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Antarctica’s History
By Meghan

Antarctica’s name comes from the greek word “Aktos” meaning bear, after the constellation in the sky known as The Great Bear.  Aktos was used to refer to the north or Arctic region of our planet because The Great Bear constellation was located in the northern sky.  Thus, the opposite of Aktos meaning “no bear” or Antarctic was associated with the land at the opposite end of the earth, in the south.  It was the Greeks that proposed the idea of a great land mass at the southern end of the Earth to counter balance the land masses in the north.  It was originally believed the land at the south pole must be a lush and fertile region.

One of the early explorers who traveled around Antarctica was Captain James Cook.  He is credited with being the first to sail all the way around the continent during three separate voyages in 1772-1775.  He did not actually land on Antarctica but dispelled the earlier beliefs that the land was a fertile paradise and fit for establishing colonies.  He did, however, report on the vast sightings of marine life that gathered during the summers there such as whales and seals.  This spurred sealers, whaling merchants and fishing companies to want to travel to this region.   From 1780 to the early part of the 1900s, most visitors to the region were seal hunters.  These sealers were also active in many adjoining regions such as the Falkland Islands, Tierra del Fuego, Stewart Island, and Tasmania. Sealers traveled from Britain, Cape Colony, France, New South Wales, New Zealand, Tasmania and the United States. These sealers made the first landings on Antarctica in 1821 at Hughes Bay and were the earliest to winter in this region, on the South Shetland Islands in 1821 and 1877.  During this sealing era, charts of the continent progressively improved and slowly, scientific and exploring expeditions began by many countries to explore the interior of the continent.

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton led an expedition across Antarctica in search of the South Pole. He came within 97 miles of the South Pole.  Between December 1908 - February 1909, Shackleton and his crew were credited with making several firsts.  They were the first humans to cross the Ross Ice Shelf, the Transantarctic Mountain Range and the first humans to set foot on the South Polar Plateau.  It was on January 15, 1909 that three members of his crew became the first humans to reach the magnetic South Pole.  At that time, the magnetic South Pole was within the Antarctic continent at latitude 71.6°S and longitude 152°E.  Today, it lies far out to sea at latitude 65°S and longitude 139°E and travels 10 to 15 km north-westerly each year. Electric currents and the rolling motion of the liquid iron core of the Earth due to the tilting of the Earth’s axis determine the position of the magnetic poles. The pole moves daily in a roughly elliptical pattern around this average position, and may be as far as 80 km away from this position when the Earth's magnetic field is disturbed.

In 1911, two explorers Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Scott of England, were both planning expeditions to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole.  (The geographic South Pole is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth, directly opposite the North Pole and lies in the middle of Antarctica on the Greenwich meridian line at 0 degrees longitude.)   Amundsen, who had experience traveling to the North Pole decided to adopt the Inuit ways of combating the cold on his journey to the South Pole.  He used animal furs to stay warm and huskies to pull the sleds across the Antarctica ice fields.  Scott’s group was poorly equipped and used ponies for at least part of their trip across the land and wool instead of furs to stay warm.  Both reached the South Pole but Amundsen beat Scott by 33 days and Scott’s group did not survive the return trip.

Scientific exploration continued as did the interests of the whaling industry during the early to mid 1900s.  By now, there were an increasing number of countries interested in claiming parts of the continent and setting up research stations. This led to more activity in the region and the permanent occupation of stations began in 1944 at Port Lockroy (Wiencke Island) and Hope Bay (Antarctic Peninsula).

During the 1950s advances were made in rocketry and seismography leading to a U.S. scientist named Lloyd Berkner to propose having a third international polar year. This became known as the IGY or International Geophysical Year and began July 1, 1957 through December 31, 1958.  The IGY was a cooperative, international scientific effort to study Antarctica during a solar maximum, which was considered to be a time when unusual effects of the sun on the earth might be observed.  More than 70 existing national scientific organizations then formed IGY committees, and participated in the cooperative effort. The IGY included the study of eleven earth sciences: aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, glaciology, gravity, ionospheric physics, longitude and latitude mapping, meteorology, oceanography, seismology and solar activity.

The U.S. Government announced it was developing earth satellites as geophysical tools for this research program.  The Soviet government wanted to beat the U.S. and rushed its satellites, known as Sputniks, into orbit. The Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 of October 1957 was the first successful artificial satellite.  Other significant achievements of the IGY included the discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belts, described as energetically charged particles around the earth, trapped by the earth’s magnetic field and the discovery of mid-ocean submarine ridges that helped support the existence of plate tectonics.

The IGY also led to the negotiations of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, by the twelve states then active in the Antarctic. It came into force in 1961 and has subsequently been a major influence on Antarctic affairs.  In the treaty, Antarctica is defined as all land and ice shelves south of the southern 60th parallel. The treaty has now been signed by 44 countries, including the former Soviet Union and the United States, with the understanding that Antarctica is to be left as a scientific preserve, establishing freedom of scientific investigation and bans all military activity on the continent.

Today, Antarctica is visited by about 4,000 researchers and tourists during the summer months with only about 1,000 people remain for the harsh, winter months.  These people that remain, live mostly at government research stations where temperatures can reach a minimum of  between -121 °F and -130 °F (-85 °C and -90 °C).  During the summer months, the temperature typically ranges from -5 to 20 °F. This makes Antarctica the coldest place on Earth.  In the middle of winter, so much of the sea around it freezes into pack ice that the continent doubles in size.  It is much like a frozen desert with very little precipitation, especially at the South Pole itself. 

I think Antarctica will remain a vital asset for our planet because of the vast amount of fresh water that it holds in the form of ice.  It is important that all nations work together to keep it in its natural state and study the effects of green house gases, global warming and changes in the ocean temperatures and marine life so that we can find ways to better preserve this land for the future.

Sources used to write this article:
http://www.70south.com/resources/antarctic-history 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/About_Antarctica/FAQs/faq_05.html
Eyewitness Video “Arctic & Antarctic” copyright 1996
The Frozen World, A Panoramic Vision, by Patrick Hook copyright 2006