REPORTER: Aaron Lewis
I've made my way to Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina, a place that calls itself the end of the world and the beginning of everything. From here I'll board a boat headed for the Antarctic on a journey to retrace the steps of famed explorer Ernest Shackleton. Almost a century ago Shackleton's 2-year ordeal, including being stranded on the Antarctic ice, provided an early, accurate record of the geography and climate of the Antarctic. I'm going to see how things have changed in what has been nearly a century since Shackleton's epic voyage.
In 1914 Shackleton set out to cross Antarctica on foot. But before reaching land, his ship was crushed in pack ice, beginning one of the greatest survival stories of the last century. Our ship, the 'Polar Pioneer', is now setting out to retrace Shackleton's escape. For the next three weeks I'll be travelling with a group of Antarctic veterans who have a unique perspective on the impact of global warming. After a few days at sea, we reach Antarctica. I go ashore with Dave Burkitt, who's been coming here for 30 years.
DAVE BURKITT, ANTARCTIC HISTORIAN: Yeah, I do keep coming back here. I very much enjoy it. It is a fascination with me. What is the fascination? Well, the scenery, the wildlife and it's a climate that seems to suit me. I don't like it when it's too hot - albeit it's not that cold in Antarctica now during the summer months. Indeed, I went back earlier on in the year back home to Britain and it was colder there than it was in Antarctica.
Burkitt says evidence of climate change is plain to see.
DAVE BURKITT: I mean, over the last 50 years we've seen an increase in temperature, mean temperature, of about 3 degrees centigrade. Here at Port Locheroy, yeah, there's been some visible - as you look at the glacier out the back there, there are more and more crevasses appearing each year and general retreat of the glacier.
The Antarctic peninsula is undergoing some of the most dramatic climate changes on the planet. 87% of glaciers here are retreating and large ice shelves are collapsing at an alarming rate. The changes happening here are likely to be the most significant contributing factor to sea level rises globally in the coming decades. This colony of gentoo penguins now struggles in rising temperatures, which can exceed 10 degrees Celsius on summer days.
DAVE BURKITT: I can remember looking at some of these penguins, the gentoos here - on really hot days, they're gasping for air. Their beaks are wide open. They don't find it comfortable on those days - there's no doubt about it - and those days seem to be getting more and more frequent when you've got bright, really high temperatures, blue skies and sunshine.
One of the most obvious effects of climate change here is the melting of glacial ice. As the edges of a glacier melt away, they leave freshly exposed rock, beach or sea. Antarctic biologist Gary Miller says there are dramatic signs of glacial retreat at Paradise Harbour, just east of Port Locheroy.
GARY MILLER, ANTARTIC BIOLOGIST: In particular at Paradise, that glacier - the whole front of it - used to be floating out into the bay and now about half of it is actually resting on the shore line, so you can see a line of rock underneath it so we know it's moved back considerably.
Miller's work as a biologist has taken him all around the Southern Ocean. He tells me that the cold ocean currents produced by Antarctica are responsible for regulating the earth's climate.
GARY MILLER: All the way around the Antarctic as ice forms it creates this body of water that is heavier than the rest of the water, and it physically sinks and drives the whole system of the ocean, so it's the force behind most of our ocean currents. By driving along the bottom of the sea and upwelling in various places, it creates these circulations. Being in a position on the Pole in a hub, it drives the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean all together, so it drives the entire world's circulation.
Miller says that when Antarctic ice melts, disrupting the world's oceans, this contributes to global warming. And with projected temperature rises of up to 6 degrees this century, the melting ice and sea level rises could be devastating.
GARY MILLER: So a 5 degree change would be a massive change, and, in fact, the world has had a period in which it was warmer than what it is now but we weren't there and the continents looked a lot different because of the rise in sea level - and if you raise the sea level up that much, 90% of our population is now under water, and that's an awful lot of people. And so if that happens in a short period, even on the order of 50 years, we won't be able to keep up with that.
Dave Burkitt says he spent many years in the freezing cold of Antarctica but now temperatures are warm enough for it to rain.
DAVE BURKITT: The climate generally has changed. Indeed, I can remember when I first saw it rain down the peninsula on Adelaide Island, and we were out dog sledding and big black clouds moving toward us. We got camp up and it rained for a full 24 hours and it rained hard too. And that was my first real experience of rain down there. Nowadays, working down the peninsula throughout the summer, rain is commonplace. We're now issued with waterproof clothing, rather than just wind-proofs as we were in the 1970s.
