Antarctica: a trip to the end of the world to understand the world of the future

Known in the collective imagination as “the end of the world”, the Antarctica is today the thermometer of the Earth: a vast frozen territory in which scientists investigate the effects produced by the climate change and that will have consequences throughout the planet.

Despite its remoteness, which forces visitors to King George Island, the closest to Chile, to travel two hours by plane from the southern city of Punta Arenas and celebrate Christmas in summer under an almost perpetually illuminated sky, the The influence of the “white continent” encompasses natural phenomena in other parts of the globe that we cannot even imagine.

“The temperature of the North Sea in Europe, the blossoming of cherry trees in Japan or the alluviums in northern Chile”, are marked by Antarctic processes, explained the director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (Inach), Marcelo Leppe.

Antarctica, he explained, “has a powerful regulatory role in the planet’s climate, not only because of the albedo -the ability to reflect solar radiation-, but also because the marine current that surrounds it produces a series of interactions in the seas of all the world, which in turn produces a very interesting ocean-atmosphere relationship that conditions an important part of the global climate”, detailed Leppe.”

Entrance to the end of the world

To understand these processes, thousands of researchers visit its icy waters and snowy black slopes every year, dotted with the reddish color of volcanic stone and the faint green of lichens, with projects that analyze radiation and nutrient levels in the waters even the way life makes its way in such an extreme context.

A landscape of raw and immense beauty that serves as a prelude to the continent, since King George Island is the largest island in the South Shetland archipelago, the closest point to the American continent.

There are two Chilean bases there: one military, the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base, and one administered by the Inach, Professor Julio Escudero. One of the main research points in the country, where scientists, logistics operators, technical personnel and students from various areas coexist.

The frozen kingdom of microorganisms

One of them is the Spanish oceanographer Juan Höfer, a professor at the School of Marine Sciences of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, who searches for plankton in the Antarctic coastal waters, small organisms capable of flourishing in the icy summer waters thanks to the sunlight.

“The microalgae that are part of the plankton are what we call phytoplankton, which capture large amounts of Co2 from both the atmosphere and the ocean and help reduce the amount of Co2 in the air, which is one of the causes of global warming,” Höfer pointed out.

Among his works, the biologist has been able to observe the impact of the melting of glaciers due to climate change, a substantial change in our planetary reality since they are responsible for “returning 90% of the radiation that reaches us Earth back into the atmosphere” which prevents us from heating up so quickly.

“As the glaciers recede, the Earth or the sea that is exposed captures much more energy and that makes them warmer. Also, by melting, fresh water enters the ocean and changes its dynamics. That is why it is important to understand how these microalgae help us or not to stop climate change”, he concluded.

All of a demonstration of how in the midst of the immensity of Antarctica, life makes its way, even at even more microscopic scales, as is the case of the researcher from the Research Institute for Development (IRD) of France, Léa Cabrol, who studies the distribution of bacteria in the southern oceans.

“Bacteria are microorganisms that produce and consume methane, and methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. We study them here because the poles are the areas where there are more temperature changes and, therefore, they are the first areas that will respond to the effects of global change”, he explained.

But not everything is as simple as it seems: in order to carry out their research, scientists depend on so-called “windows”, periods of good weather to go out into the field that last hours in the best of cases and sometimes take days to complete. to give

A responsibility that ultimately depends on Francisco Santa Cruz, the head of the Escudero base and Inach researcher, who explained that despite the difficulties, the opportunity that science has to obtain information is “unique” because it is collected in “the heart of the world” and “climate change sensor”.

An oasis of peace and science

There are a total of 42 permanent bases in the Antarctic territory, belonging to 21 countries, all of them regulated by international treaties that have created an oasis never seen before in history, where respect for biodiversity and cooperation between world powers reign. .

Which makes it, in Leppe’s eyes, the “greatest diplomatic triumph in history” since it has been the only one with the capacity to “completely dedicate a continent to the most altruistic concepts: peace and science.”

A human victory that can serve as a bulwark to face one of the great challenges that we have as a species: to inhabit a planet that is in a new climatic era in which the world average of CO2 exceeds 400 parts per million, a reality never before view, since similar data only exist in times before the existence of human beings.

“All this that we are experiencing is new for us. We can find many vestiges in natural history, even in the Antarctic ice, that tell a turbulent climatic history of the past, but our ability to respond to those changes is what is in question, “said Leppe.

Antarctica in the new Chile

In order to face these global problems, organizations such as the United Nations have tried to lay the foundations for global agreements through summits such as the COP, in order to limit greenhouse gas emissions or eliminate the use of polluting practices.

Even so, these agreements find their natural limits at the borders of the States. In this sense, Chile is in a moment of great transitions, with the recent election of Gabriel Boric as president, a young left-wing politician with a strong environmental message, and in the process of drafting what could be the country’s new Constitution. .

An opportunity that the director of the Inach highlighted should serve to “give a central role to Antarctica”, since it is necessary to “understand what happens in that territory” and “what its influences can be both in Chile and in the South American continent and vice versa”.

“Antarctica touches you and finally you are infected with one of the most beautiful pandemics in the world: believing that humanity can come to an agreement to ensure the future existence of things that go far beyond the economic,” concluded Leppe.