Expedition in Antarctica
Today, a big portion of the earth’s population is in lockdown. During this complicated time, I thought it would be a nice idea to take you on a journey to Antarctica, where we will learn how long-term climate records are collected and analyzed. Here we go!
Context
One year ago, I had the great opportunity to sail on board the JOIDES Resolution for an IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) Expedition in Antarctica during my PhD studies. IODP is an international research collaboration program that coordinates seagoing expeditions to study the history of Earth as recorded in marine sediments and rocks around the world. The JOIDES Resolution Science Operator (JRSO) operates the scientific drillship JOIDES Resolution on behalf of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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Applying for an expedition is a long process. First, you have to choose which expedition you want to join and what kind of job you want to do. I applied to the Expedition 379 (Fig. 1): “Amundsen Sea West Antarctic Ice Sheet History”, which was co-led by Julia Wellner (University of Houston, USA) and Karsten Gohl (Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany), as a micropaleontologist to study foraminifera and ostracods in the Amundsen Sea. One year before the expedition was due to leave, I was selected to be part of Expedition 379 and finally, I knew I was going to have a fantastic experience in Antarctica!
I went on Expedition 379 during the third and
last year of my PhD, which focused on the reconstruction of oceanographic and
atmospheric changes in the Eastern Indian Ocean (NW-Australia) during the
Quaternary using marine sediments retrieved in an earlier expedition (IODP Exp
356). I applied a multi-proxy approach that included micropaleontology
(foraminifera - unicellular organisms which build a calcareous shell around
them; Fig. 2) and geochemistry (radiogenic isotopes of Neodymium and Strontium)
to trace the sediment provenance and, particularly, for identifying the
Australian continental sediment sources. My work allowed me to clarify the
source of the sediment during massive dust storms crossing the whole continent
during glacial periods [2].
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| Fig. 2: Some examples of different foraminifera a) Vaginulopsis sp., b) Planorbulina sp. and c) Sigmoilopsis schlumbergeri |
Life on board
After preparing my luggage a dozen times, I travelled to Punta Arenas, Chile (Fig. 3), where the JOIDES Resolution was waiting. One hundred and seventeen people were onboard the vessel from the 21st of January (2019) for two entire months, without any stopovers. During these months we were working 12 hours a day, every day of the week. This was definitely not a cruise! I was working the night shift from midnight to midday. In the beginning, it was hard to change my habit of being awake during the day but after a few days, having breakfast at 11 pm and going to bed around 3 pm began to seem normal.
Being in the middle of the Amundsen Sea has its ups and downs. As part of the night shift, I saw all the sunsets and all the sunrises (if the sky was clear), and they were the most beautiful ones I have seen in my life. One of the best experiences was watching sea life! When we were at a drilling site, we didn’t move for weeks, so we saw plenty of humpback whales swimming around the boat; sometimes only a few meters away (Fig. 4) and some were even breaching!
When you are in Antarctica, of course, you are
expecting to see some icebergs and they were amazing to see, but in 2019 the
number of icebergs present in the Amundsen Sea was TREMENDOUS. Luckily, we had
two ice specialists with us, who monitored each iceberg’s trajectory
constantly. If one of them came within two miles of the boat, we had to stop
the drilling operations. Even worse, if it came within one mile we had to
abandon the drilling hole! Because there were so many icebergs, drilling work
was “paused” during 50% of the expedition. This large iceberg abundance in the
Amundsen Sea during the austral summer was possibly unprecedented and may have
been caused by major calving events of the ice shelves during the last 2–3
years [1].
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| Fig. 3: Me standing in front of the JOIDES Resolution in the port of Punta Arenas. © Vivien Cumming |
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| Fig. 4: Photos from the expedition. Left: Me working on identifying foraminifera. © Vivien Cumming. Middle: Humpback whale swimming around the ship. © Margot Courtillat. Right: One of the numerous icebergs we saw. © Vivien Cumming |
One other big concern I had with being at sea for 2 months was worrying: “Am I going to be seasick?“ I do not know if it was good luck, but I was not sick at all, even with 10 meter tall waves in the Drake Passage! But if you are usually seasick on a ship it does not mean that you shouldn’t apply for an expedition because there are some good treatments – some scientists on board took them to feel well enough to work with success.
