New team to save Antarctic port from climate change — SkimNews
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- UK Antarctic Heritage Trust specialists are embarking on a 9,000-mile journey to Antarctica in year two of a three-year mission to save Port Lockroy, which houses the world's southernmost Post Office, a museum, and more than 1,000 gentoo penguins.
- An eight-person team led by former RAF worker Carole McCullough will spend five months at Port Lockroy installing beams and props to help the 80-year-old buildings withstand increased precipitation and snow loading, while also monitoring the penguin colony.
- Port Lockroy faces escalating structural deterioration on the rapidly warming Antarctic Peninsula, driven by rising temperatures and extreme weather, the charity said.
- A parallel field team of six specialists will conduct the first comprehensive survey of Wordie House further south — a site where climate records dating to 1947 make it one of the longest continuous climate records on the continent.
- Camilla Nichol, UKAHT's CEO, called this the charity's "biggest ever conservation season" at Port Lockroy and "a huge year for us as we meet the growing challenges of climate change."
Why it matters: UKAHT is racing to shore up an 80-year-old heritage site in one of the planet's fastest-warming regions before the Antarctic winter returns, with this season marking its largest conservation push yet at Port Lockroy. A side expedition of six specialists will begin the first full survey of Wordie House, extending a climate record that has documented the peninsula's rapid warming since 1947.
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