Antarctica: Italian winter research campaign kicks off

At Dome C, at the Italian-French Concordia base, the 22nd winter mission of the Italian Antarctic Research Program (PNRA), funded by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and implemented by the CNR for scientific coordination, by ENEA for the planning and logistical organization of activities at the Antarctic bases and by the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS) for the technical and scientific management of the research vessel Laura Bassi.

The expedition is led by station leader Gabriele Carugati, a glaciologist from the University of Insubria, who succeeds Riccardo Scipinotti of ENEA, station leader of the summer mission. This year, the group consists of 12 members: five Italians from the PNRA, six French from the French Polar Institute Paul-Émile Victor (IPEV), and one researcher from the European Space Agency (ESA). The team will live in isolation for nine months at an altitude of over 3,000 meters, with three months of total darkness and temperatures that can drop to -80°C, ensuring the maintenance of the station and conducting 21 scientific activities across various disciplines, like the new PASSPORT microplastics project. In addition, seven biomedical projects, coordinated by the ESA, will be carried out to study the effects of an extreme, space-like environment, on the winterers.

During this same period, the Mario Zucchelli base completes the 41st summer mission of the PNRA, which saw the implementation of 14 scientific activities, which include projects and permanent observatories on: climatology, seismology, geodesy, geomagnetism, upper atmosphere and solar activity, volcanism, changes in microbial communities, permafrost and vegetation.

"The Mario Zucchelli base hosted two international Polarin projects, thus strengthening scientific collaboration with foreign partners. The research focused on the evolution of the cryosphere, analyzing the drainage of the ice sheet, seasonal variations in ice velocity and interactions with the atmosphere. The scientific activity also investigated the secondary emission of contaminants, revealing even minimal traces of anthropogenic activity in the Antarctic environment" explained Nicoletta Ademollo, scientific coordinator of the expedition (a role initially held by Gaetano Giudice of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology - INGV) and researcher at the CNR Institute of Polar Sciences. "Other projects analyzed glaciers through geodesy, seismology and remote sensing, as well as volcanic rocks for interactions between the cryosphere and the atmosphere and microbial survival strategies in extreme environments. Studies focusing on the marine ecosystem prioritized assessing the adaptation and biodiversity of organisms, monitoring plankton communities and carbon flows in coastal waters."

The research projects involved nearly 170 people, including researchers and technical staff, of whom 20 were military experts from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Carabinieri, and 3 firefighters.

The 41st expedition was a challenging endeavor, also due to the logistical effort required. Important infrastructure work was carried out at both stations. At Zucchelli, under the coordination of ENEA base manager Francesco Pellegrino, a new area was completed where modern technological systems will be installed to replace the existing ones, and the pier was secured through complex underwater mechanical work. A road variant was built to facilitate access to the Boulder Clay airstrip, which ensures interoperability between the Antarctic stations of different countries. At Concordia, ENEA continued work on the construction of a new living area, a warehouse, and a new service module outside the main building.

"During this mission, partly thanks to these infrastructure improvements, the Italian Antarctic bases have become strategic hubs for international scientific cooperation, supporting the GANOWEX campaigns of the BGR (German Research Centre for Geosciences) and RINGS of the AWI (Alfred Wagner Institute), the IPEV program (France) and those of our ‘neighbors’ KOPRI (Korea) and PRIC (China)" pointed out Rocco Ascione at the ENEA Antarctic Technical Unit and head of the 41st Expedition.

Research activities will continue on the icebreaker Laura Bassi until next March, where around 30 people, including researchers and technicians, alongside the member crew, are working on five research projects.

The fifth and final campaign of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, coordinated by the CNR Institute of Polar Sciences, took place at the Little Dome C camp from November to January. Italy was represented by Ca' Foscari University of Venice and ENEA (which manages logistics together with the IPEV). The international team worked with two objectives: on the one hand, to drill into the bedrock beneath the ice sheet to estimate when it was last exposed to sunlight; on the other, to divert the drill hole to extract new ice samples from the deepest and therefore oldest part, in order to obtain further material to analyze in relation to the Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT), a crucial period for understanding the evolution of the Earth's climate.

As part of the Ice Memory project, launched in 2015 by the CNR and Ca' Foscari University of Venice with the CNRS, IRD, Université Grenoble-Alpes (France) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), the Ice Memory Sanctuary was inaugurated in Concordia. This cave carved into the ice will preserve samples of vanishing mountain glaciers from around the world for future generations.

Two ice samples from Mont Blanc and Grand Combin have already been transported to the Ice Cave, arriving at the Mario Zucchelli base from Trieste aboard the icebreaker Laura Bassi. From there, thanks to a special flight enabled by ENEA, the ice cores crossed the interior of the Antarctic continent to Concordia, thanks to the logistical effort that ensured the cold chain between the two hemispheres of the Earth.