The South Pole at Christmas? We know Tritons like to buck the trend,
but isn't that the wrong pole for Santa season? Apparently
not for
Mark Thiemens (right of South Pole), the dean of physical sciences.
Along with Justin McCabe (left of South pole), a graduate
student,
and Joel Savarino, a post doc, Thiemens braved temperatures of
minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit to drill three tons of ice samples
for study
in the lab at UCSD. The hope is to better understand the behavior
of the Antarctic polar vortex, the whirlpool of extremely
cold stratospheric
air that forms over the region during the long winter and contributes
to the formation of
the Antarctic ozone hole.
Since ozone has a unique isotopic
signature, changes in ozone levels are recorded in the oxygen
isotopes that
ultimately end up in the ice. NASA satellites have been able to
observe the vortex directly since the 1970s. Thiemen's team
therefore
wanted to retrieve ice laid down before those satellite observations.
The first samples took them “back as far as Motown,” Thiemens
says,
“but not as far back as Elvis.” Subsequent drilling by the graduate
students took them back to the turn of the last century. So maybe
going to the South Pole at Christmas
is not as far out in the ozone as we think.  |
