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Something Strange is Happening at the Coldest, Driest Place on Earth
For someone who has experienced "freaky weather" in the Antarctic up close and personal, reports this week that baby Antarctic penguins are freezing to death due to "freak rain storms," came as no surprise.
Fellow explorer Jon Bowermaster had this to say:
"Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death."
The sad truth is there's been a lot of freaky things happening in the Antarctic lately.
If little baby penguins freezing to death isn't enough, a new study out last week from the University of Washington has found that penguin populations are plummeting due to climate change, pollution and other factors like fish stock depletion and loss of breeding habitat.
Despite it still being the winter season in the Antarctic, with temperatures as low as minus 85 Fahrenheit, the massive Wilkins Ice Shelf is collapsing as we speak.
And then there's the "freaky snow."
With all that ice, it might seem kind of backwards to call snow at the South Pole "freaky," but it is. The Antarctic is literally a desert of ice with an average of 1-inch of precipitation each year.
Antarctica is in fact the the coldest, highest, windiest and driest continent on earth.
Last year, when I attempted to become the first American to reach the South Pole, solo and unaided, it was the "freaky snow" that stopped me in my tracks.
At first the snow fell only lightly. Clouds of tiny crystals sank from the sky like plankton to the sea floor. I stood for a while, still hooked to my sled, unbelieving. It was not clear if what I was seeing was real. My mind and body had become so deeply worn from the hundreds of miles of hauling that at first I could not be sure. I was alone, exhausted and doing my best o stay alive and reach the South Pole on a dwindling supply of food and fuel.
Many days before, injury had taken my expedition partner, along with too much of our supplies. The image of the evacuation plane was now a foggy and distant one, and now here I was, standing alone in the middle of Antarctica witnessing something not easily believable - it seemed to be snowing in the driest place on earth.
But what began as a curious illusion soon turned to real alarm.
Within hours the crystals thickened and turned heavy - and soon visibility would be completely chocked off. By midnight a rare easterly rose, climaxing at to 40 knots. What began as a crystal dance now turned to a full-blown blizzard - the equivalent of torrential rain in the middle of the Sahara. What I was seeing was real, the world had indeed turned upside-down, and it would be more than a week before it could right itself.
I was trapped, wrapped in a blizzard somewhere around the 83rd parallel. A few hundred miles away at Base camp - things were no better. I spoke by satellite phone from my buried tent to Mike Sharp, the Logistics Veteran who had not missed an Antarctic season since 1977.
He could offer little comfort:
"I've never seen anything like this mate. I don't know what to make of it, but whatever you do, don't move"
Of course I moved, I needed to move, I was running short of food... Struggling over the ice, blinded by fierce white, I began to wonder what had caused this. Could this be an isolated event, or was it part of a bigger system? Could this be part of larger phenomena - like Global Warming?
Last year I was wondering, but now I know for certain that even in the coldest, driest place on earth something just isn't right.
On November 8, 2008 Todd Carmichael will attempt to become the first American in history to reach the South Pole, solo and unaided.
Ed Levine: Finding Bourbon and Barbecue in Brooklyn
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And if the ice pack increases in several months as it does every year, I'm certain this will be seen as a hiatus.
Help me Grist, help me, I'm a denier.
If sections of the Antarctic Ice Shelf the size of Manhattan Island breaking off are not enough to convince the Bush Administration - and a significant percentage of the American public - that global warming is real, then I don't know what could.
And what of the sister to the north? The arctic may well be completely free of ice by September. Just another coincidence, right? This could be the first time the N. Pole will be free of ice since the last major pole shift. Which is, for all intents and purposes, before time began. LOL
To Todd Carmichael, Thanks for sharing your rare first-hand perspective from the Arctic in your post. Just in the news this eve:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080718/ap_on_sc/brazil_dead_penguins_3
an alarming news item from Associated Press, "Hundreds of baby penguins found dead in Brazil".
To those of you who doubt how bad things are, I suppose this is just a coincidence.
If I believed in "intelligent design", I'd say God designed a most compelling 'canary in a coal mine' - the Antarctic penguin.
Nice tern (sic) of phrase.
Thank you for your fascinating article. It breaks my heart knowing that our planet is dying before our very eyes and G.W. is thumbing his nose at all of us, refusing to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a global emergency.
I wish you success on your next trip in November.
God Bless.
I feel you
On a daily basis I feel my heart breaking
Our beautiful planet is being destroyed before our very eyes
Our great nation is being destroyed before our very eyes
what troubles me most, is hearing and seeing so many people who are willfully ignorant and completely indignant at the suggestion that they might need to get informed
heartbreaking indeed
There's a few of us still around. Just tell anyone who'll listen, and maybe a little will rub off.
"suggestion that they might need to get informed"
On your perspective? I'd rather click through wiki.
It is very sad that we treat out planet as a large garbage can and as a giant resource to exploit. But unfortunately for us I believe that Mother Nature will put a stop to it by stopping humans in some way. Wether it be a virus, or extreme weather, or the collapse of the food chain, or even infertility like what happened in the movie "Children of Men" , we are in for a really rough future. After humans are gone from this planet the Earth will slowly buy surely "fix itself". What are we as a species going to do when the oil runs out? The oil supply is not infinite it will stop flowing one day and when it does we will be thrown back into the stone age unless we come up with a new technology to replace petrol products as a fuel. When the worlds oil supply begins to run out wars will be a very common occurrence between various countries in order to lay claim to the dwindling oil fields. We (meaning all of the industrial countries) need to start a scientific program like "The Manhattan Project" in order to figure out how and what we can use as a clean substitute that is also renewable.
