USC Researcher Heads to Antarctica During Holidays

While the rest of the world focuses on a visitor from the North Pole during Christmas, University of South Carolina geology professor Dr. David Barbeau will be focused in the opposite direction. He leaves Thursday the 11th to head to Antarctica to continue research he began there last year. He'll be near the South Pole for nearly a month, missing the holidays with his wife.

"It's a little hard, 'cause we'll miss Christmas, New Year's and her birthday," he says. "So it's a little bit of a challenge, but she's very understanding."

The weather will also be a major challenge. He's going now because it's summer in Antarctica from mid-December to mid-January. Temperatures will be around 28 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit where he'll be. But it's very windy much of the time and he and his colleagues will be living in tents on a glacier. "The harder challenge is getting used to the fact that's it's daylight 24 hours a day the entire time that we'll be down there," he says.

His research is on the climate of Antarctica. "Antarctica has been at the South Pole geographically for about the past 100 million years but it's only had ice on it for the past 35 million years. This is a big conundrum for scientists. How could there be a continent on the South Pole that was not glaciated for 70 million years? And one hypothesis that we're testing is a hypothesis that was proposed about 30 years ago, and that's that the positions of the continents affect how the oceans circulate and that the circulation of the oceans can either protect or not protect polar continents from getting cold or warm," he says.

The theory is that the tectonic shift of the continents that moved South America away from Antarctica allowed a stream of cold water to circulate all around Antarctica. That cold current prevents warmer water from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans from reaching Antarctica. "Prior to 35 million years ago, that current did not exist, and therefore warm waters could make it all the way to Antarctica, keeping it relatively warm," he explains.

The alternative theory is that Antarctica is so cold because of changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making the research important for scientists interested in global climate change.

To test the theory, he and his colleagues, including some USC students, will be gathering rock samples from Antarctica and the southern tip of South America to analyze them. So not only will he not be home for Christmas, he'll be getting only a box of rocks. But for a geologist, that's a great present.