Marambio Base, you can see a C-130 Hércules from the Argentine Air Force. Photo from 2014, Wikimedia commons.
Credit: Casa Rosada (Argentina Presidency of the Nation)
Dag Avango writes about climate change and the long wait for departure
Today, Friday January 10, we are scheduled to leave Buenos Aires and fly south via Rio Gallegos to the Argentinean research station Marambio in Antarctica – a week later than originally planned. Delayed departures is nothing unusual in Antarctic logistics. This is not your ordinary flight destination. Any transport to the frozen continent is dependent on weather conditions as well as the results of rigorous safety check-ups, there to ensure that airplanes, boats and equipment are in good condition and that the personnel is healthy. In the case of our delay, the safety concern are the conditions for landing at Marambio. The airstrip at this station consists of fine-grained sediments that provide a good foundation for landing because they are frozen as a part of the permafrost of this region. However, temperatures there during the current Antarctic summer have been high with plus degrees Celsius for weeks and with a peak of surprisingly high 9 degrees plus a few days ago. As a result, the permafrost on the airstrip has begun to thaw, transforming its normally firm surface to a deep watery mud. Under these conditions, the Argentinean air force cannot land its huge Hercules planes there.
As an historian, I shall refrain from judging if the thawing permafrost at Marambio is an impact of climate change or the result of a weather anomaly. Climate scientists have established however, that the Antarctic Peninsula has seen the most substantial increases in temperature over the last decades on the continent, with dramatic losses of shelf ice such as the collapse of Larsen B and subsequent loss of land ice. These changes are also one of the main rationales for the CHAQ2020 expedition objective of contributing to the conservation of the historical remains of the first Swedish Antarctic expedition at Snow Hill. The remains of this station is under threat of destruction from thawing permafrost and erosion from growing streams of melt water. There is no reason to doubt that these processes are the result of the same long-term changes in the climate. Thus, while climate change is a main reason for CHAQ2020 to be here it is possibly also a reason why we are still in Buenos Aires and not at Snow Hill.
