The duo kite-skiing 4000 kilometres across Antarctica for science

In the endless white expanse, a small mound broke the horizon. As explorer Matthieu Tordeur and glaciologist Heïdi Sevestre skied towards it, they saw a golden head emerging from the snow. It was the bust of Vladimir Lenin left by a Soviet expedition at the southern pole of inaccessibility, the point in Antarctica furthest from any coast.

This surreal experience was the first milestone of a 4000-kilometre expedition across the continent to collect data that could shed light on its future in a warming world.

“I almost had tears in my eyes,” says Sevestre, speaking to New Scientist by satellite phone from Antarctica. “We felt really humble, really, really small, and it was quite something to see lonely Lenin here just in the middle of nowhere.”

Since 3 November, the pair have been skiing with kites that can pull them at speeds of 35 kilometres an hour or more. It is the first kite-ski expedition to collect data for polar science. The pair are hauling sleds with ground-penetrating radar that can scan the snow and ice 40 metres down.

Scientists have been trying to figure out if increased snowfall in the interior of East Antarctica is offsetting greater melting along the coast. Satellite measurements can give some indication, but Sevestre and Tordeur’s data could help produce more accurate estimates, says Martin Siegert at the University of Exeter in the UK.

“For a thousand kilometres in all directions, there will be no one,” he says. “And so it’s rare to get that type of information, but as we’re interpreting satellite data [to work out whether] the ice sheet growing, we really need that.”

The pair have three months to get from Novo Airbase in East Antarctica to Hercules Inlet in West Antarctica before the Antarctic summer ends and there will be no flights out.

In 2019, at age 27, Tordeur became the youngest person to ski to the South Pole solo and unassisted. He decided that if he returned, he would try to combine adventure with science.

“It was much better to use kites, because we would be able to travel much further and do science much further inland in the continent where scientists don’t go often,” he says.

While most subsurface mapping is done by aircraft, researchers have also towed ground-penetrating radar behind tractors to get more detailed data. But this kite-ski expedition would be one of the longest ground-penetrating radar surveys ever.

From the South Pole, Tordeur and Sevestre will tow a more powerful radar that can penetrate as deep as 2 kilometres. Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey want to see if this can trace ancient ice layers from East Antarctica into West Antarctica. If so, it would suggest that West Antarctica — which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by up to 5 metres — didn’t completely melt during the last interglacial period, a much-debated question.

“This is important because it would indicate whether the ice sheet is unstable to the sort of climate forcing it is now experiencing,” says Hamish Pritchard at the British Antarctic Survey.

Tordeur and Sevestre have had to ski through almost 1000 kilometres of sastrugi, wind-sculpted ripples of hard snow that jolt and break equipment in the sleds.

Sevestre keeps a sense of perspective by listening to audiobooks, including The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account of an agonising winter crossing of the Ross Ice Shelf in 1910-1913 and his failed attempt to meet Robert Falcon Scott’s party, who froze to death kilometres away.

“They’re talking about temperatures of -65°C in their tents,” she says. “I thought, OK, I’m not going to complain about the -28°C we have in our tent.”

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