The volcano that threatens the Spanish navy base in Antarctica | Science | EUROtoday

Chilean normal Jorge Iturriaga, virtually nonagenarian, remembers that he spent the entire yr 1967 remoted from the remainder of humanity. The Beatles premiered their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard achieved the primary coronary heart transplant and the American astronaut Gus Grissom, meant to be the primary human being who put a foot on the moon, died anchicked in an essay, however Iturriaga didn’t know something as a result of he lived in a navy base as a result of he lived in a navy base Chilean constructed on the emerged volcano that kinds the distant island disappointment, in Antarctica. The then Captain knew that there had been rashes in 1812, 1842 and 1912, virtually each half century, and that he already touched one other, however requested the scientists and at all times answered the identical factor: “Don’t worry, it is a volcano off.” On December 4, 1967, after tons of of earthquakes, the entrails of the earth opened underneath the ice and the Chilean navy needed to flee shotguns from the island. It has been greater than half a century and there, on the volcano, there may be now the Spanish base Gabriel de Castilla. His inhabitants are ready for hypothetical eruption.

The Alfredo Ojanguren brigade is among the 24 navy who has spent the southern summer time on the base. It belongs to the legendary Galicia 64 regiment of mountain hunters, inheritor to the thirds that fought in Flanders within the sixteenth century. He is accustomed to taking part in the pores and skin in Misiones in Afghanistan, however doesn’t belief Antarctica, the one continent with out weapons or explosives. “Here the threat is not another human being, but the hostile environment that surrounds us,” alerts supported by a Zodiac towards the Chilean base destroyed by the eruption of 1967. The violent winds convert the fragments of volcanic rocks into tiny flying blades. The thermal sensation reaches 20 levels under zero. “Antarctica welcomes you telling you that this is not a place for you,” he proclaims Ojanguren.

The Antarctic Treaty prohibits navy bases, until they’re devoted to science, such because the Gabriel de Castilla, established in 1989 by the Spanish military on the island disappointment, about 1,000 kilometers south of the tip of South America. Ojanguren has the mission of accompanying scientists, a lot of them volcanologists, of their dangerous expeditions exterior the bottom. It carries a machete within the belt and a water-proof go well with of survival in chilly waters. “If you fall without this team, hard minutes alive,” he warns.

The Vulcanologist Belén Rosado is among the researchers escorted by the navy. Their evaluation confirms that the rises and descents of the magma make the volcano open and shut their jaws periodically, threateningly. His group, from the University of Cádiz, has been the space between the Spanish base and the Chilean station destroyed for many years, about six kilometers, on the opposite facet of the boiler of the volcano, flooded by the southern ocean. The final scare was lived within the 2019-2020 marketing campaign, when a deformation was detected that compelled to alter the visitors gentle indicated by volcanic exercise, which went from inexperienced to yellow. “If the trend has continued, 20 centimeters would have been in a year, which is very much,” says the researcher.

The Ministry of Defense itself has this textual content revealed on its web site: “The Volcanologist Ramón Ortiz, of the CSIC, has studied the seismic activity of the island for more than 10 years, and has come to record more than 80 daily earthquakes. He ensures that all this is an obvious symptom that there is a real, short -term danger, that an explosive eruption that causes the sudden awakening of the volcano of the volcano. Disappointment could be swallowed by the sea, and there is no reason to think that this does not happen. ” Belén Rosado additionally believes that the hazard is actual. “Yes, it is true. But that is precisely why we are here, to measure all the parameters that give us indications that or may not erupt,” he argues. This yr, the mouth of the volcano has closed about 4 centimeters. It appears “very relaxed.”

The skeleton of the Chilean base is a spooky reminder that the volcanic risk is, certainly, very actual. General Jorge Iturriaga explains by video name that, on December 4, 1967, he and his companions have been simply leaving the island disappointment, after being relieved by one other detachment. He had been watching a film for greater than a yr, so he celebrated that they put one on the ship, even when it was the spiritual movie SANTA TERESITA DEL NIÑO JESÚS. Started the projection, an officer entered the room and shouted: “Volcanic eruption in island disappointment!” Iturriaga and his colleagues went on stampede to the roof and contemplated an enormous black smoke column sprouting that his dwelling had been till a couple of hours in the past. “The eruption was gigantic, it was really hell,” recollects the overall, creator exactly from a guide entitled Hell in island disappointment (Arturo Merino Benítez Foundation, 1999), by which he particulars the agonizing evacuation.