Scientific results
Even though the expedition was cut down by one week and put on ‘pause’ a lot because of icebergs and sea ice, it was still a success! We drilled at two sites and retrieved 1086.46 m of sediment dating from the Holocene to late Miocene, with an 85% core recovery rate providing us with a high-quality record. As a result, we recovered the longest sediment core from the Antarctic region drilled on a marine platform near a rapidly melting, massive ice sheet and produced a scientific report.
These two sites are going to help us reconstruct the history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is suspected to have previously collapsed and raised the global sea level by several meters [3]. Understanding the ice sheet’s history and the conditions of its collapse will help us better assess how much sea level might rise and how quickly if it collapses in the future. This is really important for us scientists but also for the global community. In fact, the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report highlighted that if there is a substantial increase in the rate of sea-level rise over the next century, it is likely to come from marine-based ice like that in the Amundsen Sea Embayment [4]. More recently, the IPCC (2018) concluded that marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could be triggered by ~1.5° to 2°C of global warming and result in multimeter sea level rise over hundreds to thousands of years [1,5].
Conclusions
The expedition took two months away from working on my PhD, yet it was a good experience! In terms of work, I learned a lot from being part of this project, especially as a PhD student. In fact, your work is considered equal to the senior scientists and it is always very interesting to have a scientific conversation with them! I also learned how to work in a large international team and how rewarding it can be.
But this experience was also rich in human kindness, because more than having new colleagues, now I can also say that I have new friends!
I would strongly recommend joining an IODP
expedition. If you are interested in joining the IODP expedition visit the website and check opportunities. Also,
don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions!
Want to know more?
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During the expedition, I made a French blog to describe day to day life on
board, but even if you don’t read French, you can still have a look at the
pictures!
● There is also a really nice video that was made by Vivien Cumming during
the expedition, and explaining the scientific project in detail (in English).
●
Another video was made onboard about the diatoms and
their role in the reconstruction of Antarctic history (in English).
●
If you prefer comics, here is the website of Karen Romano Young who was an
artist on board during the expedition.
Margot Courtillat, PhD
Centre of Education and Research on Mediterranean Environments, Université de Perpignan, France
If you have questions or comments concerning Margot's post, please leave a comment below, or send her an email. You can also follow her research on ResearchGate or Twitter.
[1] Gohl, K., Wellner,
J.S., Klaus, A., and the Expedition 379 Scientists, 2019. Expedition 379
Preliminary Report: Amundsen Sea West Antarctic Ice Sheet History.
International Ocean Discovery Program. https://doi.org/10.14379/iodp.pr.379.2019
[2] Courtillat, M., Hallenberger, M., Bassetti,
M.A., Aubert, D., Jeandel, C., Reuning, L., Korpanty, C., Moissette, P.,
Mounic, S., Saavedra-Pellitero, M., (submitted). Middle to Late Pleistocene
Record of Dust Input during Glacial Periods in Western Australia shelf (IODP
Expedition 356, Site U1461).
[3]
Fretwell, P., Pritchard, H.D., Vaughan,
D.G., Bamber, J.L., Barrand, N.E., Bell, R., Bianchi, C., et al., 2013.
Bedmap2: improved ice bed, surface and thickness datasets for Antarctica. The
Cryosphere, 7(1):375–393. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-7-375-2013
[4] Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, 2013. Summary for policymakers. In Stocker, T.F., Qin,
D., Plattner, G.-K., Tignor, M., Allen, S.K., Boschung, J., Nauels, A., Xia,
Y., Bex, V., and Midgley, P.M. (Eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical
Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Cambridge, United Kingdom
(Cambridge University Press), 3–29. http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
[5] Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, 2018. Summary for policymakers. In Masson-Delmotte,
V., Zhai, P., Pörtner, H.-O., Roberts, D., Skea, J., Shukla, P.R., Pirani, A.,
et al. (Eds.), Global Warming of 1.5°C: Geneva (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change). https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/SR15_SPM_version_stand_alone_LR.pdf
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