal experiences or the sheer awesome beauty of the landscape, for example - but none has managed to capture whole story, till now. Gabrielle Walker, author, consultant to New Scientist and regular broadcaster with the BBC has written a book unlike any that has ever been written about the continent. Antarctica weaves all the significant threads into an intricate tapestry, made up of science, natural history, poetry, epic history, what it feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people back there again and again. It is only when all the parts come together that the underlying truths of the continent emerge. Antarctica is the most alien place on Earth, the only part of our planet where humans could never survive unaided. It is truly like walking on another planet. And yet, in its silence, its agelessness and its mysteries lie the secrets of our past, and of our future.
391 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
About the author
Gabrielle Walker
12 books43 followersDr Gabrielle Walker is an expert on climate change and the energy industry. She has been a Professor at Princeton University and is the author of four books including co-authoring the bestselling book about climate and energy: The Hot Topic, which was described by Al Gore as “a beacon of clarity” and by The Times as “a material gain for the axis of good”.
Gabrielle is currently Chief Scientist at Xynteo, an advisory firm with a mission to reinvent growth: to enable businesses to grow in a new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic realities of the 21st century.
She has been Climate Change Editor at Nature and Features Editor at New Scientist and has written very extensively for many international newspapers and magazines. [from author's website]
Gabrielle is currently Chief Scientist at Xynteo, an advisory firm with a mission to reinvent growth: to enable businesses to grow in a new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic realities of the 21st century.
She has been Climate Change Editor at Nature and Features Editor at New Scientist and has written very extensively for many international newspapers and magazines. [from author's website]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
January 10, 2024
Certainly Antarctica seems a place which should force a change of perspective. Not only because there is nothing familiar for us to compare ourselves to, to judge against - no trees, little familiar life, nothing permanent. This author has written a rather encompassing book as she travels from outpost to outpost. She recognizes that she’s an invasive species, a non-native lifeform.
She delivers a lot of terrifying information in a totally non-terrifying way. I don’t think she’s terrified at all. She’s quite proud of how tough she is. I am impressed. This book is over a decade old, and she doesn’t seem too upset about stuff.
Here’s a bit:
“Unlike the other two exit points for West Antarctic ice, which flow into the Ross and Ronne ice shelves, the glaciers pouring into the Amundsen Sea have no massive shelf of floating ice to buttress them. Instead, each has its own miniature ice shelf that runs for just 20 miles before it hits open water. That puts the glaciers perilously close to the ocean, with very little to hold them back.”
She has told us that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), held in by this “miniature shelf” slopes downward as it goes inland, like a bowl - so if not blocked it would be a free for all:
“The rock on which the WAIS rests isn’t high like the east. Instead, almost all of it lies below sea level, and some is 10,000 feet deep. So deep, in fact, that if it weren’t for the ice there would be nothing in the west but ocean, and a smattering of small island archipelagos.”
The last time this was open ocean, you ask? It was when the Earth was 1.5 degrees above pre industrial, pre-anthropocene temperature. Like the temperature the Earth is now.
(https://phys.org/news/2023-12-antarct...)
And that tiny ice shelf is disappearing at ½ mile a year (measured beginning in 1992). 2024 - 1992… divided by a half mile per year…Leaves us four years from now to zero.
Zero is when there is no ice shelf to the Below Sea Level WAIS.
Of course I realize that this simplistic straight line calculation leaves out many variables but really, why isn’t this a headline, daily? Why are only climatologists “gobsmacked”? Where are the other adults?
Interesting reading.
She delivers a lot of terrifying information in a totally non-terrifying way. I don’t think she’s terrified at all. She’s quite proud of how tough she is. I am impressed. This book is over a decade old, and she doesn’t seem too upset about stuff.
Here’s a bit:
“Unlike the other two exit points for West Antarctic ice, which flow into the Ross and Ronne ice shelves, the glaciers pouring into the Amundsen Sea have no massive shelf of floating ice to buttress them. Instead, each has its own miniature ice shelf that runs for just 20 miles before it hits open water. That puts the glaciers perilously close to the ocean, with very little to hold them back.”
She has told us that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), held in by this “miniature shelf” slopes downward as it goes inland, like a bowl - so if not blocked it would be a free for all:
“The rock on which the WAIS rests isn’t high like the east. Instead, almost all of it lies below sea level, and some is 10,000 feet deep. So deep, in fact, that if it weren’t for the ice there would be nothing in the west but ocean, and a smattering of small island archipelagos.”
The last time this was open ocean, you ask? It was when the Earth was 1.5 degrees above pre industrial, pre-anthropocene temperature. Like the temperature the Earth is now.
(https://phys.org/news/2023-12-antarct...)
And that tiny ice shelf is disappearing at ½ mile a year (measured beginning in 1992). 2024 - 1992… divided by a half mile per year…Leaves us four years from now to zero.
Zero is when there is no ice shelf to the Below Sea Level WAIS.
Of course I realize that this simplistic straight line calculation leaves out many variables but really, why isn’t this a headline, daily? Why are only climatologists “gobsmacked”? Where are the other adults?
Interesting reading.
April 19, 2020
A woman's look at all the areas and bases and science studies being undertaken in Antarctica. The author went to the frozen continent many times, and interviewed everyone from overwintering mechanics at the Pole to Russian priests to hardy penguin researchers.
If you were following the drilling down through ice cores to an under ice lake - that's here, including why the team stopped six metres above the water.
If you want to know about Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen and many other hardy souls, that's here too.
If you want to understand why Chile and Argentina have been having babies born at their bases, and shipped in to spend the summer, you'll find out.
If you are not sure what parts of Antarctica are freezing more and what parts are melting dangerously fast, or how we know, it's all covered.
And if you'd like to volunteer to walk in search of meteorites lying on the ice, on a landscape not too dissimilar to Mars - that's in the book.
This is a brilliant, skilled, sensory piece of writing, full of journalism, history, poetry and science.
This is an unbiased review.
If you were following the drilling down through ice cores to an under ice lake - that's here, including why the team stopped six metres above the water.
If you want to know about Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen and many other hardy souls, that's here too.
If you want to understand why Chile and Argentina have been having babies born at their bases, and shipped in to spend the summer, you'll find out.
If you are not sure what parts of Antarctica are freezing more and what parts are melting dangerously fast, or how we know, it's all covered.
And if you'd like to volunteer to walk in search of meteorites lying on the ice, on a landscape not too dissimilar to Mars - that's in the book.
This is a brilliant, skilled, sensory piece of writing, full of journalism, history, poetry and science.
This is an unbiased review.
July 29, 2013
This book is not as amazing as the author believes it is. The author here is a bit intrusive into the story, and in every case that makes the book much less interesting. Especially romanticizing the forces of nature -- as if they care a whit about you. Whenever she goes for a walk and records her impressions watch out.
This is my first Antarctica book, so it should have made more of an impression. Presenting this as the intimate portrait of the continent, however, is overselling the content.
This is my first Antarctica book, so it should have made more of an impression. Presenting this as the intimate portrait of the continent, however, is overselling the content.
February 5, 2020
What a book! I have such a fascination with Antarctica and this bin really have me the feeling I was there with her. And of course, the information on the changes in the ice in Antarctica as the result of increased greenhouse gases is extremely concerning. Especially since there have been such increased levels in the eight years since the book was published.
October 11, 2020
Just had the absolute best time reading this. If you’ve got the Antarctic itch this ones for you : )
November 6, 2022
Very informative regarding state of Antarctic scientific research at time book was written (more than 10 yr ago). Just in news this week are reports of Antarctic scientists detecting neutrinos from another galaxy. I actually understood this since I had just read about the author’s time spent with this group of scientists. She explained the work quite well , including why the extremely thick ice makes it possible to detect neutrinos in Antarctica.
This was not a dull book of dry facts, but was an engrossing tale of people at work in a very unique environment. The author does explain the science and methodologies really well—and I couldn’t help but think that I should have been an Antarctic scientist!
I’m so glad I read this in preparation for my upcoming Antarctica trip.
This was not a dull book of dry facts, but was an engrossing tale of people at work in a very unique environment. The author does explain the science and methodologies really well—and I couldn’t help but think that I should have been an Antarctic scientist!
I’m so glad I read this in preparation for my upcoming Antarctica trip.
Read
July 22, 2014Fun and interesting. A lot of cool science, some ominous (but not terribly ominous) climate change data, and neat insights into the way the various research stations function socially and economically, both one by one and as a sort of continent-wide, international community. I do think a bit that some of the whimsical humor and quirkiness of the place, which Walker seems to really admire if not downright fangirl, is less some astonishing adaptation mechanism of almost superhuman cameraderie in face of nature, etc, and more that it's a bunch of nerds on a really extreme camping trip, but I guess that was charming in its way too.
August 27, 2016
I felt like I was on Antarctica (and this book made me want to experience the continent in person!). A great blend of what is happening now on Antarctica - to the continent itself to the science taking place there - and its history. I will read this book again and again.
