A team led by English adventurer Sir Robert Falcon Scott - depicted in this Christchurch statue - reached the South Pole in January 1912 but perished on the ice. Photo / File
A team led by English adventurer Sir Robert Falcon Scott - depicted in this Christchurch statue - reached the South Pole in January 1912 but perished on the ice. Photo / File
The race to the South Pole in the southern summer of 1911-1912 coincided with unusually warm weather which might have both helped and hindered the explorers, a new study has found.
Reconstructions of past atmospheric pressures over Antarctica show much of the continent experienced unusually high pressures during portions of the early and middle 20th century.
Those high pressures were associated with warm weather that may have significantly affected the race to reach the pole.
A team of Norwegian explorers led by Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
A competing British party led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott reached the Pole on January 17, 1912.
Amundsen's team returned safely home but Scott's team perished on the ice in March, 1912.
In a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, researchers used data from weather stations in Antarctica and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere to reconstruct atmospheric pressures for Antarctica from 1905 to the present.
This new research shows that natural variability played an important role in Antarctica's climate changes over the past century.
The study also finds that while the ozone hole is primarily responsible for recent low pressures observed over Antarctica in summer, other factors like sea surface temperatures are needed to fully explain these trends.
An accompanying study published in the October issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society used these pressure reconstructions and measurements from early Antarctic explorers to see how the unusual weather of 1911-1912 fit into the larger context of Antarctic climate variability.
This new research shows the Amundsen and Scott expeditions experienced exceptionally high pressures that were often associated with unseasonably warm summer temperatures on their expedition routes.
The warm temperatures were a boon to Amundsen's crew but hindered the Scott party's progress in two instances, which may have contributed to their deaths, according to the study's authors.
"In context, the pressures and temperatures were exceptional," said Ryan Fogt, an atmospheric scientist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and lead author of both new studies.
"The high pressure and the warmer conditions were measurements we haven't seen much of since."
