Antarctica: Pure as the Driven Snow?

The word Antarctica evokes images of remote wilderness, ice, seclusion and purity.

Vaughan set about shattering those images. He advised students not to go there “because you want to get away from people.” Inevitably, he said, you run into someone because it is such a harsh place that you can’t survive there long without others.

He also gave three examples of how humans have dramatically impacted the continent. Above-ground testing of atomic bombs in the Pacific in the 1950s, which Vaughan described as “possibly some of the most stupid things we’ve ever done,” sent radioactive particles raining down on the entire planet. Dig in the Antarctic ice and you will find a slightly radioactive layer marking the times when these tests occurred.

Similarly, he said, you can find levels of lead in the layers of ice matching the rise and fall of emissions from industrial processes in the past century. You can even see an abrupt drop in lead levels corresponding to the banning of leaded gasoline.

The third example also involved humans releasing dangerous things into the air. This one involved chemicals called CFCs, compounds once common in air conditioning and refrigeration systems. These chemicals contributed to the breaking down of ozone high in the atmosphere and led to the infamous ozone hole, not so much a hole as a seasonal thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica. Since the chemicals were banned by an international treaty in the 1990s, the ozone hole appears to have stopped growing and to have started the long, slow process of recovery. That’s good news for all living things. Ozone high in the atmosphere protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

Captain Robert Scott and his crew in Antarctica. They successfully reached the South Pole in 1912, only to find their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen had already beat them by one month. They perished on the journey home.

Despite our greasy fingerprints here and there, Vaughan acknowledged that for scientists, Antarctica does have a well deserved mystique.

“The first explorers went to Antarctica not because they were desperate to get away from what was going on at home, the privations of famine and so on, and not from a desire to beat other people up and take whatever they had found in these new lands,” said Vaughan. “Antarctica is the only place that was explored from the point of view of curiosity.”

He recounted how Captain Robert Scott, a fellow Brit who raced to be the first to reach the South Pole, didn’t return, in part because he was carrying 70 pounds of rocks he had collected.

“He wanted to understand something about the Antarctic continent because he was driven by science,” said Vaughan. “And most of the exploration of Antarctica today is driven by science, by wanting to know what’s out there.”