December 19, 2022
Взагалі-то це книжка про подорожі, але Антарктида - специфічний континент. Тому тут лише трохи тревел-жанру і значно більше дуже цікавого наукпопу: про пінгвінів, льодовикові періоди, динозаврів, зміни клімату, Великий Вибух та багато інших речей, що їх досліджують на антарктичних дослідницьких станціях науковці, єдині постійні людські мешканці Антарктики.
April 12, 2018
Can a book about Antarctica be interesting? Yes, it can! It has been so pleasant, in fact, that it made me excited about reading again, after a period of reading weariness.
June 23, 2023
"Learn what you can from Antarctica, but don't ever underestimate it." This sentence appears about 2/3 of the way through the book, and it perfectly encapsulates the spirit of this book. I will never not be fascinated by Antarctica and the people who, no matter how briefly, populate it.
August 19, 2013
Reading about the icy isolation (icylation boooooo) of the South Pole during the tail end of summer is fun escapism. It boggles my mind to think that people willingly go to the end of the Earth to work, explore, or, heck, do anything.
I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of research performed on the continent, and even more impressed by the necessity of isolation for much of the work. Telescopes peer into deep space, searching for the earliest signs of the Big Bang, free of the dirty light of civilization. Seismographs peer in the opposite direction, detecting subtle changes in frequency to draw a map of the Earth's innards, or, more nefariously, determine if a rogue state has detonated a nuclear weapon. Microorganisms and sea creatures thrive here, not because sub-freezing conditions are "ideal" for growth, but because they've lived in sub-optimal conditions long enough that "sub-optimal" is their new "ideal". Geologists study the bone-dry valleys of the continent not to derive the formation of, say, the Grand Canyon, but canyons on Mars. The landscape is so old, dry, and undisturbed that it's a functional equivalent of another planet! On top of that, asteroid hunters have found chunks of Mars in these valleys. I can barely comprehend the profundity of holding a small piece of another world in my hands.
Antarctica is a harsh, lonely place, seemingly designed to grind human life into the glaciers and out to sea. Yet this book shows the lives of those who reside on the bottom of our globe, and those lives are filled with joy, wonder, and excitement, all balancing on a knife's edge of isolation, darkness, and loneliness.
In a way, I'm jealous. I envy top-flight researchers who have the drive (or the luck) to doggedly pursue one problem forever and ever, amen. I long for that passion and devotion, the flow and giddy awe that comes from being the first or the best. The isolation of a research station sounds refreshing; there are plenty of days (most?) when curling up with a book and no social obligations seems like the best idea in the world.
Yet, I'm aware that my mind goes to mush once loneliness sets in, and that happens pretty quickly. Yeah, I'd love to fight to the death to learn some weird corner of biology, physics, or geology, but my expertise hasn't taken me down that path. I'm actually quite happy with my life as a cog in the medical device machine, living in a city that gives me the option of eating at hundreds of restaurants or hiking under a green canopy above a winding river. Spending a season in an extreme environment would probably inspire some fundamental change in me and I would relish the opportunity, but I know I'm not the best fit for that. However, I'm happy to know that those who are fit are able to do so, and I'm thankful for a small window into their very human lives.
I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of research performed on the continent, and even more impressed by the necessity of isolation for much of the work. Telescopes peer into deep space, searching for the earliest signs of the Big Bang, free of the dirty light of civilization. Seismographs peer in the opposite direction, detecting subtle changes in frequency to draw a map of the Earth's innards, or, more nefariously, determine if a rogue state has detonated a nuclear weapon. Microorganisms and sea creatures thrive here, not because sub-freezing conditions are "ideal" for growth, but because they've lived in sub-optimal conditions long enough that "sub-optimal" is their new "ideal". Geologists study the bone-dry valleys of the continent not to derive the formation of, say, the Grand Canyon, but canyons on Mars. The landscape is so old, dry, and undisturbed that it's a functional equivalent of another planet! On top of that, asteroid hunters have found chunks of Mars in these valleys. I can barely comprehend the profundity of holding a small piece of another world in my hands.
Antarctica is a harsh, lonely place, seemingly designed to grind human life into the glaciers and out to sea. Yet this book shows the lives of those who reside on the bottom of our globe, and those lives are filled with joy, wonder, and excitement, all balancing on a knife's edge of isolation, darkness, and loneliness.
In a way, I'm jealous. I envy top-flight researchers who have the drive (or the luck) to doggedly pursue one problem forever and ever, amen. I long for that passion and devotion, the flow and giddy awe that comes from being the first or the best. The isolation of a research station sounds refreshing; there are plenty of days (most?) when curling up with a book and no social obligations seems like the best idea in the world.
Yet, I'm aware that my mind goes to mush once loneliness sets in, and that happens pretty quickly. Yeah, I'd love to fight to the death to learn some weird corner of biology, physics, or geology, but my expertise hasn't taken me down that path. I'm actually quite happy with my life as a cog in the medical device machine, living in a city that gives me the option of eating at hundreds of restaurants or hiking under a green canopy above a winding river. Spending a season in an extreme environment would probably inspire some fundamental change in me and I would relish the opportunity, but I know I'm not the best fit for that. However, I'm happy to know that those who are fit are able to do so, and I'm thankful for a small window into their very human lives.
April 27, 2017
This was a fascinating, well-written view of a continent that I previously knew very little about. Gabrielle Walker knows what she speaks of, having taken several trips to various points in Antarctica. She looks at this frozen land from a variety of perspectives: historical, geographical, political, cultural, geological, sociological, and philosophical. There aren't too many rocks that Gabrielle leaves unturned and she has the wonderful skill of picking the most interesting things to tell you about, making this a vibrant page-turner. The downsides were a bit of a lag at the end with a heavy focus on climate change and some ugly language in a few sections that was pretty off-putting. Overall, though, this was a good solid read and I learned a lot along the way.
Content warning: A few patches of swearing, blasphemy, and profanity; a couple of paragraphs with sexual immorality mentioned.
Content warning: A few patches of swearing, blasphemy, and profanity; a couple of paragraphs with sexual immorality mentioned.
August 12, 2014
Traverses the entire continent discussing the explorers of the heroic age, past and current scientific research operations, the cultural differences between each base, and introduces the reader to the machinery that allows the frozen continent to be habitable, however sparsely. All while capturing the profound awe felt by those few bastards lucky enough to have set foot on the ice. It's all vastly fascinating. I want soooo badly to spend a winter at the south pole, it sounds cleansingly brutal.
"I watched the sky a long time, concluding that such beauty was reserved for distant, dangerous places, and that nature has good reason for exacting her own personal sacrifices from those determined to witness them." (Admiral Richard Byrd)
"I watched the sky a long time, concluding that such beauty was reserved for distant, dangerous places, and that nature has good reason for exacting her own personal sacrifices from those determined to witness them." (Admiral Richard Byrd)
December 2, 2020
I have wanted to go to Antartica for many years but for a variety of reasons it’s a dream I can no longer make come true. This book’s vivid account has given me the closest I can imagine I will come to the Antartica experience and more than I would have been able to experience had I have visited. Gabrielle structured her book in such a way that she gave evocative glimpses into all aspects of life on this continent, and it was the personal insight I so enjoyed mixed perfectly with, Antartica’s natural inhabitants, history and accessible science. Thank you.
September 2, 2016
Walker is one of the better science writers out there at the moment.
She has a passion for the polar regions, and writes about Antarctica with clarity and measured prose. She clearly explains how the effect of climate change is starting to have a noticeable effect at the South Pole. She describes the characters that inhabit the stations, who vary from the reclusive scientist to the people normally on the fringes of society.
Bang up to date, well worth a read.
She has a passion for the polar regions, and writes about Antarctica with clarity and measured prose. She clearly explains how the effect of climate change is starting to have a noticeable effect at the South Pole. She describes the characters that inhabit the stations, who vary from the reclusive scientist to the people normally on the fringes of society.
Bang up to date, well worth a read.
February 20, 2023
As much as I loved Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognito from 1997, if you were to ask me to name just ONE book on Antarctica, I'd have to say it's this offering from Gabrielle Walker, first published in 2012 would be the one I'd have to suggest. Walker has a PhD in natural sciences from Cambridge University and has taught both there and at Princeton. She is Chief Scientist of strategic advisory firm Xyntéo and a consultant to New Scientist. Additionally, she has presented the Planet Earth Under Threat series as well as The Secret Life of Ice for BBC4.
AND, she is one hell of an absorbing writer! Everything from the content structure (Part One focuses on East Antarctica; Part Two on The High Plateau; Part Three West Antarctica). In laying out the book in these three parts, she then dives into what each unique area offers. She begins her story at Mactown, the largest research station on Antarctica, and writes lovingly and humorously about Penguins. While she initially sought to resist the universal fascination of these amazing birds, she -- like the rest of us -- caved as she viewed their silliness, their ingenuity, their amazing parenting and fortitude.
