SOCIETAL NEEDS FOR ANTARCTIC RESEARCH

(a vignette prepared by the National Science Foundation)

The U.S. presence and activities in Antarctica--

• provide scientists with access to an area essential for understanding global processes and change:
  • The ozone hole was discovered and explained as a result of ground-based research in Antarctica. Current research is measuring the continued growth of the ozone hole and its possibly imminent impingement on populated regions of the other southern continents.

  • The world's only research on how ozone-hole- increased ultraviolet (UV) radiation affects marine organisms is being performed in Antarctica.

  • The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the world's only marine-based ice sheet, appears capable of collapse, which would raise sea level 20 feet. U.S. scientists are performing a comprehensive multiyear investigation of glaciological changes under way in this ice sheet.

  • Continual measurements since 1956 by American scientists at the geographic South Pole have documented changes in the world background levels of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Continued measurements are crucial to understanding and predicting future world levels of these gases and their impact on climate change.

  • The unbroken collection of weather data from manned and unmanned stations in Antarctica, now exceeding 30 years for some locations, provides an invaluable data base from which to chart the potential effect of man- induced global warming on the climatically sensitive polar regions.

  • Ice cores provide the world's most complete and continuous record of climatic change back through the last ice age and into the last interglacial period. This information is essential for predicting global climatic change.

• provide for other scientifically important investigations:
  • Research on the highly productive marine ecosystem around Antarctica is essential to understand levels of harvesting that can take place without damaging the ecosystem.

  • The extremely cold and dry atmosphere at the South Pole provides the world's best conditions for astrophysical observations of such phenomena as remnant cosmic radiation from the Big Bang.

  • More than half the meteorites known to science were collected in recent years from the antarctic ice sheet. These specimens represent a "poor man's space probe," yielding invaluable materials for understanding the history of the solar system at a fraction of the cost of manned space missions.