After a few days, we set course for Elephant Island - a day's journey north. Even from a distance Burkitt can see that the island's ice cover is melting away.
HOWARD: Be interesting to come back in 10 or 20 years and see what it looks like then.
DAVE BURKITT: Well, in 30 years, from those pictures there, there's been noticeable changes.
My first visit to Antarctica was back in 1970. I was on a joint British Services expedition to Elephant Island, one of the South Shetland group, which, of course, appears very prominently in the Shackleton saga.
After Shackleton's ship was crushed by ice, his crew sailed here in three lifeboats. We try to land our boats on Point Wild, but we can't make it past the rocks, ice and sea swell. It took great skill for Shackleton to land all three boats and 28 crew safely.
DAVE BURKITT: They'd been at sea for 16 months or so - they'd be drifting on those ice flows. By the time they landed on Elephant Island there, they were in a sorry state of health and demoralised as well after what they must have gone through.
Shackleton was well aware no-one would find them here, and so he and five men set out in one lifeboat and headed for South Georgia, 1,300km away. Shackleton described his voyage, saying, "We were a tiny speck on the vast vista of the sea. The ocean that's open to all and merciful to none, that threatens even when it seems to yield, that is pitiless always to weakness."
DAVE BURKITT: It was an amazing achievement. Think about it - 800 miles distance, just a little bit out, and they'd have missed South Georgia altogether.
It took Shackleton 16 days to reach South Georgia in a lifeboat. Our ship makes the journey in three. Also on board the ‘Polar Pioneer’ is 78-year-old Alec Trendall, a renowned geologist who was trained by a cousin of Shackleton. He says that even though he never succeeded in crossing Antarctica, Shackleton's rescue mission made him a legend.
ALEC TRENDALL, GEOLOGIST: The big anomoly of Shackleton that he had to live with was his total failure to achieve what he'd set out to do with the 'Imperial' transantarctic expedition and his enormous, outstanding success in saving all the men he had personally left on the Whettlesea side. He would have been aware of this tension between Shackleton the great success and Shackleton the great failure.
In 1951 Alec Trendall helped map the island where Shackleton ended his voyage.
ALEC TRENDALL: No-one can forget an arrival on South Georgia. You wake up one morning, and there are the alps sticking out of the Southern Ocean. It's breathtaking. And it was for me then in November 1951.
We wake one morning to the sight of the stunning Drygalkski Fjord.
ALEC TRENDALL: Ice coming down here - it's a separate entity entirely. You can see here is this one.
The towering rock at the entrance to the fjord has a familiar name - Trendall Crag. It was named to honour Alec's contribution to geological work on South Georgia.
ALEC TRENDALL: You see we didn't choose the place names we were allocated. Every member of the South Georgia surveys was given either a peak or a crag or a glacier or something - and they gave me Trendall Crag.
We land where Shackleton first landed - at King Haakon Bay. It's been 50 years since Trendall set foot on the island. What he finds is a landscape transformed by warming temperatures and glacial retreat.
ALEC TRENDALL: When Shackleton actually made his crossing he would have walked maybe half a mile down there and we would have walked along the shore and then he would have struggled past the snout of this glacier behind us which would have reached all the way to the shore. And they describe how they waited for the waves to recede and dash past the glacier's snout. And that's this glacier. And it's a solid 300m or 400m back from the shore now, so we can't accurately reproduce Shackleton's route on this receding glacier snout here. It is several hundred metres back from where it was in the '50s and it was probably substantially further in this direction in 1916.
The 170km-long island of South Georgia is home to an astonishing proportion of the ocean's wildlife, including the wandering albatross, the largest flighted bird in the world. What is happening to wildlife here tells us a lot about the impact of global warming on Antarctica. But every species is affected differently. With less ice, the fur seals have started to move inland, where they disrupt nesting birds and damage plants.
GARY MILLER: The most dramatic changes we've seen has been the destruction of plant life by, for example in South Georgia the increase in fur seal populations. It has continued to increase over the last couple of decades and so now it numbers somewhere around 3 million or more.
Antarctica is a near-pristine wilderness in part because of its harsh climate. But here in South Georgia, warming temperatures mean that introduced species like reindeer and rats are now thriving.