She writes about her trek to the South Pole, her seeking meteorites (it is in Antarctica that we first learned that meteors from Mars and the Moon have made their way to Earth, altering and expanding our knowledge of the Solar System. Somehow, she tells the heroic story of Shackleton, a story I've read about many times, in the most humanizing and dramatic way making it live for me as no other has and then eases one into a deep dive into some other science discovery. And that's what makes this book so wonderful. The ease and fluidity of her writing seamlessly merges travelogue, history, and cutting-edge science. And, she exposes a bit of her romantic poetic side occasionally too.
She reminds us that 100 million years ago, Antarctica drifted over the South Pole with concentrations of greenhouse gases much higher than they are today and the Earth was 18-degrees warmer than today. That 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs living on Antarctica died with the rest of them and it wasn't till 35 million years ago that Australia and South America made their final break with Antarctica, leaving it isolated by the circular oceanic currents that cooled temperatures till 1 million years later the first ice sheets appeared.
And today, she reminds us, the power of Antarctica to change people's mentalities might still prevail. It was scientists on Antarctica that the hole in the ozone layer of our atmosphere was discovered, leading to a spectacular international cooperative effort banning the aerosols responsible and allowing the hold to recover. She writes:
"Perhaps the steadying influence of this inhuman continent will help us all to tip the balance from smash and grab to human solidarity. I hope so. Because if we continue to pour out the gases that are warming our world, the melting will continue, and the seas will rise." She points out that many of the first explorers came to the same epiphany as testified in the diary of Robert Scott before he died there: "For God's sake, look after our people!" As Richard Byrd, near death wrote: "It seemed a pity that men must undergo a cataclysmic experience to perceive this simplest of truths."
One goes to the end of the Earth and you find... "a mirror a truism," something you either should have known all along or perhaps you knew intellectually but only now "after Antarctica, it's in your gut." After my return from Antarctica I find I've not talked about it much because I understand it is something others cannot understand. I thought I knew with all the reading and viewing of documentaries beforehand, but no. I'd hadn't a clue. The stark beauty, silence, absolute unworldliness of Antarctica changes you. Antarctica reminds one of just how precarious our existence actually is, and, as Walker notes, "how tenuous and temporary our mastery."
She ends, reminding us that ultimately, whatever we do, at the most basic level, "Antarctica itself is under no threat." This may seem an astounding statement knowing what we know of the melting ice sheet. But it reminds me of a tee-shirt I own: "Death is only the end if you think the story is about you." She writes: "Antarctica is bigger than all of us, bigger than our technologies, our human strengths and weaknesses, our eagerness to build and our capacity to destroy. Enough ice could slide into the sea to turn West Antarctica into an island archipelago, and to raise the sea to heights that would swamp coastal cities, without causing so much as a flutter in the continent's cool white heart.
And even when all the ice does melt that will not be the end of Antarctica. The Sun is naturally warming as it ages, and some distant day, perhaps millions of years in the future, the white continent will turn green again no matter what we do. When this happens, as it must, we humans will probably not be there to witness it. But someone or something else surely will."
AND, she is one hell of an absorbing writer! Everything from the content structure (Part One focuses on East Antarctica; Part Two on The High Plateau; Part Three West Antarctica). In laying out the book in these three parts, she then dives into what each unique area offers. She begins her story at Mactown, the largest research station on Antarctica, and writes lovingly and humorously about Penguins. While she initially sought to resist the universal fascination of these amazing birds, she -- like the rest of us -- caved as she viewed their silliness, their ingenuity, their amazing parenting and fortitude.
She writes about her trek to the South Pole, her seeking meteorites (it is in Antarctica that we first learned that meteors from Mars and the Moon have made their way to Earth, altering and expanding our knowledge of the Solar System. Somehow, she tells the heroic story of Shackleton, a story I've read about many times, in the most humanizing and dramatic way making it live for me as no other has and then eases one into a deep dive into some other science discovery. And that's what makes this book so wonderful. The ease and fluidity of her writing seamlessly merges travelogue, history, and cutting-edge science. And, she exposes a bit of her romantic poetic side occasionally too.
She reminds us that 100 million years ago, Antarctica drifted over the South Pole with concentrations of greenhouse gases much higher than they are today and the Earth was 18-degrees warmer than today. That 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs living on Antarctica died with the rest of them and it wasn't till 35 million years ago that Australia and South America made their final break with Antarctica, leaving it isolated by the circular oceanic currents that cooled temperatures till 1 million years later the first ice sheets appeared.
And today, she reminds us, the power of Antarctica to change people's mentalities might still prevail. It was scientists on Antarctica that the hole in the ozone layer of our atmosphere was discovered, leading to a spectacular international cooperative effort banning the aerosols responsible and allowing the hold to recover. She writes:
"Perhaps the steadying influence of this inhuman continent will help us all to tip the balance from smash and grab to human solidarity. I hope so. Because if we continue to pour out the gases that are warming our world, the melting will continue, and the seas will rise." She points out that many of the first explorers came to the same epiphany as testified in the diary of Robert Scott before he died there: "For God's sake, look after our people!" As Richard Byrd, near death wrote: "It seemed a pity that men must undergo a cataclysmic experience to perceive this simplest of truths."
One goes to the end of the Earth and you find... "a mirror a truism," something you either should have known all along or perhaps you knew intellectually but only now "after Antarctica, it's in your gut." After my return from Antarctica I find I've not talked about it much because I understand it is something others cannot understand. I thought I knew with all the reading and viewing of documentaries beforehand, but no. I'd hadn't a clue. The stark beauty, silence, absolute unworldliness of Antarctica changes you. Antarctica reminds one of just how precarious our existence actually is, and, as Walker notes, "how tenuous and temporary our mastery."
She ends, reminding us that ultimately, whatever we do, at the most basic level, "Antarctica itself is under no threat." This may seem an astounding statement knowing what we know of the melting ice sheet. But it reminds me of a tee-shirt I own: "Death is only the end if you think the story is about you." She writes: "Antarctica is bigger than all of us, bigger than our technologies, our human strengths and weaknesses, our eagerness to build and our capacity to destroy. Enough ice could slide into the sea to turn West Antarctica into an island archipelago, and to raise the sea to heights that would swamp coastal cities, without causing so much as a flutter in the continent's cool white heart.
And even when all the ice does melt that will not be the end of Antarctica. The Sun is naturally warming as it ages, and some distant day, perhaps millions of years in the future, the white continent will turn green again no matter what we do. When this happens, as it must, we humans will probably not be there to witness it. But someone or something else surely will."
September 11, 2021
“The scale of the place is hard to grasp. You see a mountain or an island that seems a few hours’ walk away and decide to wander over and explore; five days later you’re still walking. The early explorers did this a lot. The problem is not just the size of the features—glaciers that make Alaska look small, mountains that dwarf the Alps—but also the absence of anything against which to judge them. There are no trees, or indeed plants of any kind; no land animals; nothing but glaciers, snowfields and sepia-toned rocks.”
“It can take being in pure emptiness to remind you to let go of your hubris; and it can take being blocked by the power of nature to remind you how precarious our existence is and how tenuous and temporary our mastery. Some find this frightening, but I take a strange kind of comfort from knowing that this patient and implacable continent doesn’t care what we think or do. It will yield warnings if we seek them. We can avert human catastrophe if we act on them. But Antarctica itself is under no threat. That, in the end, is what I love most about it. Antarctica is bigger than all of us, bigger than our technologies, our human strengths and weaknesses, our eagerness to build and our capacity to destroy. Enough ice could slide into the sea to turn West Antarctica into an island archipelago, and to raise the sea to heights that would swamp coastal cities, without causing so much as a flutter in the continent’s cool white heart.”
This author is not the most exciting or lyrical writer, I kept wondering who she was to gain such access to Antarctica, and it turns out she is a respected climate scientist. I prefer Barry Lopez on Antartica, but the deep access the author had to the continent is pretty stunning, even if the prose is a little dry. A lot is well known, but there were sweet gems of wonder that the author slipped in that might lend themselves to a found poem. I was stunned to think that as written above, Antarctica would be fairly immune to sea level rise, but the human stations would be affected, or maybe they are more mobile than say, NYC, so it would be a blip. But the continent down there, rotating in a way so differently than ours, would endure.
I only know one person who has ever been to Antarctica, and I know she was on a cruise but not much else, not sure if she set foot on it, or what she saw, unfortunately. I would like to see the Dry Valleys. The lack of pictures when we are talking about such an extraterrestrial type landscape was jarring; I went down a wormhole of some pictures especially of the Dry Valleys and the mountains and ice sheets. It is truly a otherworldly landscape, and this book was a good overview.
In spite of its size, Antarctica officially belongs to nobody. An international treaty, signed now by the forty-nine countries with a declared interest, forbids commercial exploitation and dedicates the entire place to ‘peace and science’.