All right, this is going to sound horrible, but I think humanity's best chance is a plague or some other massive depopulator. "Humanity" has still not acted on what is likely a mortal threat to its environment (sort of belies the "sapiens" part of homo sapiens). Hell, 28% of Americans still support Bush. By the time humanity as some kind of whole takes action on environmental degradation, it'll be way too late; the massive depopulator may in fact be our own environmental degradation. We need to find a way to live in cooperation with our planet, not using it up for our greedy purposes, and yet our species is led by some of the very worst among us. We fail to act in our interest, preferring to act for our pleasures.
But whatever happens, Earth will happily trundle on. At some point, and we're bringing that point on very fast, homo sapiens will have been an infinitesimal, if notable, part of the planet's life. Just another species, and compared with most, not very successful.
Brutal but true.
Hopefully population reduction will be sorted out randomly by unforeseeably severe natural impacts.... otherwise it will ultimately be implemented by the racist, classist , sexist MFs who've got things to this horrific state in the first place, and you can bet they won't be excising themselves.
And one day in the future earth will be swallowed by the bloating giant our sun will become. Then that will be devoured by the black hole. Then the black holes will collide. Then the singularity will form once more. Then we'll have another big bang. And so it goes on and on and on, over and over and over again............
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Antarctic blizzards?
Not as normal as you'd think.
Just ask the penguins.
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Thanks for the excellent post. Best wishes.
so. Is it doomsday? Or can this be fixed?
say todd, how do you stay warm and dry in antartica, wool or polyprope? and lower on this thread i challenged the efficacy of co2 as a greenhouse gas using as an example cold desert nights, and got three different responses. just curious, what's your take on why desert nights are so cold? isn't there co2 above the desert? and if so, where is the inversion layer or greenhouse effect that co2 is supposed to cause? thanks for a great post and good luck this november!
Cold desert nights are related to a number of factors, including low humidity, which dominate over CO2 concentrations, which have a global impact -- not just local to the deserts.
thanks reason! what you say made no sense to me at all, but i appreciate your response. so you're saying the greenhouse effect caused by co2 can only be felt globally, not locally? meaning co2 can take out the arctic and antarctic while being a no-show in those cold desert nights? did i comprehend you correctly? and just so's ya know, i'm not a global warming denier or even a global warming crisis denier, i'm pretty much a co2-as-the-culprit denier. for now anyway...
Hehe! Cold desert nights as proof that Co2 doesn't keep thing warm.. Lol!!!
That's so cute!
Guess what the temperature is out in space? It hovers just above absolute zero which is approximately -459 degrees Fahrenheit.
How cold does it get in the desert? Well, let's take the coldest extreme: Antarctica’s winter which is -129 degrees Fahrenheit. That's still a difference of 330 degrees.
What keeps the any desert from reaching -459 degrees Fahrenheit at night?
Co2 in the atmosphere (along with water vapor and other gases) retaining a minimum of about +330 degrees worth of residual heat.
If you want an example of what happens without the greenhouse effect on a planet, then I suggest looking at a planet that has very little Co2 in it's atmosphere: Mercury. On the sunny side it reaches +870 degrees and on the dark side it reaches -297 degrees. A difference of 1167 degrees. The earth at its hottest only gets to about +130 with the coldest about -129 for a difference of about 260 degrees. Alternately, Venus which has the highest content of Co2 reaches a height of + 900 degrees (hot enough to melt lead) and stays consistent, even at night for a difference of about 0.
Nice try though!!
''What keeps the any desert from reaching -459 degrees Fahrenheit at night? '' a daily dose of direct sunlight? just a guess...
The desert nights get so cold because there is not enough moisture in the air. I live in North Carolina we get dry periods, and the temp at night drops a lot, but when its humid the temps stay more stable.
I think global climate change is more accurate.
This area was temperate rain forest when the Europeans came, since we have clear cut so many of the forests there is nothing to hold and transpire water to the atmosphere. We had the worst dought in recorded history here last year. we are still in drought conditions.
I lived in South Florida for many years, the Everglades were also referred to as the Great Rain Machine, the sun would evaporate water from the swamp and every day at 3pm in summer we would get a down pour for 10 minutes to an hour. After the cities grew and more of the glades were drained, they dried out a lot, then we no longer had regular rains. it got so dry the glades would catch fire and the smoke in downtown Fort Lauderdale was so thick you could not see 30 feet.
Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. So yes, that would be a correct answer as well.
Something Strange is Happening at the Coldest, Driest Place on Earth.....
Yea, the ice is increasing following one of the coldest winters known in the Southern Hemisphere.
Which is why a glacier crashed off the coast in Argentina ... you have no idea what you are talking about ... Did you even bother to read what Mr. Carmichael said about the ice shelf collapsing and btw it is global climate change ... which means extremes
Reference please.
Thank you for the article, very interesting. Please keep us informed.
To Khal:
'The thing that bothers me is what if we are actually in a cooling trend, but that the increase in temperature is being caused by us. If this is the case, what happens when the cooling trend ends and the warming trend starts?
Does anyone know if this question has been posed?'
I believe your question was answered in an excellent NOVA PBS Science program which has been running this season titled "Dimming the Sun". I felt that this program was particularly well done and a must see for anyone who is interested in the complexities of world wide climate change.
Global Dimming is just maksing the effects of warming.
It is caused by the sunlight reflecting off of jet contrails and dust in the air.
for the sake of corporate profits, say goodbye to your planet.
The planet will be fine, say goodbye to humans and animals.
Indeed, the planet will continue by throwing us out as uninvited guests.
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