Sustainability will focus the new British scientific strategy in Antarctica

In the AntarcticaBritish scientific missions study how the ocean absorbs heat and carbon, census animals polar ice caps and drill into the ice to discover weather conditions of the past. But at the same time, they adapt to reduce their own environmental impact.

“The main focus of our strategy is really on climate change, because the polar regions are the areas on Earth that change most dramatically,” explains Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

In the next ten years, “What we try to do is plan for the future of our research more than we used to, because I think it’s really urgent that we understand how our research is changing. climate”it states.

“We have to contribute to making good decisions about renewable energies, about how to save carbon and how to live in better balance with our planet”he adds when presenting this new strategy.

At the BAS headquarters, in the English university city of Cambridge, you can see some of the technology used by its scientists to study the polar regions.

They have small autonomous submarines to collect data in the depths of the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean, that surrounds Antarctica and acts as a carbon sink, absorbing heat and CO2 from the atmosphere.

From the sky, drones and satellites allow them to monitor and count animal populations in the most remote or inaccessible areas.

To gather information about past weather conditions, scientists drill into ice sheets and glaciers, extracting ice fragments hundreds of thousands of years old.

This is then cut inside a special cold room in the BAS laboratories, whose temperature is maintained at -25ºC. Here the air bubbles trapped inside are extracted to measure the concentration of greenhouse gases -CO2 or methane- that they contain.

Energy efficiency and artificial intelligence

The BAS currently operates five research stations in Antarctica, although one of them only during the southern summer.

In these, one of their main objectives is to reduce their own carbon emissions. The agency wants to decarbonise all its activities by 2040, explains another of its managers, Nopi Exizidou.

“For our research stations, we are investing heavily in renewable energy technologies”underline.

For example, the Bird Island station, located to the west of the Falklands, uses a solar energy and battery storage system that should cut its fuel consumption in half.

The King Edward Point station, in South Georgia, has a hydroelectric power station that covers 80% of the demand for heating and electricity.

At Rothera, the largest British research station in the area, located on the island of Adelaide, a new energy-efficient building will replace several older buildings.

The BAS also has a team of engineers that is developing a set of tools for artificial intelligence that will help plan maritime routes and manage research vessels more efficiently.

These future technologies will be “truly revolutionary” says Francis.

“We don’t need to take the ship that far, we don’t need to take the fuel-guzzling plane, we can send drones, we can send marine robots.”she says enthusiastically. So, “we can collect data, much more data, faster” and with less environmental impact.

Source: AFP