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Antarctic Awakening
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# : |
10399 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1986 |
4,058 Words |
| Author
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Jim Detjen
Jim Detjen is the science writer for the Philadelphia
Inquirer and one of four journalists selected by the National
Science Foundation to visit Antarctica in November 1985. |
SUMMARY: Asleep for eons under a thick blanket of ice, the Antarctic continent's interior remained inaccessible until early in this century. Even then, only courageous explorers willing to risk their lives penetrated very far from the continent's shores. In the last thirty years, modern transportation, communication, and habitation technologies have finally opened inner Antarctica to relatively safe and convenient travel and to massive, methodical, year-round scientific research.
So far, the greatest treasure retrieved from the heart of this strange continent is knowledge. Scientists in Antarctica have been able to gather information and gain understanding about the earth and the workings of nature not obtainable anywhere else. Researchers from sixteen nations who work there help each other amid the earth's most hostile environmental conditions. They are making Antarctica not only a fertile arena for scientific discoveries but also a laboratory for international cooperation.
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In May 1985, scientists with the British Antarctic Survey reported finding large and unexpected losses of ozone from the atmosphere twenty to thirty miles above their station in Antarctica. The loss was worrisome because ozone helps block the sun's ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer. The British scientists found that this dangerous radiation had increased ten-fold over much of Antarctica.
Studies by U.S. scientists confirmed that the amount of ozone over Antarctica had dropped substantially during the past twenty years. The cause for this loss in not known, but many scientists believe that synthetic industrial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, commonly used as a refrigerant, are to blame.
The findings have sparked renewed debate among scientists about the fragility of the atmosphere surrounding our planet and about whether enough is being done to protect it from harmful artificial chemicals.
These debates have spotlighted the unique scientific role Antarctica has come to play in recent times as an early-warning station for detecting important changes in the world's environment. Scientific measurements and observations can be done in Antarctica that are not possible elsewhere because it is far from the major sources of pollution and the more complex ecological systems that exist in most other parts of the world.
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