Joint ice study by U.S., Russia

Press, 6 October 1989, Page 38

Joint ice study by U.S., Russia

Sending aloft a balloon that would dwarf a football field and a unique cooperative effort on icecoring with the Soviets will be features of this year’s Antarctic programme by the United States National Science Foundation.

Releasing details of the programme, the head of polar programmes for the foundation, Dr Peter Wilkniss, said it would be the biggest season yet. Large Galaxy aircraft would be used for the first time, as a trial, and Italian and Australian supply planes would take part.

Among 96 American scientific projects, the most spectacular would be the launch of an 800,000 cu m atmospheric balloon, carrying astronomical equipment to a. height of about 40km. The balloon will be released from near McMurdo Station and will circle Antarctica in the rotating, high-altitude winds, in a flight expected to take two to three weeks.

Dr Wilkniss said that French and American scientists would visit Vostok Station, where the Soviets had drilled an ice core more than 2km deep, containing ice up to 160,000 years old.

Such cores carry a record of the climate and atmospheric changes. United States planes will be used to carry parts of the core to McMurdo, from where they will be shipped to the United States, France, and the Soviet Union for examination. The programme will again include investigations into ozone depletion and the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on Antarctic life forms. Dr Wilkniss said it had been realised that the accepted mechanisms for ozone depletion accounted for only about half the measured loss. It had been believed that ozone was destroyed by chlorine from manmade chlorofluorocarbons, acting in concert with sunlight — explaining why it occurred mainly in spring, with the return of the sun to Antarctica. It had now been realised, from measurements taken at the South Pole in winter and from laboratory simulations, that depletion also happened in. the dark. There was now “a lot of speculation” about alternative causes, he said.