Day 1: A Stopover in New Zealand
As the first Smithsonian secretary to set foot on Antarctica, Secretary Clough prepares for his trip from a research center in Christchurch
- By G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
- Smithsonian.com, January 22, 2010, Subscribe
(Page 2 of 2)
Here are a few facts about the unique place I will be seeing tomorrow for the first time:
1. The Antarctic is the coldest, windiest and driest place on the face of the earth. Temperatures average 70 degrees F below zero and have plunged as low as -129 F. Six to eight inches of precipitation measured in water equivalent falls on the Antarctic, and in the Dry Valleys, no rain has fallen for 2 million years.
2. The continent is the fifth largest of the seven continents of the world and is larger than the United States and Mexico combined.
3. All but 2.4 percent of the continent of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet that averages more than a mile in thickness and in some places reaches three miles thick. The ice sheets contain up to 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.
4. If the ice sheets were to melt, sea level would rise more than 200 feet around the globe and Antarctica itself be elevated more than 500 feet because of the relief from the weight of the ice.
5. There are no trees in Antarctica and the largest terrestrial animal is the wingless midge (Belgica antarctica), a tiny fly less than one-half of an inch long.
6. The Antarctic continent itself was not sighted until 1821 and the first man to reach the South Pole was Roald Admundsen, a Norwegian explorer, in 1911.
7. Here’s a good one. The Antarctic was not always cold. Some 200 million years ago, the land masses that were to become South America, Africa and the Antarctic were linked as Gondwanaland, a southern supercontinent that eventually split up. The part of Gondwanaland that was to become part of Antarctica was warm and tropical plants and animals flourished. Assembling the Antarctic into a separate continent was the work of millions of years of plate tectonics and plate movements. The eastern part of the present continent is much older than the western part, with the two separated by the Transantarctic Mountains.
8. The Antarctic as we know it today is about 20 million years old at which time it became completely surrounded by the sea. The Antarctic, a continent surrounded by water, differs from the northern Arctic, which is floating ice surrounded by land.
9. And, I saved the best for last: According to the International Antarctic Centre, hair grows at twice the rate in the Antarctic as it does elsewhere on the planet.
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Comments (1)
I thoroughly enjoyed Secretary Clough's journal entries on his visit to Antarctica. His experiences somewhat mirrored my own from a February 2010 trip to the White Continent. However, from reading his journal, one might conclude that flying to and over Antarctica is the usual way to see the continent. For those of us not fortunate enough to be part of a scientific expedition, the only way to get there is by ship from Ushuaia, Argentina, across the Drake Passage (arguably the roughest water in the world), and then going ashore by zodiac. This tourist experience, however, permitted us multiple close encounters with Antarctic wildlife and allowed us time to simply stand still and absorb the indescribably beautiful vistas around us. Our group did pay a visit to the working Ukranian research facility at Vernadsky Station, which gave us some idea of the types of scientific research ongoing on the continent. Antarctica is truly the last wilderness on earth, and I am immensely grateful that the Antarctic Treaty remains in place to protect this irreplaceable treasure.
Posted by Laurie Smith on May 8,2010 | 10:05 AM