Even its apparent barrenness is a large part of its power. People are drawn to Antarctica precisely because so much has been stripped away. The support staff I met there told me that they had come not to find themselves so much as to lose the outside world. The continent lacks most of the normal ways that we interact in human societies.
And with this simplicity of life comes a clarity that’s intoxicating.
The underlying theme of the book is the classic ‘hero’ story, in which the narrator travels to the end of the Earth, to the strangest, most distant lands, only to find a mirror, the girl next door, the key to life back home. But there is also a deeper message, for which Antarctica is the living metaphor. The most experienced Antarcticans talk not about conquering the continent but about surrendering to it. No matter how powerful you believe yourself to be—how good your technology, how rich your invention—Antarctica is always bigger. And if we humans look honestly into this ice mirror, and see how small we are, we may learn a humility that is the first step towards wisdom.
The water is so clear that you can see for 250, maybe 300 yards in the green half-light. Your head tells you that this is impossible, that distant divers cannot be so far away and still so clearly visible, that they must instead be much closer, hanging nearby in the water like tiny Tinker Bells. Nobody is tethered. You float freely to maximise your flexibility, always deeply mindful of the shaft of light, what Sam calls the Jesus beam’, that shoots down from the dive hole and shows the way home.
And below you, the grey sea floor is carpeted with alien creatures. Run your flashlight over them and their colours leap out. There are brittle stars, golden discs that raise themselves up on their five long legs as you approach, and then march away on tiptoe like the Martians from The War of the Worlds; feather stars, 40 cm across, that look like a bundle of bottle brushes and swim by waving their protuberances wildly as if they were drunken octopuses; and sun stars, a sort of bright orange starfish with up to forty arms, which in the waters of McMurdo Sound can grow to a metre or more.
The sea spiders here are more than a thousand times bigger than the ones elsewhere in the world. They stride over the seabed like colossi, a full foot from tip to toe. They are supposed to have eight legs, like their relatives on the land. But some have ten or even twelve.
Why should these creatures be so much bigger than anywhere else? Although it seems paradoxical, the answer lies in the extreme cold temperatures. Life here is necessarily very slow. Chemical reactions take place at an absurdly sluggish rate, and animals can live very much longer than their warmer cousins. On top of that, colder water can dissolve more oxygen, which is essential for growing big.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are the closest thing we have on Earth to the planet Mars. A set of bare rocky valleys running in parallel from the edge of the ice sheet down to the sea, they are ‘dry’ not just through lack of water, but through lack of ice. They are also all but monochrome. The jagged mountain ranges that separate the valleys are run through like a layer cake with alternate slabs of chocolate brown dolorite and pale sandstone. This is an unearthly place, intimidating and harsh in the bright light of noon. But at night in the summer, when the sun never sets but merely hovers close to the horizon and casts its long low shadows, the peaks seem to soften, the dolorite rock grows richer and the oatmeal sandstone takes on a golden glow. It’s not just the colours that look their best at night-time. Those long shadows also pick out the features that tell the history of this extraordinary place. There are weird raised beaches, jutting out halfway up the mountain sides, which mark ancient high stands of water; rock ripples and gigantic potholes that were once carved out by a waterfall the size of Niagara; and bulbous glaciers and frost-cracked soils that show how cold and dry this land has now become. Fifty-five million years ago, Antarctica was warm, wet and brimming with life.
No rain has fallen in the interior of the Dry Valleys for millions of years, and there has been precious little snow. This is the coldest, driest, barest patch of rock on Earth. The life here took the form of giant mats that look as though they’re woven of some sludgy seamless material. In fact, they were made from microscopic cyanobacteria,
Dave Marchant calls this landscape ‘paralysed’. There has been no running water in Beacon Valley for fourteen million years. Most of the snow on the ground has blown in from elsewhere rather than fallen from the clouds. The wind may scoop and pit the boulders but it doesn’t move them. If I’d walked here a million years ago it would have looked like this. Ten million years ago, before humans ever walked anywhere, this is how this valley looked. It’s a window back in time.’
The tectonic forces that cause the rest of the world to buckle and warp have been subdued here for an extraordinary stretch of time. ‘You’re looking at the most stable landscape on Earth,’ said Dave. ‘Nothing even comes close. The Grand Canyon was carved in its entirety; the alps in New Zealand have risen to their great heights and all the while nothing happened here.’ I was awed by the sense that time was standing still there. And not just in the past but in the future too.
‘Are we crazy to spend six weeks out here? Can you imagine doing it?’ Yes, I could. I could imagine staying here much, much longer than that. I found myself envying him the serenity of this valley that time forgot. ‘I’m tired of rushing around,’ I said. ‘I’d like to stay here long enough to get bored, and then go beyond the boredom and see what’s really there.’ He seemed to understand. ‘It’s when you’ve been here for a while, when you really get in the zone, like a runner with a second wind, when the weather’s good and you’ve had a good day doing good science, you can just stop and listen and ask “what are you telling me?”’ Ask who? The landscape? I wondered if he was being whimsical again but I could see from his face that he was in earnest. ‘It does talk to you,’ he said. ‘Antarctica has this way of clearing your mind. Part of it is that there’s no distractions. They keep saying to me “why not just do day trips” but I say, “no, you have to be here, to be immersed in it. You have to feel the landscape—to start to feel like Antarctica. That’s when you can hear what it’s telling you.”’
Robert’s telescope would be picking up the faint afterglow of the Big Bang itself. For the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang the entire Universe glowed hotter than the Sun. A roiling plasma of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions circled around each other, eager to join forces and become neutralised, and yet constantly breaking apart as soon as they united, because of the searing heat. And all was bathed in a brilliant blaze of light. Eventually, as the Universe stretched and cooled, the electrons and ions fell into each other’s arms to become the atoms that make up the stars, the planets, and us.10 And the light streaked out across the Universe, bearing the slightest, almost imperceptible traces of erstwhile lumps in the cosmic maelstrom, here the light a little denser, there a little more insubstantial. This faint glow is still out there, its elongated wavelengths now too far from the visible rainbow for human eyes to see.
the other kind of whiteout, the one that had apparently descended now without warning. In this variant, you could see anything in front of you quite clearly, but without any definition. Thick cloud somewhere high
above us was scattering sunlight so completely that all shadows were gone. The white snow underfoot and the white sky above were indistinguishable, empty of any kind of texture
Or maybe it’s not really about peace. There was nothing passive about this feeling. The world had shrunk, as if Antarctica had allowed itself to go from being intimidating to being intimate. And it had given me a deep sense of comfort that was almost overwhelming. This was the opposite of loneliness. It was also the opposite of being smothered. I felt utterly relaxed.
the continents could drift, that Antarctica spent much of its geological history wandering around the warmer parts of the world, before the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates took it to its current resting position at the South Pole. But we know that now. So perhaps all these fossils came from a time when the continent was basking in the warmth of the tropics. Well, not exactly. Geologists have traced Antarctica’s path through the ages, and it landed at its present position some one hundred million years ago—within the days of the James Ross ankylosaur. Even when Antarctica was sitting squarely at the Pole, it was a green continent, covered with forests and ferns and dinosaurs.
‘But warm-blooded animals only account for less than 0.00001 per cent of species on Earth. So for a scientist, if you take a statistical approach they don’t exist. They’re such a small proportion of life on Earth that they don’t really exist.’ Whoa. Statistically speaking warm-blooded animals, including humans, don’t really exist?
Eugene Domack, a sedimentologist from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He knew that the Peninsula was undergoing serious change right now, but he was also ready to take the long view. It was possible that this was just some perfectly natural local warming. Perhaps the Peninsula regularly experienced hot flushes that could disappear as quickly as they came. After all, we had only been acquainted with the region for a couple of centuries. Ice shelves might have been breaking and reforming repeatedly for thousands of years, with nobody there to notice.
the oldest Navy traditions. The previous night, the ship had sailed past the invisible line in the sea that marks the Antarctic Circle, and those of us who were first-timers had had to undergo an initiation ceremony. Originally this only applied to crossings of the equator, during which naval ‘pollywogs’ (neophytes) were transformed into ‘shellbacks’ (veterans) by means of the sort of humiliations that would make members of a fraternity turn pale.
This certifies that she Did, Boldly and Without Trepidation, Cross the Antarctic Circle at 66° 33’ South Latitude, 67° 36’West Longitude, aboard the Vessel Nathaniel Brown Palmer, entering the Treacherous and Unforgiving Reaches of the Antarctic Ocean. By so Doing and having Subsequently displayed proper Obeisance to King Neptune and his Faithful Lieges prior to Departing the Southern Reaches, She now Commands due Honor and Respect from all Persons, Whales, Seals, Penguins, Fishes, Crustaceans, Sponges, Insignificant Microscopic Creatures and other Denizens of the Polar Domains. (Rob studies insignificant microscopic creatures, which is probably why they made it on to the list.) Below all this, just above the signature of King Neptune, it added: She bears this Distinction with Pride for it is neither Lightly Undertaken nor Easily Attained.
