2011 News

Travelling to the end of the Earth and back

Published: February 9, 2011
Tamarah Feder

Prof. Eric Galbraith of the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences is taking nine of his students south this February, but instead of warm oceans and white sandy beaches, they are heading to freezing waters and monumental mountains of snow in Antarctica as part of the Students on Ice educational program.

Launched 10 years ago, the award-winning educational expedition program is an extraordinary field-study opportunity where students, teachers and scientists can collect specialized scientific data. To date, the program has brought more than 1,500 people from around the world to the Arctic and Antarctic. Though the program has a broad range of sponsors, university students cover their costs, which run as much as $10,000. This is the first year McGill will participate, thanks to Galbraith’s efforts – and the hard work and savings by his determined students.

Along with nearly 70 students from five other universities from Canada, the U.S. and Europe, Galbraith and his group will board ship in Argentina and cross the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula, arriving about five days after they depart Montreal.

Galbraith, who has led seven similar expeditions of high school and university students, has prepared his charges by teaching them how to access, plot, analyze and interpret global oceanic data sets that include millions of observations made over recent decades. His students – who represent faculties as diverse as Science, Environmental Studies and Management – will apply what they have learned to understanding how things look in the region today compared with the past. They will also be looking for signs of change.

“We will be travelling around a fairly large area of the Southern Ocean that is still undersampled, so we will be able to take some valuable ocean temperature and salinity measurements. We plan to contribute the data and observations we collect for use by researchers around the world,” said Galbraith.

The Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica provides oxygen to and aerates the rest of the world’s oceans. The dynamics of the ocean play a critical role in keeping the region cold; if the water temperatures don’t stay cold enough, the ocean will bring warmer waters to the ice sheets, accelerating glacier melts which cause world sea levels to rise.

Practically void of humans, the region is home to diverse wildlife. In addition to the business of taking measurements, Galbraith and his students are looking forward to seeing whales, seals and millions of “very curious but very smelly penguins,” he laughed.

For Galbraith, bringing his students on the trip is a way to empower them with an empirical experience that will demonstrate how and why what happens in Antarctica matters. In addition to writing up research reports upon their return, Galbraith and his students plan to document their experience and the work they are doing in word and on film.

And as for all those tomato-coloured snowbirds floating belly-up in Caribbean waters, don’t feel too bad for Galbraith and his students. They’re going to go swimming, too. In a volcano and where the sun sets after midnight.

Original source taken from: McGill Reporter