Antarctica

Due to my fondness of all things Antarctic, I’ve enjoyed following the blogs of a few folks who have been stationed in Antarctica.

“Homeless Heidi”, who is preparing to head north after finishing winter at the South Pole, mentioned that absentee ballots were shipped out on the second supply plane to visit the Pole this spring.

As to who won down at the bottom of the globe, her picture says it all:

An article I saw at NationalGeographic.com appealed to my childhood fascination with Antarctica:

A thousand images from NASA’s Landsat satellite data, taken mostly between 1999 and 2001, were pieced together to create a first true-color map with ten times greater resolution than previous images of Antarctica.

The map is so detailed it includes features that are as small as half the size of a basketball court.

The maps, covering Antarctica down to about 82.5° South (Landsat’s orbit apparently doesn’t permit imaging within 7.5° of the poles), are reportedly available at the USGS, and the imagery is fascinating. (However, when I revisited the site while drafting this post, the server seemed unwilling to display the interactive map.)

I’ve had a “thing” for Antarctica ever since I was a kid (as evidenced, for example, by the irrational exuberance I expressed this summer over the performance of Nunatak in Live Earth). So I was pleasantly surprised this morning when, while seeking a little diversity in background noise while getting ready to go to work, I discovered NBC’s Today Show broadcasting from McMurdo Station, in Antarctica.

Apparently the Today Show is playing the green card this sweeps period, by broadcasting from the “ends of the earth”—Greenland, Antarctica, and Ecuador (or “the north pole”, “the south pole”, and “the equator”)—to do a series of stories on climate change.

Sadly, I didn’t catch much this morning (other than being very intrigued by the live broadcast from McMurdo, and somewhat annoyed by the north/south pole misrepresentations), but I’ll be interested in seeing what the TiVo captures the next couple of mornings.

Seen in the Guardian:

The United Kingdom is planning to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of the remote seabed off Antarctica, the Guardian has learned. The submission to the United Nations covers more than 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) of seabed, and is likely to signal a quickening of the race for territory around the south pole in the world’s least explored continent.

The claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, to which the UK is a signatory. It specifically states that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent. The treaty was drawn up to prevent territorial disputes.

This and an apparent expansion of seabed claims around other southern U.K. territories is described as securing claims on energy reserves as concerns are raised about dwindling supplies in currently producing oil- and gas-fields.

In addition to defying the Antarctic treaty which put all territorial claims into abeyance, such a stance would be counter to other treaties restricting mineral exploitation of the Antarctic, and it’s likely to tick off Chile and Argentina which have overlapping claims with the U.K. in the Antarctic.

Offered as evidence that documenting climate change (or the lack thereof, depending on your point-of-view) isn’t as easy as the mass-media and pop culture would have you believe, seen at Watts Up With That:

Just when you thought this season’s cryosphere couldn’t be more strange …. The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km.

Personally, I’ve been of the opinion that I can believe that human-influenced climate change is occurring, augmented by long-and-short term climate cycles, which when put together creates a very complex puzzle. To the extent that some of this is preventable…or at least that preparations can be made for whatever the new climate norm ends up being… I worry that public support, currently inflamed by factoids and sensationalism in the media, could wane if a short-term cycle contrary to the long-term trend emerges.

Bah. Kids these days just have no appreciation for and too little understanding the beauty of a truly complex dynamic model.

I could join in with all the other bloggers who are either getting all warm, fuzzy, and morally outraged in honor of the Live Earth concerts, or the bloggers who are pointing out the hypocrisy of certain elements of the concerts. However, for now, I’m going to just be pleased to indulge in my childhood love of all things Antarctic, with the uploading of some of Nunatak’s performance to YouTube:

Link for those of you reading via RSS, in case you’re interested: [YouTube]

Of course, my luck holds true. I’ve been miffed at not being able to see the performance on TV….and it appeared in the Bravo wrapup as I was drafting this post.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time. From Treehugger:

The band Nunatak, the Greenlandic word that means an exposed summit of a ridge mountain or peak within an ice field or glacier, will be rocking the ice 7.7.07 for their 17 on-site colleagues and also for, well, the rest of the world. Former Vice President Gore personally reached out to the band, not that he had many alternatives. Live Earth organizers did originally explore the idea of flying in performers, but quickly dropped that when told the continent is pretty much inaccessible during the winter.

I’ve always had a thing for all things Antarctic. I hadn’t been planning on paying much attention at all to Live Earth, but now, I might have to find out when Nunatak is planning to be covered by the relevant media relays.