All of this ice had come from the land, from snow, turning to ice, turning to glaciers, spilling into the sea, floating, flexing and finally breaking off. But the water, too, was freezing. Here it was slushy with grease ice, or frazil, which slithered against the ship’s hull; there it was so still that it had already begun to form pancakes, like frozen water lilies, decorated with streaks of snow. As we continued, the sea ice became more abundant, and thicker. The Palmer’s bow now smacked with pistol cracks as she performed a stately slalom through the pack. And overhead snow petrels wheeled, silhouetted against a slate grey sky, graceful as swallows.
sorted through his newly retrieved samples to see what the mud had to say. And what he found was as shocking as the Larsen B’s almighty breakdown. As far back as the record could show him, all the way to the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the ice shelf had been fully intact.37 The spectacular collapse of Larsen B was completely new. This was deeply troubling news. It seemed to confirm what many meteorologists suspected—that the warming of the Peninsula really is down to our activity.
making their mark on the Antarctic Peninsula. There was one shred of comfort. Floating ice already displaces water, so when ice shelves disintegrate they don’t make sea levels rise. But they now looked like a serious warning sign, a shot across our bows. ‘The Peninsula ice shelves really are the canary in the mine,’ Gene said. ‘And if the canary goes, you have to be worried.’
On the eastern side is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, by far the larger of the two, a mighty behemoth that contains more than 80 per cent of all the ice on Earth.
Though its average thickness is more than a mile, most of its base still rests safely on high ground and most of its ice creeps only sluggishly from the centre to the sea. It has been around for tens of millions of years.
Since its coastline tracks the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the eastern ice sheet is relatively easy to reach by ship or plane from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the tip of South America. On the west, however there is . . . nothing. The coastline of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet faces the broad, empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean. No nation can reach it simply by sailing south and it has not one single permanent scientific station. Most of the ice sheet lies beyond the normal reach of any existing Antarctic operations. The west of Antarctica is truly Earth’s final frontier.
The rock on which the West Antarctic Ice Sheet rests isn’t high like the east. Instead, almost all of it lies below sea level, and some is ten thousand feet deep. So deep, in fact, that if it weren’t for the ice there would be nothing in the west but ocean, and a smattering of small island archipelagos.
That meant we were crossing over into the ice stream. On one side, the ice was moving perhaps several feet per year. On the other, it moved that same distance in a day. On the outside of the margin the ice was resting, on the inside it was racing, and the area between was being ripped apart with the strain, creating such extraordinary patterns of crevasses on the ice
That evening the light was lovely. I borrowed some skis and went out a few kilometres beyond the camp. Apparently there hadn’t been much wind lately; the sastrugi were smooth and low. This was a new variant of the familiar ‘flat white’ of the East Antarctic plateau. Though the air here was 5°F and dry enough to scrape the skin, it was still noticeably damper than the dry desert of the east. There was moisture enough in the air to coat guy ropes with hoar frost. And the crystals on the surface were big and bold and flashy. They glinted in the slanting sunshine, as if someone had scattered handfuls of diamonds over the snow.
Beneath Antarctica’s mantle, in the deep dark places where ice met rock, it seemed that there were entire districts of hidden, liquid lakes…they were buried under miles of ice and hadn’t seen daylight for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years. But researchers knew they were there thanks to the way ice can’t help but betray its roots.
He and George have carefully charted different parts of the channel systems in the Dry Valleys. They have worked out which cuts through what, separated out the older features from the younger, used volcanic ashes to date different layers and figure out what happened when. They agree that this landscape is incredibly old. There was probably a series of floods, but the last one took place somewhere between twelve and fourteen million years ago, and almost nothing has happened since.
Ross Sea is one of the key parts of the global conveyor belt, an interdependent set of ocean currents that carries heat around the planet in a complex pattern that evens out some of the imbalances between the overheated tropics and the frozen poles. As sea ice forms here, the remaining water becomes saltier, and heavier, and sinks down to set the conveyor in motion. Throw in a sudden lens of freshwater on the top and you could jeopardise the whole thing.
And even when all of the ice finally does melt that will not be the end of Antarctica. The Sun is naturally warming as it ages, and some distant day, perhaps millions of years in the future, the white continent will turn green again no matter what we do. When this happens, as it must, we humans will probably not be there to witness it. But someone or something else surely will.
“It can take being in pure emptiness to remind you to let go of your hubris; and it can take being blocked by the power of nature to remind you how precarious our existence is and how tenuous and temporary our mastery. Some find this frightening, but I take a strange kind of comfort from knowing that this patient and implacable continent doesn’t care what we think or do. It will yield warnings if we seek them. We can avert human catastrophe if we act on them. But Antarctica itself is under no threat. That, in the end, is what I love most about it. Antarctica is bigger than all of us, bigger than our technologies, our human strengths and weaknesses, our eagerness to build and our capacity to destroy. Enough ice could slide into the sea to turn West Antarctica into an island archipelago, and to raise the sea to heights that would swamp coastal cities, without causing so much as a flutter in the continent’s cool white heart.”
This author is not the most exciting or lyrical writer, I kept wondering who she was to gain such access to Antarctica, and it turns out she is a respected climate scientist. I prefer Barry Lopez on Antartica, but the deep access the author had to the continent is pretty stunning, even if the prose is a little dry. A lot is well known, but there were sweet gems of wonder that the author slipped in that might lend themselves to a found poem. I was stunned to think that as written above, Antarctica would be fairly immune to sea level rise, but the human stations would be affected, or maybe they are more mobile than say, NYC, so it would be a blip. But the continent down there, rotating in a way so differently than ours, would endure.
I only know one person who has ever been to Antarctica, and I know she was on a cruise but not much else, not sure if she set foot on it, or what she saw, unfortunately. I would like to see the Dry Valleys. The lack of pictures when we are talking about such an extraterrestrial type landscape was jarring; I went down a wormhole of some pictures especially of the Dry Valleys and the mountains and ice sheets. It is truly a otherworldly landscape, and this book was a good overview.
In spite of its size, Antarctica officially belongs to nobody. An international treaty, signed now by the forty-nine countries with a declared interest, forbids commercial exploitation and dedicates the entire place to ‘peace and science’.
Even its apparent barrenness is a large part of its power. People are drawn to Antarctica precisely because so much has been stripped away. The support staff I met there told me that they had come not to find themselves so much as to lose the outside world. The continent lacks most of the normal ways that we interact in human societies.
And with this simplicity of life comes a clarity that’s intoxicating.
The underlying theme of the book is the classic ‘hero’ story, in which the narrator travels to the end of the Earth, to the strangest, most distant lands, only to find a mirror, the girl next door, the key to life back home. But there is also a deeper message, for which Antarctica is the living metaphor. The most experienced Antarcticans talk not about conquering the continent but about surrendering to it. No matter how powerful you believe yourself to be—how good your technology, how rich your invention—Antarctica is always bigger. And if we humans look honestly into this ice mirror, and see how small we are, we may learn a humility that is the first step towards wisdom.
The water is so clear that you can see for 250, maybe 300 yards in the green half-light. Your head tells you that this is impossible, that distant divers cannot be so far away and still so clearly visible, that they must instead be much closer, hanging nearby in the water like tiny Tinker Bells. Nobody is tethered. You float freely to maximise your flexibility, always deeply mindful of the shaft of light, what Sam calls the Jesus beam’, that shoots down from the dive hole and shows the way home.
And below you, the grey sea floor is carpeted with alien creatures. Run your flashlight over them and their colours leap out. There are brittle stars, golden discs that raise themselves up on their five long legs as you approach, and then march away on tiptoe like the Martians from The War of the Worlds; feather stars, 40 cm across, that look like a bundle of bottle brushes and swim by waving their protuberances wildly as if they were drunken octopuses; and sun stars, a sort of bright orange starfish with up to forty arms, which in the waters of McMurdo Sound can grow to a metre or more.
The sea spiders here are more than a thousand times bigger than the ones elsewhere in the world. They stride over the seabed like colossi, a full foot from tip to toe. They are supposed to have eight legs, like their relatives on the land. But some have ten or even twelve.
Why should these creatures be so much bigger than anywhere else? Although it seems paradoxical, the answer lies in the extreme cold temperatures. Life here is necessarily very slow. Chemical reactions take place at an absurdly sluggish rate, and animals can live very much longer than their warmer cousins. On top of that, colder water can dissolve more oxygen, which is essential for growing big.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are the closest thing we have on Earth to the planet Mars. A set of bare rocky valleys running in parallel from the edge of the ice sheet down to the sea, they are ‘dry’ not just through lack of water, but through lack of ice. They are also all but monochrome. The jagged mountain ranges that separate the valleys are run through like a layer cake with alternate slabs of chocolate brown dolorite and pale sandstone. This is an unearthly place, intimidating and harsh in the bright light of noon. But at night in the summer, when the sun never sets but merely hovers close to the horizon and casts its long low shadows, the peaks seem to soften, the dolorite rock grows richer and the oatmeal sandstone takes on a golden glow. It’s not just the colours that look their best at night-time. Those long shadows also pick out the features that tell the history of this extraordinary place. There are weird raised beaches, jutting out halfway up the mountain sides, which mark ancient high stands of water; rock ripples and gigantic potholes that were once carved out by a waterfall the size of Niagara; and bulbous glaciers and frost-cracked soils that show how cold and dry this land has now become. Fifty-five million years ago, Antarctica was warm, wet and brimming with life.
