bookshelf
Cold hard facts about conducting polar research
Science is just the Tip of the Iceberg
A review of Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science
Reviewed by Capt. Edward Lundquist, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Senior Science Advisor Alion Science and Technology
William Althoff's new book, Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science, will appeal to you if you are interested in ships, planes, scientific exploration or polar expeditions. If you are fascinated by all of those subjects, then this book should be at the top of your reading list. On the surface, Althoff's book tells us about the pioneering outposts placed upon the drift ice to unlock the mysteries of the Arctic. That's the science part of the story. But getting there and staying there, living and moving about in the extreme latitudes, is another story altogether. The science is just the tip of the iceberg. "We need platforms to penetrate an ocean so that we can conduct oceanographic, geophysical and climate-related science at sea," Althoff says. "A ship works well enough in the open ocean, and less well or not at all in ice-covered seas. The obvious question was whether explorers could fruitfully and safely exploit the ice itself." Polar exploration was driven by a desire to fill in the blanks on the map. The imperative was exploration, scientific understanding, territorial expansion, prestige, and just plain hubris. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen built the Fram to be frozen in the ice to learn about how the ice drifts across the Arctic Ocean. His expedition left Norway in 1893 and returned three years later. The introduction of radio communications, aviation, and still later the nuclear submarine, enabled subsequent exploration to be conducted by outposts built upon the shifting and dangerous ice itself as foundations for at-sea research. These were called drifting stations.
20 MTR
Althoff's book tells of the 1937 Soviet encampment led by Ivan Papanin. The expedition was launched from Rudolf Island in Frantz Josef Land using aircraft to establish a camp on the drifting ice near the North Pole. The aircraft were guided by a radio beacon and a rudimentary landing strip was built for resupply. "They were more or less entirely on their own once it had drifted beyond the pole. It was a bold, gutsy, admirable pioneering effort. I'm very pleased to recount the Soviet contributions to polar science because little is known or appreciated in the West." Nuclear submarines have proven indispensable for under-ice echo-soundings, surveying bottom topography and measuring ice thicknesses. Ice thickness, an indispensable metric for climate-related research, is the baseline data for assessing how much and how fast the Arctic Basin ice cover is retreating, Althoff says. Climate is governed largely by the oceans, he adds, "and one cannot study the air-iceocean system from below the canopy." The "canopy" refers to the sea-ice cover over the underlying seawater. "Sea ice is important to climate models because it is a fractured medium between the atmosphere and ocean," he says. Today, modern radio and satellite communications contribute a high degree of safety. Scientists know where they are and can be extracted in the event of a medical emergency or ice breakup. Status reports are routine, and scientific data can be transmitted elsewhere for instant analysis and permanent storage. Aircraft are still used to support the ice-based science, deliver logistics and provide evacuation. For Althoff, researching one story led to another. "I got the idea for Drift Station
October 2007
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