South Pole station description

• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Antarctic; South Pole; The Antarctic; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/antartica/id/27

This slide shows the idea of what the South Pole Station is. It’s an isolated mid-continental area. There are no large local pollution sources or population centers there. We’re approximately 2,000 kilometers from the sea, at an altitude of 3.5 kilometers. The Antarctic continent is one large ice cube. There’s no local mountain terrain. It is absolutely flat at the South Pole and it samples the free troposphere away from the free boundary layer all the time. But you do witness several episodic events, which are mainly of marine origin, of storms, that will mix aerosols high enough into the atmosphere to reach the South Pole. Since winds can’t come directly over the ice to do that, they will mix material up into the upper troposphere where then the winds will bring them across the South Pole continent to mid-continent. And then they will descend on the South Pole.