Category Archives: Guest publication

Adapting to life in cold isolation

Doing my job... my colleague and I cleaning instruments from the snow.

Doing my job... my colleague and I cleaning instruments from the snow. Credits: P. Robert

While waiting for this year's Concordia crew to start sending updates, Angelo Galeandro sent us his experience of spending almost a year at the remote research station:

My story begins in July 2010, when a colleague of mine asked me if I was interested in spending a full year in Antarctica. Actually, she was joking, but I took her seriously. A research team was looking for someone to monitor their equipment during the winter in Concordia, Antarctica. I presented myself and, a few months later, I realised one of the greatest dreams of my life. For the first time walked on the ice of the White Continent of which I had only read about in books and seen in some documentary before.

The emotions and feelings I experienced from the moment I left home after saying goodbye to my loved ones, over the entire period of my stay in Antarctica and beyond, have been so many that it is difficult to find the right words to describe them in the space of few lines. (more...)

New York Times blog: Lost in Time in the Antarctic Ice Age

Credits: A. Kumar

Alex wrote this for the New York Times:

Living in Antarctica in what I call the Worst Winter in the World can be likened to living through the ice age — surrounded by ice, in extreme temperatures, reliant on available food and warmth for survival. Living in the darkness, with various sleep difficulties, I have observed and documented changes in my own and fellow crew members’ day-night cycles over the past eight months, and I have noticed a strange change in my perception in the passing of time.

Continue reading via New York Times... 

 

Midsummer up north

Credits: Kolbjørn Blix Dahle

Alex writes: During midwinter in the southern hemisphere we try to remember the sunlight and wonder about midsummer. I was sent this text which shows how varied different places on planet Earth can be...

At the Andøya Rocket Range in northern Norway the Sun has been up since mid-May and will not dip below the horizon until July 25.

It is easier to get up in the morning and more difficult to go to bed at night when the Sun hovers over the ocean. It is as if the Sun itself is urging us to stay up.

Just a little bit longer, it pleads… you can sleep in the winter. (more...)