It Must Be Incredible to Visit Antarctica. Here's Why You Shouldn't

In the summer, tens of thousands of tourists and scientists flock to the landmass by boat and plane.

The number of sightseeing visitors to the remote continent increased to 74,000 during the current season, with most of them traveling by ship. More than 70 research stations on the continent house thousands of researchers.

This activity leaves a physical footprint with lasting consequences. Humans are having a growing impact that can be measured and quantified at one of the last undisturbed places on earth.

Tourist and scientific operators are required to remove waste from the continent. Trash and human waste can be flown or shipped to warmer latitudes for disposal. Some forms of waste are not easy to dispose of.

Fuel is burned by all activity in Antarctica, be it powered drills for scientific ice coring or vehicles for transport. Black carbon is released when we burn fuel to keep warm or move around.

Black carbon is released by forest fires and human activity around the world. The soot from the Australian bushfires traveled around the world.

The sources of black carbon are usually more local in Antarctica, which is isolated from the rest of the world by a strong barrier of circumpolar winds.

The levels of black carbon in the snow near human settlements have been quantified in a new research. Scientists collected samples from 28 locations across a 2,000 km stretch of the most traveled section of the planet.

By analyzing the quantity and type of light-absorbing particles in snow samples, the researchers document how soot emitted by humans is affecting the properties of Antarctic snow near high-traffic areas.

The concentrations of black carbon were lower at less accessible sites. Cordero et al., Nature Comms.

The quantity and type of particulates were identified by analyzing the samples through filters. The background level of black carbon in the snow is one billionth of a gram per gram.

The researchers used anangstrom exponent to differentiate between dust and black carbon. The type of particles in the snow samples could be inferred from how the filters interacted with light in the laboratory.

Black carbon levels were much higher than the normal background levels in all samples from near human settlements. A property known as "albedo" will be influenced by elevated levels of black carbon.

The snow will melt faster if it has a lower albedo. The black carbon content in the snow samples could be used to see if the snow melt rates have increased due to human activity.

Scientists emit even more per capita than tourists

The results are not good. Human-produced black carbon may be causing snow to melt in areas near human settlements on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Between 2016 and 2020 the authors calculated that each visitor was melting 83 metric tons of snow due to emissions from cruise ships.

Scientific research stations contribute to an order of magnitude higher per capita snow melt rate through the operation of fuel-intensive equipment and vehicles, sometimes year-round.

Black carbon emissions play a role in ice and snow melt. Fires in the Amazon rainforest increased the melting of glaciers in the Andes.

Black carbon near settlements echoes other research on pollution, such as microplastics being found in sea ice and penguins. The findings show that human impacts may be more pervasive than you think.

The effects will increase as human activity increases. Research on these real and potential harms gives vital information on how they might be mitigated or avoided altogether. We need to make sure research and tourism are managed carefully to minimize harm to the environment.

Matthew Harris is a researcher at the university.

This article is free to use under a Creative Commons license. The original article is worth a read.