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Post Office Box 325, Port Clyde, Maine 04855 Another Level of Antarctic Science? VOLUME 16-17 APRIL NO. 3 HONORARY PRESIDENT “BY AND FOR ALL ANTARCTICANS” Dr. Robert H. Rutford Post Office Box 325, Port Clyde, Maine 04855 PRESIDENT Dr. Anthony J. Gow www.antarctican.org 117 Poverty Lane www.facebook.com/antarcticansociety Lebanon, NH 03766 [email protected] Another level of Antarctic science? .. 1 From wood huts to sci-fi chic ........... 6 VICE PRESIDENT Liesl Schernthanner Next Gathering, 20-22 July 2018! .... 2 C. Pierce, distinguished Antarctican . 7 P.O. Box 3307 Surface temperature extremes ........... 2 John Perry, 1937-2016 ...................... 8 Ketchum, ID 83340 [email protected] What makes a nation consultative? ... 3 Bob Dingle, 1920-2016 .................... 9 People and books .............................. 5 Board meeting, July 2016 .............. 10 TREASURER Dr. Paul C. Dalrymple Sea ice breaks a record, and a trend .. 6 Box 325 Port Clyde, ME 04855 Phone: (207) 372-6523 [email protected] WILL ANTARCTIC SCIENCE ADVANCE ANOTHER LEVEL? SECRETARY Joan Boothe When the third polar year – the 1957-1958 International Geophysical 2435 Divisadero Drive San Francisco, CA 94115 Year – replaced start-then-stop expeditions with continuous Antarctic pro- [email protected] grams, scientific output went up. The fourth one – the 2007-2008 Internation- al Polar Year – used far better research tools such as satellite observations, WEBMASTER Thomas Henderson computer visualizations, and modeling. Scientific output went up some more. 520 Normanskill Place The need for boots on the ground remained unquestioned. Even Slingerlands, NY 12159 remote sensing requires ground truth, dictating a continuing human presence. [email protected] Those boots need places to sleep, eat, and do science. Some new sta- ARCHIVIST tions are breathtaking: Belgium's Princess Elisabeth, an aerodynamic pod on Charles Lagerbom 16 Peacedale Drive steel legs built in 2009, is the first with zero emissions. Solar and wind energy Northport, ME 04849 run it, great insulation greatly reduces heat loss, and waste heat and human [email protected] activity keep the interior warm. For more, see “From huts to sci-fi chic.” BOARD OF DIRECTORS Of course, for years that human presence has been challenged by Dale Anderson; Dr. John automated monitoring devices that transmit weather and geophysics to home Behrendt; J. Stephen institutions by satellite. In fact, unattended stations already outnumber the Dibbern; Valmar Kurol; Dr. Louis Lanzerotti; Mark human-occupied facilities in Antarctica. We’ll cover this in a future issue. Leinmiller; Jerry Marty; Now, though, comes another challenge to some of the human Ronald Thoreson; Leslie presence. Two British Antarctic Survey staff have opened a discussion of Urasky how nations should be selected for consultative, or decision-making, status in NEWSLETTER EDITOR the Antarctic Treaty. While a physical Antarctic presence may historically Guy Guthridge [email protected] have been a major factor, shouldn’t scientific output – however achieved – be the more useful criterion? See “What makes a nation consultative?” inside. MEMBERSHIP Three remarkable Antarcticans are commemorated below. The Ice Send check to Treasurer, or click “About Us” on web draws accomplished individuals; these men each made unique contributions. site. Other news includes a report on the Society’s 2016 board meeting and $20/yr newsletter mailed. the next Antarctic Gathering in Port Clyde, Maine, 20-22 July 2018. Read on! $13/yr newsletter online. Foreign $25 mailed. Guy Guthridge The Antarctican Society April 2017 20-22 July 2018: mark your calendar March 2015 at Esperanza, an Argentine for the next Antarctic Gathering! station near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, elevation 13 meters, latitude Treasurer and Guiding Soul Paul 63o24’S Dalrymple has graciously, again, invited the • one for the Antarctic plateau: Society to cosponsor with him an Antarctic −7.0oC (19.4oF) recorded 28 December 1989 Gathering at his house in Port Clyde, Maine, at D-80, a U.S.-operated automatic weather to take place Friday through Sunday, 20-22 station (AWS) in Adélie Land, elevation July 2018. 2,500 meters, latitude 70o06’S The format will follow that of the The paper contains the following highly successful 2016 event, which caveat: “As with all WMO evaluations of attracted 114 Society members and guests: a extremes (e.g., temperature, pressure, wind, Friday evening meal of outstanding fish etc.), the extremes presented here are the chowder, a Saturday of Garage Theater highest observed temperatures placed before presentations, and a gala Sunday lobster the WMO for adjudication that passed brunch. WMO’s standards for such data. It is We especially hope, this go-round, possible, indeed likely, that greater extremes also to attract any and all 1957-1958 can and have occurred in the Antarctic but International Geophysical Year alumni(ae). have gone unreported.” Your 60th anniversary! Here’s where things get interesting Gee. Coastal Maine, summer, for your editor, who is not a meteorologist. seafood, colleagues new and old, and The new EOS paper starts this way: “On 21 presentations that will glue you to your seat. July 1983 the lowest temperature ever ob- It’s not too early to sign up, even if served on Earth was recorded at a Russian you’re only tentative at this point. We research station [Vostok] in central encourage you to do that and have started a Antarctica: The thermometer at the site read list. Write Paul Dalrymple or your editor −89.2°C (−128.6°F). But it’s not just the (Guy Guthridge) using an email address lowest lows that have caught the attention of shown on the front page of this newsletter. scientists in the Antarctic. Especially in the face of climate change, researchers have Surface temperature extremes in the also begun to investigate how warm the Antarctic planet’s southernmost region can get.” The World Meteorological Organiza- Pondering that record low tion, reporting an evaluation of surface temperature records, has a new paper in EOS The Vostok temperature was (American Geophysical Union) stating observed on 21 July 1983, and it is credible Antarctic record high temperatures and in two ways. It is not much lower than the explaining how they were verified. August 1960 record of -88.3oC for the same Three record highs are given: location, and it is published in a 1984 paper, • one for south of 60oS: 19.8oC “Novyy absoliutnyy minimum temperatury (67.6oF) observed 30 January 1982 at Signy, vozdukha [New absolute minimum of air a British station on Signy Island, elevation temperature],” Sovetskaia antarkticheskaia not stated but near sea level, latitude ekspeditsiia Informatsionnyy biulleten. 60o43’S no.105. • one for the Antarctic For decades the Vostok world record continent: 17.5oC (63.5oF) observed 24 low has been one of the extremes that people 2 The Antarctican Society April 2017 like to state for Antarctica (others being where surface instruments are not present. highest, windiest, most remote, and so on). The NOAA statement that 2016 was Earth’s The figure continues to be used widely in warmest year on record, for example, the popular literature, and the new EOS derives from all observations including paper presents it without elaboration. satellite ones. But. That 1984 Soviet paper about Officially documenting and verifying the Vostok record states, “According to high-temperature extremes is the business of theoretical calculations, air temperature in the World Meteorological Organization the area could fall below −90oC, but this Commission for Climatology (CCl). For the would require prolonged absence of heat highest Antarctic temperatures evaluation, advection.” the CCl created an international committee Sure enough: Ted Scambos and of climatologists and meteorologists others of the U.S. National Snow and Ice associated with Antarctic temperature Data Center (NSIDC) found temperatures measurements. Reflecting this, the new EOS from −92º to −94ºC (−134º to −137ºF) in a paper has 15 authors from institutions in 1,000-kilometer stretch on the highest seven nations. section of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Citation. Skansi, M. d. L. M., et al. measurements were made between 2003 and (2017), Evaluating highest-temperature 2013 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging extremes in the Antarctic, EOS, 98, Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO068325. board the Aqua satellite and in 2013 by Published on 01 March 2017. Landsat 8, a then new satellite launched by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. What makes a nation consultative? On 10 August 2010 the MODIS measurement for the region was −93.2ºC by Guy Guthridge (−135.8ºF). Commenting about it on 10 December 2013, the Scientific Committee The 12 nations’ representatives who on Antarctic Research noted that the 21 July signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 (and 1983 Vostok measurement “was an air whose governments ratified it in 1961) temperature taken a couple of meters above included a provision for other nations to the surface, and the satellite figure is the join. New adhering nations would be in one ‘skin’ temperature of the ice surface itself. of two categories: agreeing to abide by the But the corresponding air temperature would treaty but having no say in decisions at almost certainly beat the Vostok mark.” consultative meetings (“acceding,” as Wikipedia’s “Lowest temperature recorded prescribed in Article XIII), or achieving on Earth” article makes that point and says, “consultative” or voting status equal to the “it is most likely that the real temperature on original 12 by meeting a threshold the [satellite-observed] site was lower than requirement. that recorded at Vostok.” The treaty’s Article IX sets the For historical continuity, the 1983 threshold: Vostok temperature remains useful. “Each Contracting Party which has But it’s also reasonable for us to become a party to the present Treaty by state that Antarctica is colder. In whatever accession under Article XIII shall be entitled way you decide to assess the information, to appoint representatives to participate in Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth – the meetings referred to in paragraph 1 of even though parts of it are getting warmer.
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