No rain has fallen in the interior of the Dry Valleys for millions of years, and there has been precious little snow. This is the coldest, driest, barest patch of rock on Earth. The life here took the form of giant mats that look as though they’re woven of some sludgy seamless material. In fact, they were made from microscopic cyanobacteria,
Dave Marchant calls this landscape ‘paralysed’. There has been no running water in Beacon Valley for fourteen million years. Most of the snow on the ground has blown in from elsewhere rather than fallen from the clouds. The wind may scoop and pit the boulders but it doesn’t move them. If I’d walked here a million years ago it would have looked like this. Ten million years ago, before humans ever walked anywhere, this is how this valley looked. It’s a window back in time.’
The tectonic forces that cause the rest of the world to buckle and warp have been subdued here for an extraordinary stretch of time. ‘You’re looking at the most stable landscape on Earth,’ said Dave. ‘Nothing even comes close. The Grand Canyon was carved in its entirety; the alps in New Zealand have risen to their great heights and all the while nothing happened here.’ I was awed by the sense that time was standing still there. And not just in the past but in the future too.
‘Are we crazy to spend six weeks out here? Can you imagine doing it?’ Yes, I could. I could imagine staying here much, much longer than that. I found myself envying him the serenity of this valley that time forgot. ‘I’m tired of rushing around,’ I said. ‘I’d like to stay here long enough to get bored, and then go beyond the boredom and see what’s really there.’ He seemed to understand. ‘It’s when you’ve been here for a while, when you really get in the zone, like a runner with a second wind, when the weather’s good and you’ve had a good day doing good science, you can just stop and listen and ask “what are you telling me?”’ Ask who? The landscape? I wondered if he was being whimsical again but I could see from his face that he was in earnest. ‘It does talk to you,’ he said. ‘Antarctica has this way of clearing your mind. Part of it is that there’s no distractions. They keep saying to me “why not just do day trips” but I say, “no, you have to be here, to be immersed in it. You have to feel the landscape—to start to feel like Antarctica. That’s when you can hear what it’s telling you.”’
Robert’s telescope would be picking up the faint afterglow of the Big Bang itself. For the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang the entire Universe glowed hotter than the Sun. A roiling plasma of negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions circled around each other, eager to join forces and become neutralised, and yet constantly breaking apart as soon as they united, because of the searing heat. And all was bathed in a brilliant blaze of light. Eventually, as the Universe stretched and cooled, the electrons and ions fell into each other’s arms to become the atoms that make up the stars, the planets, and us.10 And the light streaked out across the Universe, bearing the slightest, almost imperceptible traces of erstwhile lumps in the cosmic maelstrom, here the light a little denser, there a little more insubstantial. This faint glow is still out there, its elongated wavelengths now too far from the visible rainbow for human eyes to see.
the other kind of whiteout, the one that had apparently descended now without warning. In this variant, you could see anything in front of you quite clearly, but without any definition. Thick cloud somewhere high
above us was scattering sunlight so completely that all shadows were gone. The white snow underfoot and the white sky above were indistinguishable, empty of any kind of texture
Or maybe it’s not really about peace. There was nothing passive about this feeling. The world had shrunk, as if Antarctica had allowed itself to go from being intimidating to being intimate. And it had given me a deep sense of comfort that was almost overwhelming. This was the opposite of loneliness. It was also the opposite of being smothered. I felt utterly relaxed.
the continents could drift, that Antarctica spent much of its geological history wandering around the warmer parts of the world, before the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates took it to its current resting position at the South Pole. But we know that now. So perhaps all these fossils came from a time when the continent was basking in the warmth of the tropics. Well, not exactly. Geologists have traced Antarctica’s path through the ages, and it landed at its present position some one hundred million years ago—within the days of the James Ross ankylosaur. Even when Antarctica was sitting squarely at the Pole, it was a green continent, covered with forests and ferns and dinosaurs.
‘But warm-blooded animals only account for less than 0.00001 per cent of species on Earth. So for a scientist, if you take a statistical approach they don’t exist. They’re such a small proportion of life on Earth that they don’t really exist.’ Whoa. Statistically speaking warm-blooded animals, including humans, don’t really exist?
Eugene Domack, a sedimentologist from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He knew that the Peninsula was undergoing serious change right now, but he was also ready to take the long view. It was possible that this was just some perfectly natural local warming. Perhaps the Peninsula regularly experienced hot flushes that could disappear as quickly as they came. After all, we had only been acquainted with the region for a couple of centuries. Ice shelves might have been breaking and reforming repeatedly for thousands of years, with nobody there to notice.
the oldest Navy traditions. The previous night, the ship had sailed past the invisible line in the sea that marks the Antarctic Circle, and those of us who were first-timers had had to undergo an initiation ceremony. Originally this only applied to crossings of the equator, during which naval ‘pollywogs’ (neophytes) were transformed into ‘shellbacks’ (veterans) by means of the sort of humiliations that would make members of a fraternity turn pale.
This certifies that she Did, Boldly and Without Trepidation, Cross the Antarctic Circle at 66° 33’ South Latitude, 67° 36’West Longitude, aboard the Vessel Nathaniel Brown Palmer, entering the Treacherous and Unforgiving Reaches of the Antarctic Ocean. By so Doing and having Subsequently displayed proper Obeisance to King Neptune and his Faithful Lieges prior to Departing the Southern Reaches, She now Commands due Honor and Respect from all Persons, Whales, Seals, Penguins, Fishes, Crustaceans, Sponges, Insignificant Microscopic Creatures and other Denizens of the Polar Domains. (Rob studies insignificant microscopic creatures, which is probably why they made it on to the list.) Below all this, just above the signature of King Neptune, it added: She bears this Distinction with Pride for it is neither Lightly Undertaken nor Easily Attained.
All of this ice had come from the land, from snow, turning to ice, turning to glaciers, spilling into the sea, floating, flexing and finally breaking off. But the water, too, was freezing. Here it was slushy with grease ice, or frazil, which slithered against the ship’s hull; there it was so still that it had already begun to form pancakes, like frozen water lilies, decorated with streaks of snow. As we continued, the sea ice became more abundant, and thicker. The Palmer’s bow now smacked with pistol cracks as she performed a stately slalom through the pack. And overhead snow petrels wheeled, silhouetted against a slate grey sky, graceful as swallows.
sorted through his newly retrieved samples to see what the mud had to say. And what he found was as shocking as the Larsen B’s almighty breakdown. As far back as the record could show him, all the way to the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the ice shelf had been fully intact.37 The spectacular collapse of Larsen B was completely new. This was deeply troubling news. It seemed to confirm what many meteorologists suspected—that the warming of the Peninsula really is down to our activity.
making their mark on the Antarctic Peninsula. There was one shred of comfort. Floating ice already displaces water, so when ice shelves disintegrate they don’t make sea levels rise. But they now looked like a serious warning sign, a shot across our bows. ‘The Peninsula ice shelves really are the canary in the mine,’ Gene said. ‘And if the canary goes, you have to be worried.’
On the eastern side is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, by far the larger of the two, a mighty behemoth that contains more than 80 per cent of all the ice on Earth.
Though its average thickness is more than a mile, most of its base still rests safely on high ground and most of its ice creeps only sluggishly from the centre to the sea. It has been around for tens of millions of years.
Since its coastline tracks the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the eastern ice sheet is relatively easy to reach by ship or plane from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the tip of South America. On the west, however there is . . . nothing. The coastline of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet faces the broad, empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean. No nation can reach it simply by sailing south and it has not one single permanent scientific station. Most of the ice sheet lies beyond the normal reach of any existing Antarctic operations. The west of Antarctica is truly Earth’s final frontier.
The rock on which the West Antarctic Ice Sheet rests isn’t high like the east. Instead, almost all of it lies below sea level, and some is ten thousand feet deep. So deep, in fact, that if it weren’t for the ice there would be nothing in the west but ocean, and a smattering of small island archipelagos.
