Australia’s most ambitious over-snow Antarctic expedition in a generation is under way. In this edited extract from Griffith Review, meet the man searching for prehistoric ice to unlock the mysteries of our planet
he photo that pops up with his periodic tweets is something of a non sequitur. Joel Pedro – “Lead Project Scientist, Million Year Ice Core Project, Australian Antarctic Division” – sits at the wheel of a Massey Ferguson tractor that’s seen better days, flannel shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow. Behind him there’s a glimpse of pale acres of rye grass – fodder for cattle grazed on his late grandmother’s property in Walpole, on the Western Australian south coast.
‘North Pole, South Pole, Walpole!’ Antarctic researcher Joel Pedro on a tractor on his family’s Western Australian farm Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Pedro drove his panel van across the Nullarbor, and 20 years and a few twists and turns later, he’s leading Australia’s full-throttle return to deep-field Antarctic science, heading its most ambitious and costly over-snow expedition in a generation. The objective is to set up a camp in the high interior of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and drill a hole almost 3km deep.
If we have this information, he says, “then we have a firm handle on these guardrails of where the climate system is stable and where it tips. And obviously what we’re looking at for the future is how far we can push the climate system before it tips into another state.”
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