GARY MILLER: The fact that the continent is warming up may mean that it's going to open the door to introductions of many species. And so I think that's one of the most immediate concerns now.
Alec Trendall started work with the South Georgia Survey in 1951, mapping the geology of the island. But not long into the expedition he fell through the snow cover into a deep crevasse, ending his first trip to South Georgia.
ALEC TRENDALL: The snow gave way at one point and I slipped. I should have been roped, but wasn't at that point. And I went down that crevasse and fell 50m down it. It was interesting - no-one knows what it is like to fall down a crevasse until it happens but I remember no particular sensation of fear. There was one of intense feelings that one had done a silly thing that should not have been done. Just waited calmly to see what would happen. A 50m fall takes about 3 seconds if you look at the equation. And when you hit something at the bottom you are travelling at about 100km/h. So I fell on my back on the flat top of this wedge block of ice and I was knocked out by the impact.
Luckily for Trendall, a colleague rescued him. And after being sent back to hospital in Britain, Trendall returned to South Georgia to complete his geological work. Much of his time was spent here, at Gritviken whaling station - where Shackleton was eventually buried. On the beach we find three rusting boats. Alec recognises them as the ships he sailed on as a young man.
ALEC TRENDALL: Well, I'd forgotten that so much time had passed. That a useful little ship could have turned into this. My memory of it is so clear - of it as a freshly painted and useful little boat. Very sad.
Not everything changes so quickly in South Georgia. This rookery of 80,000 king penguins has been here for more than 100 years - even before Shackleton's time. But how many species can look forward to another 100 years? Biologists say that an increase in the water temperature here of even one degree may mean that some species may not be able to breed.
DAVE BURKITT: Antarctica is very much an indicator - it has a great affect on the world's climate, on the world's oceans and so on. And it is a good indicator as to what is happening on our planet. So people should, all of us, should be striving to be more conscious of what we are doing to this planet and what we have done to this planet, and try and make the effort for future generations, for our children and grandchildren.
ALEC TRENDALL: I think my grandchildren are pretty bright. It's essentially their problem that they will have to solve. My responsibility is to make sure that they understand that fact. That they understand the problems. And they will have any advice from me they like in solving them. But it's essentially their problem, they've got to lift. And I have great faith in their ingenuity and ability to do this.
I've made my way to Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina, a place that calls itself the end of the world and the beginning of everything. From here I'll board a boat headed for the Antarctic on a journey to retrace the steps of famed explorer Ernest Shackleton. Almost a century ago Shackleton's 2-year ordeal, including being stranded on the Antarctic ice, provided an early, accurate record of the geography and climate of the Antarctic. I'm going to see how things have changed in what has been nearly a century since Shackleton's epic voyage.
In 1914 Shackleton set out to cross Antarctica on foot. But before reaching land, his ship was crushed in pack ice, beginning one of the greatest survival stories of the last century. Our ship, the 'Polar Pioneer', is now setting out to retrace Shackleton's escape. For the next three weeks I'll be travelling with a group of Antarctic veterans who have a unique perspective on the impact of global warming. After a few days at sea, we reach Antarctica. I go ashore with Dave Burkitt, who's been coming here for 30 years.
DAVE BURKITT, ANTARCTIC HISTORIAN: Yeah, I do keep coming back here. I very much enjoy it. It is a fascination with me. What is the fascination? Well, the scenery, the wildlife and it's a climate that seems to suit me. I don't like it when it's too hot - albeit it's not that cold in Antarctica now during the summer months. Indeed, I went back earlier on in the year back home to Britain and it was colder there than it was in Antarctica.
Burkitt says evidence of climate change is plain to see.
DAVE BURKITT: I mean, over the last 50 years we've seen an increase in temperature, mean temperature, of about 3 degrees centigrade. Here at Port Locheroy, yeah, there's been some visible - as you look at the glacier out the back there, there are more and more crevasses appearing each year and general retreat of the glacier.
The Antarctic peninsula is undergoing some of the most dramatic climate changes on the planet. 87% of glaciers here are retreating and large ice shelves are collapsing at an alarming rate. The changes happening here are likely to be the most significant contributing factor to sea level rises globally in the coming decades. This colony of gentoo penguins now struggles in rising temperatures, which can exceed 10 degrees Celsius on summer days.
DAVE BURKITT: I can remember looking at some of these penguins, the gentoos here - on really hot days, they're gasping for air. Their beaks are wide open. They don't find it comfortable on those days - there's no doubt about it - and those days seem to be getting more and more frequent when you've got bright, really high temperatures, blue skies and sunshine.