That meant we were crossing over into the ice stream. On one side, the ice was moving perhaps several feet per year. On the other, it moved that same distance in a day. On the outside of the margin the ice was resting, on the inside it was racing, and the area between was being ripped apart with the strain, creating such extraordinary patterns of crevasses on the ice
That evening the light was lovely. I borrowed some skis and went out a few kilometres beyond the camp. Apparently there hadn’t been much wind lately; the sastrugi were smooth and low. This was a new variant of the familiar ‘flat white’ of the East Antarctic plateau. Though the air here was 5°F and dry enough to scrape the skin, it was still noticeably damper than the dry desert of the east. There was moisture enough in the air to coat guy ropes with hoar frost. And the crystals on the surface were big and bold and flashy. They glinted in the slanting sunshine, as if someone had scattered handfuls of diamonds over the snow.
Beneath Antarctica’s mantle, in the deep dark places where ice met rock, it seemed that there were entire districts of hidden, liquid lakes…they were buried under miles of ice and hadn’t seen daylight for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years. But researchers knew they were there thanks to the way ice can’t help but betray its roots.
He and George have carefully charted different parts of the channel systems in the Dry Valleys. They have worked out which cuts through what, separated out the older features from the younger, used volcanic ashes to date different layers and figure out what happened when. They agree that this landscape is incredibly old. There was probably a series of floods, but the last one took place somewhere between twelve and fourteen million years ago, and almost nothing has happened since.
Ross Sea is one of the key parts of the global conveyor belt, an interdependent set of ocean currents that carries heat around the planet in a complex pattern that evens out some of the imbalances between the overheated tropics and the frozen poles. As sea ice forms here, the remaining water becomes saltier, and heavier, and sinks down to set the conveyor in motion. Throw in a sudden lens of freshwater on the top and you could jeopardise the whole thing.
And even when all of the ice finally does melt that will not be the end of Antarctica. The Sun is naturally warming as it ages, and some distant day, perhaps millions of years in the future, the white continent will turn green again no matter what we do. When this happens, as it must, we humans will probably not be there to witness it. But someone or something else surely will.
January 11, 2024
BOOK REVIEW 🇦🇶❄️
"Antartica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent
Content/Writing/Organization:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Topic:
A million ⭐️!! I LOVE Antarctica, and I WILL go someday!
"People are drawn to Antarctica precisely because so much has been stripped away. They come not to find themselves but to lose the outside world."
"When you go to the end of the Earth, you find a mirror, a truism, something you should have known all along; or perhaps you already did."
What this book is NOT:
* Definitely not for the casual Antarctica fan. 80% of the book reads like a science journal. I knew this going in. The science is all utterly fascinating, but it's a lot....
* To that same end, this book is not a poetic journey that explores the desolation and beauty of Antarctica, the metaphors to be found there or the question of why humans are so drawn to such a harsh place, pushing ourselves past all reason and comprehension in the name of adventure.
What this book is:
* A holistic overview (science, geology, and animals mainly) of ALL the Antartic regions, including the places that tourists will never see.
* An expose on all the science and research that occurs there.
* A very thorough natural history of Antarctica.
* A few tales of human life and adventure on this harsh continent.
Things that would have made this book better:
* Pictures! It feels obvious to include pictures describing places that people will never be able to see on their own??
* Organization! This author is a scientist, so admittedly, the writing didn't have the best flow. Some headings and/or breaking up each "region" into similar subsections (wildlife, science, people) would have helped quite dramatically.
"Antartica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent
Content/Writing/Organization:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Topic:
A million ⭐️!! I LOVE Antarctica, and I WILL go someday!
"People are drawn to Antarctica precisely because so much has been stripped away. They come not to find themselves but to lose the outside world."
"When you go to the end of the Earth, you find a mirror, a truism, something you should have known all along; or perhaps you already did."
What this book is NOT:
* Definitely not for the casual Antarctica fan. 80% of the book reads like a science journal. I knew this going in. The science is all utterly fascinating, but it's a lot....
* To that same end, this book is not a poetic journey that explores the desolation and beauty of Antarctica, the metaphors to be found there or the question of why humans are so drawn to such a harsh place, pushing ourselves past all reason and comprehension in the name of adventure.
What this book is:
* A holistic overview (science, geology, and animals mainly) of ALL the Antartic regions, including the places that tourists will never see.
* An expose on all the science and research that occurs there.
* A very thorough natural history of Antarctica.
* A few tales of human life and adventure on this harsh continent.
Things that would have made this book better:
* Pictures! It feels obvious to include pictures describing places that people will never be able to see on their own??
* Organization! This author is a scientist, so admittedly, the writing didn't have the best flow. Some headings and/or breaking up each "region" into similar subsections (wildlife, science, people) would have helped quite dramatically.
December 27, 2022
I read this for our Wanderlust Readers December Antarctica selection. I picked non-fiction because I felt there was a lot I could learn about the continent, and I went with this one specifically because it was a woman author - an antidote to all the age of exploration machismo that is most often found in stories of Antarctica.
And wow, I haven't read a book this fascinating in a long time. Walker is a scientist and shares an engrossing overview of the whole continent, covering everything from early exploration to scientific discovery to life on its handful of research bases. We learn about penguin colonies, evidence of dinosaurs, harrowing survival stories, ice core drilling, how conditions mimic Mars, ice sheet shifting, Argentina's "research" colony, what it's like to spend an isolated winter on base...among other things. Her writing is engaging and informative; she covers so many angles and perspectives that, despite getting into great detail with each, the narrative rarely drags. (At only one point did I begin to skim, because I couldn't particularly get into the science of asteroids.) I learned so much from this book, and I stopped to Google things a million times. Such an interesting profile of a place that is universally recognized but hardly known - highly recommend!
And wow, I haven't read a book this fascinating in a long time. Walker is a scientist and shares an engrossing overview of the whole continent, covering everything from early exploration to scientific discovery to life on its handful of research bases. We learn about penguin colonies, evidence of dinosaurs, harrowing survival stories, ice core drilling, how conditions mimic Mars, ice sheet shifting, Argentina's "research" colony, what it's like to spend an isolated winter on base...among other things. Her writing is engaging and informative; she covers so many angles and perspectives that, despite getting into great detail with each, the narrative rarely drags. (At only one point did I begin to skim, because I couldn't particularly get into the science of asteroids.) I learned so much from this book, and I stopped to Google things a million times. Such an interesting profile of a place that is universally recognized but hardly known - highly recommend!
February 18, 2019
This is an interesting overview of Antarctica and the science being done there. None of the topics are covered in depth but there is enough info to pique your curiosity. I only wish there were pictures in the book.
August 18, 2019
Great overview of the continent: historical adventures, the animals that live there, the landscape, etc. (I only wish it had photos.) It was fascinating to read about the different cultures of the various stations, what they are studying, and how living in such a remote place affects people.
July 27, 2019
I don't know why, but I am fascinated with Antarctica. This was a great account of the mysterious continent. If you doubt that humans are causing temperature rise, go and read the parts about core ice sampling. :/ Scary shit there.
January 31, 2021
Fascinating. Brings science, the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration, amd a remote continent to life.
October 3, 2022
Excellent nonfiction
This book reads like a story. I have always been intrigued with the planet's coldest places and if youare likewise intrigued you will enjoy this book.
This book reads like a story. I have always been intrigued with the planet's coldest places and if youare likewise intrigued you will enjoy this book.
April 9, 2022
Well.
My new obsession with the people who winter in Antarctica is the obsession I had no idea I needed.
And Shackleton is maybe the greatest man who ever lived ever.
This book is written really well; you don't have to care or think much about Antarctica beforehand (I didn't).
There are so many wonderful things to contemplate about the cold, dark, icy end of the world.
My new obsession with the people who winter in Antarctica is the obsession I had no idea I needed.
And Shackleton is maybe the greatest man who ever lived ever.
This book is written really well; you don't have to care or think much about Antarctica beforehand (I didn't).
There are so many wonderful things to contemplate about the cold, dark, icy end of the world.