About 5 kilometers south of the spoils of the Chilean base, the biologist Antonio Quesada walks via different ruins whereas telling his story. In the center of World War II, in 1943, the British Army launched Operation Tabarin right here, a secret mission to create navy bases in Antarctica. The expeditionaries established the so -called station B, making the most of the rickety cabins of an outdated whaling city. After the eruption of 1967, Jorge Iturriaga’s Chilean ship needed to rescue the British, helpless earlier than the rain of Magma. In 1969, after successive rashes that brought about a mud flood, the bottom was additionally definitively deserted. The stays of a cemetery buried by the mud put their hair.

“At present, the volcano is calm. This year we are having very little seismic activity, and that worries us, because after calm the storm comes,” says Quesada, answerable for the Spanish Polar Committee, the authority connected to the Ministry of Science that’s answerable for coordinating Antarctic analysis. The biologist recollects one other disaster with yellow visitors gentle, in February 2015. Like the vacationer, that we had modified the colour of the visitors gentle and there was a better threat of volcanic eruption on the island, ”says Quesada.

Antarctica lives an unprecedented increase of tourism. Last yr, some 125,000 individuals visited the continent, leaving stunning photographs of crowded seashores. The volcanic island disappointment, with the Chilean and British bases destroyed by eruptions, is among the most demanded locations. Two journalists from El País contemplated a number of of those uncommon scenes alongside a 20 -day journey in February. On the morning of that month, 100 vacationers bathed in entrance of the ruins of the Chilean station, between sea stars actually cooked by the volcano fumaroles.

Spain has two bases in Antarctica, in two neighboring islands: Juan Carlos I, managed by the Higher Council for Scientific Research; and the Gabriel de Castilla, of the Army. The first, with completely prohibited alcohol, looks as if a monastery devoted to science. The second, with wine and beer out there, is extra festive. In the just about at all times energetic front room, on prime of a ham, there’s a map of the volcano of the island disappointment with 5 evacuation routes drawn, relying on the doable place of eruption. Lieutenant Colonel Javier Moreno Amatriain, head of the bottom, explains that they’re prepared to flee at any time. “We always have five vessels on the beach to be able to evacuate all the staff,” he says. Two technicians of the National Geographic Institute, Violeta Rechcygier and Sergio Blanca, monitor the actions of the volcano in actual time from a base module.

The island is an Eden for scientists, due to its extraordinary situations. The excessive soil temperatures facilitate the institution of immense penguins, with greater than 50,000 copies. These days of February, the biologists Josabel Belliure and Gabriel López, from the University of Alcalá, and Nacho Juárez, of Oxford, examine whether or not world warming is modifying the persona of the penguins, making them extra shy, explorers or aggressive. On a seaside, the oceanographers Emma Huertas and Elena Rubio appear the protagonists of the movie Ghostbustershowever as a substitute of a proton backpack to seize spectra they carry a conveyable sensor on the again to measure greenhouse gases on the bottom. They stroll on fumaroles at greater than 100 levels of temperature.

“The role of the ocean in the mitigation of climate change is essential, since it incorporates a large amount of heat and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, which cushions this global warming. Antarctica has kidnapped 40% of the anthropogenic emissions of CO₂,” says Huertas, of the Marine Sciences Institute of Andalusia. “The fact that the Gabriel de Castilla base is located in the boiler of an active volcano gives us the opportunity to study what is the contribution of this volcano to greenhouse gas emissions that irremediably end up in the southern ocean,” provides the oceanographer, earlier than embarking on a Zodiac of the land military to return to the Gabriel de Castilla base. Tonight there can be a celebration and cumbia with the residents of the Argentine Station – the opposite that exists on the island – however at all times with 5 vessels ready for an evacuation.