Looking back on more than 45 years of overwinterings at German Antarctic stations
The value of long-term scientific observations in remote locations
A guest article by Steven Franke, Jölund Asseng, Tim Heitland and Alfons Eckstaller.
This year, the 43rd overwintering team will commence their duties at the Neumayer Station III in the Antarctic. They will continue the several-decades-long series of ongoing scientific measurements, providing valuable insights into the current status and activity of our planet by doing so, and ensure the required logistical and research infrastructure is maintained. In fact, thanks to the observatory-related and research work at the GDR’s Georg Forster Station (1976-1992), which began a few years earlier, overwinterers at German Antarctic stations have been gathering long-term observational data for the past 47 years.
100 people overwintered at the Georg Forster Station from 1976 to 1991, and more than 370 have followed suit at the three generations of the Neumayer Station since 1981. As such, they provide an essential pillar that makes German Arctic research and long-term observation under these conditions – which are as harsh as they are unique – possible in the first place. An extensive article on the topic was published this winter in the journal Polarforschung: https://doi.org/10.5194/polf-90-65-2022.
Over the centuries, German Antarctic research has been formed by a number of key figures. Just a few examples to mention are Reinhold Forster and his son Georg, who, on a voyage with James Cook, became the first German to visit the Antarctic island of South Georgia in 1775; and Georg von Neumayer, who from the 1850s advocated launching an expedition to the Southern Ocean and co-organised the International Polar Year 1882-1883; as well as the German Antarctic ship-based expeditions led by Erich von Drygalski (1901-1903) and Wilhelm Filchner (1911-1912). After the Second World War, new opportunities for German Antarctic research emerged from 1959 through the GDR’s participation in Soviet Antarctic expeditions. From 1975, the FRG began ship-based scientific expeditions to the Southern Ocean. Finally, with both German states joining the Antarctic Treaty System in the 1970s and the subsequent founding of the Alfred Wegener Institute and construction of the research icebreaker Polarstern, the stage was set for permanently manned German Antarctic stations.
Through the years, the overwinterers’ core duties have remained unchanged: to continue the scientific time series and keep the requisite infrastructure up and running under conditions that are sometimes hard to imagine. In this regard, the external circumstances – the remote geographic location, the social isolation, storms and temperatures down to -50° C, not to mention months of continuous darkness – haven’t changed, either.
In contrast, there have been massive changes in terms of comfort, communications with the outside world, and the makeup of the teams. Until 1996, there were no mixed teams of women and men at the Georg Forster Station and the Neumayer Stations. As part of the “women’s overwintering” at the Georg von Neumayer Station in 1990, for the first time women overwintered at a German Antarctic station, although still not in a mixed team. Since 1996, mixed teams have been the norm (except in the years 1998 and 2005), with women accounting for slightly under 50% on average. Another improvement and comfort for modern overwinterers is the possibility of staying in constant contact with the rest of the world, friends and family. At the dawn of Antarctic research, this was only possible by the sea route, which could remain inaccessible for months or even years, and was painfully slow to begin with. The first Neumayer overwintering teams had a telex machine, the radio channel Radio Norddeich and, in an emergency, could use a satellite phone. Today’s teams have access to a permanent satellite connection.
The three original core observatories at the Neumayer Stations – for atmospheric chemistry, meteorology and geophysics – have been in operation since 1982 and been expanded over the years. For example, the time series for certain meteorological parameters, like stratospheric ozone, was actually begun at the Georg Forster Station and, combined with the data still being gathered today at the Neumayer Station, is part of an extremely valuable overall time series. Over time, additional long-term observation projects and temporary research projects alike have been added and are supported by the overwinterers. These include the hydrophone grid PALAOA for ocean acoustics, the penguin observatory SPOT, and experiments conducted at regular intervals on the sea ice, e.g. measuring the ice thickness in Atka Bay. Overwinterers also attend to medical studies and maintain the I27DE infrasound station, used to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Continuous long-term observations in the Antarctic are laborious and often receive little acclaim as scientific contributions. Yet many key scientific discoveries would never have been possible without extended time series and analyses (e.g. the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer). It often seems easier to find ample funding for short-term projects than for establishing long-term infrastructures. Courage, determination and years of largely thankless work are needed to ensure both continuity and quality. After all, we can only arrive at a better grasp of the Earth system with the aid of precise, high-quality data. And Earth system models can only accurately simulate future scenarios when they have data of the highest quality to draw on.
It’s precisely this aspect that makes the data so valuable and gives us every reason to acknowledge the work done by all overwinterers, past and present, at the Neumayer Stations and the Georg Forster Station. In this regard, it’s also important to mention the overwinterers at the German Antarctic Receiving Station (GARS O’Higgins). Located near Chile’s General Bernardo O’Higgins Station on the Antarctic Peninsula, long-term geodetic observations have been gathered there since 1991.
Today, the “old pros” are no longer running the long-term observatories at the Neumayer Station. The pioneers from the first overwinterings at the Georg von Neumayer Station, who constructed, monitored and maintained the observatories, are no longer involved and have passed the baton to a new generation of researchers.
Original article:
Franke, S., Eckstaller, A., Heitland, T., Schaefer, T., and Asseng, J.: The role of Antarctic overwintering teams and their significance for German polar research, Polarforschung, 90, 65–79, https://doi.org/10.5194/polf-90-65-2022, 2022.