February 6, 2014
The Never Ending Wind
On land, Earth's Final Frontier is also the world's coldest, driest and windiest place. Home to hundreds of research scientist, engineers, pilots and mechanics as well as cooks and bartenders, all of whom share a love of adventure and hardship. In Gabrielle Walker's Antarctica you will read about the people who have lived, and died, on this frozen continent. Some of those people will live in our memories forever: men like Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen are names are well known to every school child and more than a few adults too. Walker will also introduce you to some modern day explorers, both men and women, who are brave enough and dedicated enough, to test their personal limits - to the n'th degree. Dr. Walker has a Ph.D. In Chemistry and is an accomplished writer of science books for the layperson reader. In Antarctica she covers a diverse range of different scientific disciplines; geology, astronomy, biology and atmospheric research to name a few. Using the hands-on approach of actually going to Antarctica, interviewing the scientist and support crews, to give her readers a clear and entertaining view of this isolated world. There are a lot of unfamiliar places mentioned in the text and the reader could easily get lost if it weren't for the fine maps at the beginning of each chapter. How about a trip to Mars? If that's too far for you, the next best thing is a day in the Dry Valleys and one valley in particular: the Beacon Valley where you can hunt for meteorites in a place that has remained unchanged for millions of years. Or how about joining the March of the Penguins as you study the biology and behavior of Adelie or Emperor penguins. Deep drilling for ice-cores is a good way to study long term climate change and atmosphere evolution by analyzing tiny bubbles of trapped air in the ice. Astronomers get some of the best views of the Cosmos here, they can observe the huge dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy and find out whats going on with the Black Hole, that resides there. And how about the Big Bang? Well, the South Pole is a good place to observe and study the CMB for clues about the beginning of everything. Whatever your research preferences are this is the place to get a clearer picture of the issues. And if history is more to your liking, this book will give you an introduction to some of the early explorers and adventurers that helped put Antarctica on the map. Join geologist Douglas Mawson on his 1912 expedition to explore Adelie Land, where his two companions would perish and Mawson himself would be in danger of being stranded, to die alone, at Aladdin's Cave. Who would be first at the Pole? Most people know how that turned out but the stories of the winners and losers will certainly whet your apatite for more in-depth works. Getting to Antarctica can be an adventure all it's own. You'll probably come by boat, as a passenger on a research ship or crew a sailing vessel, from South America or the Falkland Islands and cross the infamous Drake's Passage on your way to the Antarctic Peninsula. Once there you will experience one of the best scenic and wild-life viewing places in Antarctica, maybe even the world. There is even a stunningly beautiful Russian Orthodox Church on King George Island, a bleak outpost at the end of the world (look for the images on the internet - you'll be amazed). This well written book will provide you with a glimpse into a frozen wilderness, the research stations, and the people who live and work there. As much as I liked this book it does have one Negative against it. At one point Walker talks about her camera and taking pictures to document her trip. It's too bad she and the publishers did not see fit to include some of those pictures into this edition. A book like this needs pictures and since the author was documenting the trip anyway why not use them? I would have liked to see some of those places she talks about and get a look at the people she interviewed. Anyway, pictures or not, this is a rich and wonderful book and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something to read on a cold, snowy, February day.
Last Ranger
December 12, 2012
Gabrielle Walker, a British scientist with a Ph.D. in chemistry, has captured the wonderful, almost other worldly quality of the southernmost part of our planet in Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent. Penguins are Antarctica's cute cliche and I love them as much as anyone but there are many other fascinating creatures of Antarctica that Walker includes in her book, among them giant single-celled organisms that survive in the Antarctic Sea by eating multi-celled animals much larger than themselves, cyanobacteria that somehow make their homes inside rocks, and the idiosyncratic research scientists and support people from countries around the world who have chosen to live in a frozen desert that has only one day per year, with six months of sunlight followed by six months of darkness.
Walker spent a lot of time in Antarctica herself visiting its numerous research stations, including a joint French and Italian outpost where scientists drilled into ice so old and deep that the cores they extracted reveal information about what the Earth's atmosphere and climate were like before the existence of our species. Because she traveled to facilities run by various countries she is able to report that the Italians have the most fashionable cold weather apparel, the French serve the best meals complete with wine, the Russians have a beautiful if incongruous domed Eastern Orthodox church to worship in, the Argentinians have schools and other child-friendly facilities because they encourage families to settle there, and the British are only beginning to catch up to the Americans in terms of the percentage of females on site.
The unique features of Antarctica make it appealing to scientists of just about any field, from biology and climate change to astronomy and space exploration. Since their communities are small and insular, people tend to mix so that a carpenter, an astrophysicist, a cook and an administrator might all sit down to eat together. With a writing style as engaging as the best fiction, Walker makes reading about their lives and challenges just as interesting as learning about the science they do.
If you've seen Werner Herzog's wonderful documentary about Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, this book by Gabrielle Walker will be especially satisfying because it fill in details about the continent and its inhabitants that the film couldn't cover.
Walker spent a lot of time in Antarctica herself visiting its numerous research stations, including a joint French and Italian outpost where scientists drilled into ice so old and deep that the cores they extracted reveal information about what the Earth's atmosphere and climate were like before the existence of our species. Because she traveled to facilities run by various countries she is able to report that the Italians have the most fashionable cold weather apparel, the French serve the best meals complete with wine, the Russians have a beautiful if incongruous domed Eastern Orthodox church to worship in, the Argentinians have schools and other child-friendly facilities because they encourage families to settle there, and the British are only beginning to catch up to the Americans in terms of the percentage of females on site.
The unique features of Antarctica make it appealing to scientists of just about any field, from biology and climate change to astronomy and space exploration. Since their communities are small and insular, people tend to mix so that a carpenter, an astrophysicist, a cook and an administrator might all sit down to eat together. With a writing style as engaging as the best fiction, Walker makes reading about their lives and challenges just as interesting as learning about the science they do.
If you've seen Werner Herzog's wonderful documentary about Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, this book by Gabrielle Walker will be especially satisfying because it fill in details about the continent and its inhabitants that the film couldn't cover.
March 18, 2015
This book offers a layman's look at lots of the science going on in Antarctica. I especially enjoyed reading about the single-celled organisms that live in Antarctic oceans and eat crustaceans, the penguin studies (turning a penguin upside down will violate its sense of self), and the psychology of the people who winter at the South Pole and go "toasty" (slightly crazy). I was less interested in the astronomy measurements at the South Pole (especially after she said one of the researchers greeted her with "I hope you do a good job because you're taking the place of somebody useful"). The stuff about Antarctica having lots of lakes under the ice was pretty cool, and it was mind boggling to read about the early explorers (Shakleton is my new hero).
I had very little interest in going to Antarctica myself, and after reading this book I strongly do not want to go there. I'm not a scientist so I have no compelling reason to put up with the harsh conditions there. It's interesting to read about teams of volunteers systematically searching ice fields for meteors, but I would go crazy if I had to do that. Wintering at the Pole sounded a lot like what I've read about space travel: a small group of people physically isolated from the rest of the world, who get their instructions from people who don't always understand the situation (for instance, asking them to count things that were under seven feet of ice and that wouldn't be needed until the ice melted, or not letting them cook turkeys for their Midwinter Festival because they had to save them for base opening when more turkeys could be delivered anyway). As somebody who deals with unnecessary paperwork to do experiments with the NASA's part of the International Space Station, I find it very telling that the American bases had the most forms to fill out upon arrival, and urged or required restraint about alcohol and coffee to mitigate altitude sickness, while the French and German and Italian bases welcomed new people with wine and coffee and no forms.
I appreciated the maps but wished there were pictures. Overall, well-written book that gave me lots of cool information and saved me a trip :)
I had very little interest in going to Antarctica myself, and after reading this book I strongly do not want to go there. I'm not a scientist so I have no compelling reason to put up with the harsh conditions there. It's interesting to read about teams of volunteers systematically searching ice fields for meteors, but I would go crazy if I had to do that. Wintering at the Pole sounded a lot like what I've read about space travel: a small group of people physically isolated from the rest of the world, who get their instructions from people who don't always understand the situation (for instance, asking them to count things that were under seven feet of ice and that wouldn't be needed until the ice melted, or not letting them cook turkeys for their Midwinter Festival because they had to save them for base opening when more turkeys could be delivered anyway). As somebody who deals with unnecessary paperwork to do experiments with the NASA's part of the International Space Station, I find it very telling that the American bases had the most forms to fill out upon arrival, and urged or required restraint about alcohol and coffee to mitigate altitude sickness, while the French and German and Italian bases welcomed new people with wine and coffee and no forms.
I appreciated the maps but wished there were pictures. Overall, well-written book that gave me lots of cool information and saved me a trip :)
July 17, 2019
Decently enough written, and comprehensively researched. Two minor quibbles:
1) While a story like this requires a certain amount of authorial involvement, at some points it feels like Walker is too much a part of the story. When she's denied (for safety reasons) permission to visit one remote scientific outpost, we get three pages talking about how she eventually connived a way there by flying to another station in the area and then begging for a lift. It doesn't particularly help tell the story and feels a little thirsty.
2) The narrative meanders: by trying to connect the current scientific explorations of Antarctica with the treks of the golden age of exploration, we end up bouncing back and forth between the present and the early 20th century, and from one historic expedition to the next. I think a more linear presentation would have worked better for me, especially since most of the contemporary material could have been easily reordered to allow a temporal presentation of the historic stuff.
1) While a story like this requires a certain amount of authorial involvement, at some points it feels like Walker is too much a part of the story. When she's denied (for safety reasons) permission to visit one remote scientific outpost, we get three pages talking about how she eventually connived a way there by flying to another station in the area and then begging for a lift. It doesn't particularly help tell the story and feels a little thirsty.
2) The narrative meanders: by trying to connect the current scientific explorations of Antarctica with the treks of the golden age of exploration, we end up bouncing back and forth between the present and the early 20th century, and from one historic expedition to the next. I think a more linear presentation would have worked better for me, especially since most of the contemporary material could have been easily reordered to allow a temporal presentation of the historic stuff.
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