At the Concordia station, a French-Italian research facility that was built 3,233 metres above sea level at a location called Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau, European Space Agency (ESA) scientists are researching the effects of long space missions. The station is more remote than the International Space Station: the nearest humans are 600 kilometres away.
Isolation, confinement, very dry air, no access to supplies, danger, extreme weather conditions, the monotony of everyday life. Except for the lack of gravity, living in Antarctica is the closest thing to a long journey to Mars, for example.
The abnormal day and light cycles cause great impact on humans, and scientists are using Antarctica to study its effects and how to prevent them.
During summer at Antarctica, the sky is never dark. Around the summer solstice, weather conditions permitting, the sun is visible 24 hours a day. In the winter months, the opposite occurs. The lack of darkness and the long night affect human circadian rhythms, which are physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle. Hormones can go haywire without the usual cues to indicate day/night.
Only a small numbers of subjects have been studied intensively in polar regions, there is no native population in Antarctica to be able to conduct a long-term study, but there are many papers which focus on the civilian and military personnel that spend their winters below the Antarctic circle. The research focused first on adaptation to the cold environment, but later scientists found out that the lack of natural sunlight in winter and the excess of natural light in the summer was probably of greater importance.
How to reduce the impact of abnormal light cycles
In the summer days, it is very easy to stay up and alert for 24 hours without remembering to sleep. In the winter, seasonal affective disorder kicks in. In a slow and incremental process, exhaustion will dull the senses and slow reactions. In an extreme place such as Antarctica, you simply cannot afford it.
So, what can people do in order to prevent this?
Keep warm: This might seem obvious, but using adequate protective clothing will reduce exposure to extreme cold and prevent sudden changes of temperature.
Eat your (frozen) veggies: Meals punctuate the day. It's a time not only to ingest much-needed nutrition but to meet others and socialize. The cook is probably one of the most important persons in a station, without question.
Stick to the schedule: On British Antarctic bases, a structured day with set periods of eating, working, and sleeping is mandatory. This is also the case of most bases and research stations, and also on ships. Oceanwide Expeditions vessels might be a bit more relaxed in the sense that the schedule is not mandatory, but doctors and expedition leaders will encourage passengers to stick to the schedule and keep a routine to prevent sleep issues and other health problems.
Time zones: Since in Antarctica there are no set time zones and they can be changed for convenience, you can switch between very, very different time zones in the matter of minutes, which can be very confusing for mind and body. Vessels usually keep the time zone from their departure point on the continent to avoid this.
Below the Antarctic circle, nature takes over and us humans just have to surrender and follow its lead.
Antarctica has six months of daylight in its summer and six months of darkness in its winter. The seasons are caused by the tilt of Earth's axis in relation to the sun. The direction of the tilt never changes. But as the Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the planet are exposed to direct sunlight.
During summer at Antarctica, the sky is never dark. Around the summer solstice, weather conditions permitting, the sun is visible 24 hours a day. In the winter months, the opposite occurs.
The full length of the polar night depends on your latitude. The average duration for most destinations is around 30 days, but more northerly locations can enjoy as almost two months of darkness. If you were situated at one of the poles this would last for around 11 weeks.
Antarctica only has two seasons: summer and winter. Because it's located in the southern hemisphere, Antarctica's summer is from October to February. During this time, the sun is almost always in the sky. Days rapidly get longer there in summer, until, eventually, the sun doesn't set at all.
Most of Antarctica experiences 6 months of constant daylight in summer and 6 months of darkness in winter. Time starts to feel a little different without the normal markers for day and night.
Antarctica doesn't belong to anyone. There is no single country that owns Antarctica. Instead, Antarctica is governed by a group of nations in a one-of-a-kind international partnership called The Antarctic Treaty, which was first signed by representatives from seven countries on December 1, 1959.
But as the Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the planet are exposed to direct sunlight. During summer, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted toward the sun and is in constant sunlight. In the winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted away from the sun, causing the continent to be dark.
At the South Pole, the highest temperature ever recorded was −12.3 °C (9.9 °F) on 25 December 2011. Along the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures as high as 18.3 °C (64.9 °F) have been recorded, though the summer temperature is below 0 °C (32 °F) most of the time.
In Oslo (about 60° north) and the northernmost tip of Antarctica (about 60° south), the golden hour lasts over 90 minutes at that time of the year. Within the polar circles and just outside them, the Sun does not sink lower than 6 degrees below the horizon during the summer, so the golden hour can last all night.
Even in the most inhospitable ice-free habitats, such as inland mountains and nunataks, life can still be found. There are no trees or shrubs, and only two species of flowering plants are found: Antarctic hair grass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort (Colobanthus quitensis).
There are around 66 scientific bases in Antarctica, of which about 37 are occupied year round, the remainder are open during the summer and closed down for winter. There are about 4,000 people through the summer months and about 1,000 overwinter each year.
It is, on average, the coldest, windiest, and driest of all the continents on Earth. Technically, Antarctica is a desert because it is so dry there; with an average annual precipitation of just 166mm along the coastal regions, and even less when moving further inland.
It is the only continent on Earth which has no terrestrial mammals, but is home to a range of marine wildlife and birds, including penguins! The most common birds in Antarctica are penguins. It is home to 18 different species, including the Emperor Penguin.
While the Antarctic does not have permanent human residents, the region is a busy outpost for a variety of research scientists. These scientists work at government-supported research stations and come from dozens of different countries.
The closer to the pole you get, the longer the period with full 24 hours of darkness, at the pole itself there is 6 months of darkness, at the start and end of which the sun comes close to the horizon but not above it giving a period of twilight each day.
Antarctica's area of 5.4 million square miles makes it 1.5 times the size of the conterminous U.S. The continent itself is depressed more than half-a-mile to near sea level under the tremendous load of the ice sheet, with some regions well below sea level. The highest mountains rise to elevations of over 14,000 ft.
Specifically, countries like Norway — called, appropriately enough, “the land of the midnight sun” — Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia like Murmansk and Norilsk experience the polar night, during which the sun does not rise above the horizon for several weeks or even months.
For six months of the year the sun never rises and for six months it never sets. For scientists braving the winter at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, sunrise comes once a year, at the autumnal equinox* and it's quite an event.
Dates are based on the Gregorian calendar. The December solstice (summer solstice) in South Pole is at 10:20 pm on Saturday, December 21, 2024. In locations south of the equator, the longest day of the year is around this date. South Pole has midnight sun in December.
Introduction: My name is Dan Stracke, I am a homely, gleaming, glamorous, inquisitive, homely, gorgeous, light person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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