One of the most obvious effects of climate change here is the melting of glacial ice. As the edges of a glacier melt away, they leave freshly exposed rock, beach or sea. Antarctic biologist Gary Miller says there are dramatic signs of glacial retreat at Paradise Harbour, just east of Port Locheroy.
GARY MILLER, ANTARTIC BIOLOGIST: In particular at Paradise, that glacier - the whole front of it - used to be floating out into the bay and now about half of it is actually resting on the shore line, so you can see a line of rock underneath it so we know it's moved back considerably.
Miller's work as a biologist has taken him all around the Southern Ocean. He tells me that the cold ocean currents produced by Antarctica are responsible for regulating the earth's climate.
GARY MILLER: All the way around the Antarctic as ice forms it creates this body of water that is heavier than the rest of the water, and it physically sinks and drives the whole system of the ocean, so it's the force behind most of our ocean currents. By driving along the bottom of the sea and upwelling in various places, it creates these circulations. Being in a position on the Pole in a hub, it drives the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean all together, so it drives the entire world's circulation.
Miller says that when Antarctic ice melts, disrupting the world's oceans, this contributes to global warming. And with projected temperature rises of up to 6 degrees this century, the melting ice and sea level rises could be devastating.
GARY MILLER: So a 5 degree change would be a massive change, and, in fact, the world has had a period in which it was warmer than what it is now but we weren't there and the continents looked a lot different because of the rise in sea level - and if you raise the sea level up that much, 90% of our population is now under water, and that's an awful lot of people. And so if that happens in a short period, even on the order of 50 years, we won't be able to keep up with that.
Dave Burkitt says he spent many years in the freezing cold of Antarctica but now temperatures are warm enough for it to rain.
DAVE BURKITT: The climate generally has changed. Indeed, I can remember when I first saw it rain down the peninsula on Adelaide Island, and we were out dog sledding and big black clouds moving toward us. We got camp up and it rained for a full 24 hours and it rained hard too. And that was my first real experience of rain down there. Nowadays, working down the peninsula throughout the summer, rain is commonplace. We're now issued with waterproof clothing, rather than just wind-proofs as we were in the 1970s.
After a few days, we set course for Elephant Island - a day's journey north. Even from a distance Burkitt can see that the island's ice cover is melting away.
HOWARD: Be interesting to come back in 10 or 20 years and see what it looks like then.
DAVE BURKITT: Well, in 30 years, from those pictures there, there's been noticeable changes.
My first visit to Antarctica was back in 1970. I was on a joint British Services expedition to Elephant Island, one of the South Shetland group, which, of course, appears very prominently in the Shackleton saga.
After Shackleton's ship was crushed by ice, his crew sailed here in three lifeboats. We try to land our boats on Point Wild, but we can't make it past the rocks, ice and sea swell. It took great skill for Shackleton to land all three boats and 28 crew safely.
DAVE BURKITT: They'd been at sea for 16 months or so - they'd be drifting on those ice flows. By the time they landed on Elephant Island there, they were in a sorry state of health and demoralised as well after what they must have gone through.
Shackleton was well aware no-one would find them here, and so he and five men set out in one lifeboat and headed for South Georgia, 1,300km away. Shackleton described his voyage, saying, "We were a tiny speck on the vast vista of the sea. The ocean that's open to all and merciful to none, that threatens even when it seems to yield, that is pitiless always to weakness."
DAVE BURKITT: It was an amazing achievement. Think about it - 800 miles distance, just a little bit out, and they'd have missed South Georgia altogether.
It took Shackleton 16 days to reach South Georgia in a lifeboat. Our ship makes the journey in three. Also on board the ‘Polar Pioneer’ is 78-year-old Alec Trendall, a renowned geologist who was trained by a cousin of Shackleton. He says that even though he never succeeded in crossing Antarctica, Shackleton's rescue mission made him a legend.
ALEC TRENDALL, GEOLOGIST: The big anomoly of Shackleton that he had to live with was his total failure to achieve what he'd set out to do with the 'Imperial' transantarctic expedition and his enormous, outstanding success in saving all the men he had personally left on the Whettlesea side. He would have been aware of this tension between Shackleton the great success and Shackleton the great failure.
In 1951 Alec Trendall helped map the island where Shackleton ended his voyage.
