A geophysicists team lead by Professor Olivier Francis, is carrying out a project in Antarctica, tracing deformations of the Earth’s surface. Francis explains what kind of work they are doing and what life is like down South.

The project “Geodesy In Antarctica” (GIANT) is lead by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in close collaboration with the Laboratory of Geophysics of the University of Luxembourg. It is one of the 8 projects fully supported by the Belgian Science Policy.

The Belgian ‘Princess Elisabeth’ base is installed at Utsteinen in Antarctica, and was officially inaugurated in February 2009. The base hosts scientists during the summer season - which is November to February, and until now, only a select number of research projects have been conducted there. Most of them aim to improve our understanding of climate-related mechanisms, a first step in the fight against climate change.

By combining GPS data, gravimetry and seismology techniques, GIANT will trace the horizontal and vertical deformation of the Earth's surface and focus on the relation between ice mass variation and crust deformation around the Belgian station in Antarctica. Glaciers deform the Earth's crust by either gaining or losing ice mass.

Develop Your Social Skills

Professor Francis tells us that the cold is not one of Antarctica’s main obstacles: “The last ten days, the weather has been very nice: minus 8 degrees Celsius in average with 0 Celsius in the sun around noon time. The cold wind is the real enemy, but we are well equipped. A real challenge is living in a confined area with 29 people including technicians, engineers and other scientists for six weeks. You better develop your social skills! Also do not expect to take a shower everyday...”

Two phenomena have been causing deformation in Antarctica: the first one is rather slow and began 10,000 years ago when the ice started to melt at the end of the last ice age. The second is a lot faster and caused by the current climate change. In order to quantify each component separately, it is necessary to combine measurements of surface deformation from GPS data with measurements of variations in gravity using an absolute gravimeter.

Last year, the Royal Observatory of Belgium installed a borehole seismometer and a permanent high precision GPS - ‘Global Positioning System’ - station, called "ELIS". Continuous measurements of the position of the station allow us to estimate the horizontal and vertical deformation of the Earth surface over time with a precision of one millimeter per year.

A second permanent GPS station

This season, Professor Olivier Francis of the University of Luxembourg installed a second permanent GPS station, named « ULUX » (Utsteinen LUXembourg). “Our entire project will last at least 5 years”, says Olivier Francis, “It is really exciting, but also quite stressful as you don't want come back without data. What struck me especially was the beauty of the nature... I cannot describe it. There is the landscape, the sun, the ice, the wind, the cold, the isolation. It is just a great place to be.”