Return from Antarctic mission : interview with Nicolas Caillon

Nicolas, you have just returned from a mission of more than 3 months in Antarctica on the Concordia base, what did you do ?
N.C. With the sanitary crisis my mission this year was multi-programme. The objective was to carry out the minimum monitoring and maintenance operations on various programmes. I was accompanied by Eric Lefebvre for the NIVO, GlacioClim, Calva, Capoxi, GMOstral and EAIIST programmes. All of these programmes, except EAIIST, are relatively long-term programmes observing different varaibles and requiring a presence in the summer to ensure that observations are maintained over the following year.
Therefore, the activities vary according to the needs of each programme. For example, for Capoxi, the objectives were (1) to ensure the proper transfer of instructions between the two overwinterers (Ines and Dennis), (2) to check the installations for the 2021 winter and carry out annual maintenance, (3) to carry out ion chromatography analyses of samples retrieved by Ines during the 2020 winter and of samples taken at the Dumont d’Urville station between 2016 and 2019 (a little more than 360 samples).

As part of EAIIST, a scientific convoy that travelled 3300 km in 2019-2020, we had planned before the pandemic to return to the field, in particular where 6 seismic stations had been installed. With the arrival of the virus and its logistical consequences, these field operations were initially cancelled. But thanks to the presence of an experienced Basler plane crew and especially the invaluable skills of Jim, the pilot of the plane, we were finally able to recover the 6 seismic stations, the most remote of which was at the Italian "Wind crust" site, more than 600km from the Concordia station (see map).
Going to a remote environment like Antarctica is always an adventure for which it is essential to be well surrounded ; the article by Joël Savarino, which recounts the EAIIST adventure, points out the specific importance of the team.

In glaciology, the study of Antarctica is fundamental. 60 years ago, the first Antarctic Treaty was signed and research has taken off. What remains to be known ? And what do you think are the major advances that can still be made in these icy lands ?
N.C. Antarctica remains an incredible laboratory undisturbed by man. It is even the last virgin environment on Earth. A laboratory the size of a continent is therefore exceptional and there is still a lot to be understood or discovered. What is important is the global balance on a geophysical scale. To understand it, we need to study the snow cover, its chemistry and physics, to better understand the atmosphere and what happens in it, to better understand snow/atmosphere exchanges, glaciers mass balance, weather patterns, etc.
Central Antarctica has many unique properties - distance from local sources (ocean, outcrop, coastal wildlife), surface homogeneity, heat sink (the largest on Earth), etc. - and it was with this in mind that the Concordia station was built. Concordia is located near a dome of the ice cap (Dome C) and is a gateway to land-based operations on the East Antarctic plateau. It is a strategic scientific point to better understand atmospheric processes (boundary layer dynamics, wind transport, local pollution propagation etc.).
In the future, science will have to unravel the mysteries of the relationships between Antarctica and other regions of the world. These climatic teleconnections seem to have been demonstrated, but the mechanisms are not well understood. To better understand them, physical-chemical processes, energy balances, atmospheric chemistry and, transport are key. Since its opening in 2005, the Concordia station has enabled France and Italy to be at the forefront of research in glaciology, climate and paleoclimate. European programmes such as Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice, which aims to obtain an ice core covering 1.5 million years, will enable us to remain leaders in understanding past, present and future climate.

When you go on a mission, there are always events that prevent you from moving forward as you want. But in Antarctica, the window of opportunity to get to and from the continent is limited. How do we react ? Can we postpone research during one year ?
N.C. I think this year is a good example of how to adapt to difficulties. When people say that we went to Antarctica for three months this year, it’s not entirely true. I spent 28 long days of COVID quarantine in a hotel room in Hobart before I was able to reach Antarctica ! This threw off the schedule on the way there and back.
Secondly, the specificities of Antarctica mean that there are always hazards related to the weather and logistics. With time, you understand them, you accept them, you become used to them and patient. Above all, we are grateful for the indispensable and high-quality work carried out by the French and Italian agencies, IPEV and PNRA, in charge of organising and leading the scientific expeditions at Concordia. But despite these well-tied logistics, we are sometimes forced to re-evaluate the protocols set up before the summer campaigns.
And I must say that we were particularly lucky this year to be able to complete the field part of the EAIIST programme, which had initially been postponed due to the pandemic.

A usual question, how is life on the base especially this year ?
N.C. Yes, this year was very special. First of all, we had this long quarantine with these 28 days in Hobart. But life on base was also different. For the first time, we were all living in the same building. There were 32 of us on Concordia this year compared to the usual 65. The summer camp was not open. The atmosphere was actually more relaxed. However, one event disrupted the life of the base. Indeed, the doctor who arrived on the base at the same time as us and who was to winter in 2021, had a serious fall on the stairs requiring a medical evacuation. Temporarily without a doctor on base, we were instructed to suspend our scientific activities outside the base until another doctor joined Concordia.

Recently, a new tune can be heard in the research world : doing research pollutes. This issue is taken seriously, as can be seen from the IGE’s plans to reduce its carbon footprint by 50%, the 1point5 lab project, etc. How do you see expeditions to the ends of the Earth in the coming decades taking into account the carbon impact ? Can we limit activities ?
N.C. I think that the scientific world has a role to play regarding this issue, particularly in terms of setting an example. The idea is to reduce the impact of our activities while maintaining the quality of our research, some of which requires long travel. In this context, it is likely that the organisation of our expeditions will have to be rethought. And all this is obviously highly sensitive.
This year, with the pandemic, there were only two of us in the field serving several programmes when usually more than four people are needed. It is obvious that in this particular context we had to reduce the field protocols in order to carry out a minimum of activities to guarantee the continuity of observations. But this configuration will not necessarily serve as an example for future field missions, if we want to deploy the science we usually do there with more staff. The idea of mutualising people across several programmes is obviously a real possibility, but we will have to make sure that the sole objective of reducing staff numbers will not affect the quality of the science done there. It is conceivable that, in addition to a dose of mutualisation, one possibility could be to envisage longer missions. But that is without taking into account the impact of these long missions on family life.
In short, this is inevitably a very sensitive issue to which we will have to collectively find answers and solutions.
At the level of the IGE, part of the scientific production is based on the realization of numerous field missions on all continents. And in this very virtuous desire to reduce our carbon footprint, we must not make the mistake of stigmatising the colleagues who travel on these missions.
And I think that the T-IGE collective, which has taken up this issue with its environmental manifesto, has taken this into account, taking care not to fall into the trap of stigmatisation in its desire to seek out the avenues that are currently being discussed in our unit to reduce our carbon footprint.
In any case, it seems obvious that we will have to rethink and adjust our global mode of operation. It won’t always be easy, but the challenge is worth it !

Interview by Alexis LAMOTHE
Translated with Deepl.com