ALEC TRENDALL: No-one can forget an arrival on South Georgia. You wake up one morning, and there are the alps sticking out of the Southern Ocean. It's breathtaking. And it was for me then in November 1951.
We wake one morning to the sight of the stunning Drygalkski Fjord.
ALEC TRENDALL: Ice coming down here - it's a separate entity entirely. You can see here is this one.
The towering rock at the entrance to the fjord has a familiar name - Trendall Crag. It was named to honour Alec's contribution to geological work on South Georgia.
ALEC TRENDALL: You see we didn't choose the place names we were allocated. Every member of the South Georgia surveys was given either a peak or a crag or a glacier or something - and they gave me Trendall Crag.
We land where Shackleton first landed - at King Haakon Bay. It's been 50 years since Trendall set foot on the island. What he finds is a landscape transformed by warming temperatures and glacial retreat.
ALEC TRENDALL: When Shackleton actually made his crossing he would have walked maybe half a mile down there and we would have walked along the shore and then he would have struggled past the snout of this glacier behind us which would have reached all the way to the shore. And they describe how they waited for the waves to recede and dash past the glacier's snout. And that's this glacier. And it's a solid 300m or 400m back from the shore now, so we can't accurately reproduce Shackleton's route on this receding glacier snout here. It is several hundred metres back from where it was in the '50s and it was probably substantially further in this direction in 1916.
The 170km-long island of South Georgia is home to an astonishing proportion of the ocean's wildlife, including the wandering albatross, the largest flighted bird in the world. What is happening to wildlife here tells us a lot about the impact of global warming on Antarctica. But every species is affected differently. With less ice, the fur seals have started to move inland, where they disrupt nesting birds and damage plants.
GARY MILLER: The most dramatic changes we've seen has been the destruction of plant life by, for example in South Georgia the increase in fur seal populations. It has continued to increase over the last couple of decades and so now it numbers somewhere around 3 million or more.
Antarctica is a near-pristine wilderness in part because of its harsh climate. But here in South Georgia, warming temperatures mean that introduced species like reindeer and rats are now thriving.
GARY MILLER: The fact that the continent is warming up may mean that it's going to open the door to introductions of many species. And so I think that's one of the most immediate concerns now.
Alec Trendall started work with the South Georgia Survey in 1951, mapping the geology of the island. But not long into the expedition he fell through the snow cover into a deep crevasse, ending his first trip to South Georgia.
ALEC TRENDALL: The snow gave way at one point and I slipped. I should have been roped, but wasn't at that point. And I went down that crevasse and fell 50m down it. It was interesting - no-one knows what it is like to fall down a crevasse until it happens but I remember no particular sensation of fear. There was one of intense feelings that one had done a silly thing that should not have been done. Just waited calmly to see what would happen. A 50m fall takes about 3 seconds if you look at the equation. And when you hit something at the bottom you are travelling at about 100km/h. So I fell on my back on the flat top of this wedge block of ice and I was knocked out by the impact.
Luckily for Trendall, a colleague rescued him. And after being sent back to hospital in Britain, Trendall returned to South Georgia to complete his geological work. Much of his time was spent here, at Gritviken whaling station - where Shackleton was eventually buried. On the beach we find three rusting boats. Alec recognises them as the ships he sailed on as a young man.
ALEC TRENDALL: Well, I'd forgotten that so much time had passed. That a useful little ship could have turned into this. My memory of it is so clear - of it as a freshly painted and useful little boat. Very sad.
Not everything changes so quickly in South Georgia. This rookery of 80,000 king penguins has been here for more than 100 years - even before Shackleton's time. But how many species can look forward to another 100 years? Biologists say that an increase in the water temperature here of even one degree may mean that some species may not be able to breed.
DAVE BURKITT: Antarctica is very much an indicator - it has a great affect on the world's climate, on the world's oceans and so on. And it is a good indicator as to what is happening on our planet. So people should, all of us, should be striving to be more conscious of what we are doing to this planet and what we have done to this planet, and try and make the effort for future generations, for our children and grandchildren.
ALEC TRENDALL: I think my grandchildren are pretty bright. It's essentially their problem that they will have to solve. My responsibility is to make sure that they understand that fact. That they understand the problems. And they will have any advice from me they like in solving them. But it's essentially their problem, they've got to lift. And I have great faith in their ingenuity and ability to do this.