Concordia’s First Winter on the High Antarctic Plateau
By Guillaume Dargaud, Concordia correspondent
South Pole shares the High Antarctic Plateau with a new neighbor this winter. The Franco- Italian station of Concordia has opened for yearround operation, after five years of challenging construction.
Hardly on any map yet, Dome C, 75°S 123°E, is not too far south (and indeed the sun disappeared only on May 4) but its high altitude (3,260m) make for a pretty cold and unforgiving place. By April we had already reached a temperature of -76°C, still far from the -84°C expected later in the season. The site of Dome C is interesting for various reasons: high altitude, very low snow accumulation, absence of auroras (good for astronomers but not so much for the larger public), very flat terrain, low winds and turbulence, absence of ice motion and finally easy communication with geostationary satellites.
Last year, as the personnel was selected for the first winter, there was still a lot of uncertainties about whether the construction would be finished in time. And indeed it wasn’t. Summer construction workers were still working on the buildings on the morning the last plane was to leave.
The start of the winter was pretty hectic as the new station building wasn’t yet operational. The generator wasn’t running, there was no water, the kitchen was bare and there was no hospital. We lived in an increasingly colder summer camp for three weeks before moving to our new, shiny building, where work was pretty intense in the first months to get everything up and running. The buildings were still filled with construction equipment, so we spent weeks moving it out and moving the supplies in from outside.
For this first “evaluation” winter 13 people are on station. Eight are part of the technical team, five have scientific activities, six are newcomers to this cold land, two are bachelors and only one is female. Eleven are French, but three are counted as Italian. Go figure.
We hit the news last December when, after eight years of work, the Epica drilling project stopped a few meters from the bedrock having extracted the oldest ice in the world, a core spanning 3,270.20 meters and 900,000 years. It covered a full eight glacial cycles, putting global warming in perspective.
Old timers may remember Dome Charlie, as it was called, where two C-130 crashed in 1974 and were later fixed and flown out by the VXE- 6 team. Few visitors came to Dome Charlie in the 1980s, but in 1993 the French started traversing from the coastal station of Dumont d’Urville. In 1996 a summer camp opened as a joint project between the Italian and French polar institutes (PNRA & IPEV). Scientific research started in earnest that year and it was decided to build a permanent station.
Construction started in 1999 and proceeded quickly during the three months summers. The two main buildings are raised on hydraulic feet to avoid having the station disappear under snow over the years.
One is a quiet building with the bedrooms, laboratories and a hospital. The other building is ‘noisy’with workshops, a gym, a TV room and a 3-stars panoramic restaurant.The power generators and water recycler are in a large container next to the building. Also outside are the many fuel tanks, water tanks and the garage also acting as a balloon inflation shed. We now go to the the closed summer camp, half a mile away, only to grab missing equipment.
When the British supply ship RRS Ernest Shackleton left Rothera Station in March, a happy band of twenty-one souls on shore “waved until our arms hurt and our colorful fusillade of flares died out.”
Four of them had already been at the station for a more than a year, since the British Antarctic Program tour of duty is generally 30 months. Three were back for a repeat winter after some time away.
“But for the bulk of us, this is our first encounter with the bewildering ritual which is the transformation of austral summer to austral winter,” wrote Simon Herniman. “At these latitudes the rate at which night steals minutes from the day is accelerated. It seems as if you can tell that each successive evening is darker and each morning later.”
They also faced the mementos left by the summer crew, who according to tradition leave booby traps for those staying behind. This winter’s gifts included hidden alarm clocks timed to go off every 30 minutes, beds filled with pingpong balls, powder and scientific apparatus; doors hinged at the top rather than the side; and a fully packed skidoo and sledge parked in the loft.
The winter period is much more communal than the hectic summer season and Rothera life now resembles a combination of the ‘Waltons’ and the ‘Discovery Channel’. Meanwhile the winter science program continues undaunted by lower temperatures and increased darkness and continues to deliver world class research. Meteorology, upper atmospheric studies, terrestrial biology, marine biology and the dive program all continue over the winter period along with essential base duties.
Due to the low levels of light from the station and clear air, they have a good view of meteor storms, “In fact I thought I saw two shooting stars and wished upon them,” wrote Rob Smith, “but they were only satellites. It’s wrong to wish on space hardware.”
