BAS and the IPY: An Interdisciplinary Vision

08 Nov 2005 - Interviews, Logistics

SciencePoles interviewed Professor Chris Rapley, Director of the UK's British Antarctic Survey (BAS) - one of the world class research institutes for polar regions - on 27 October about BAS, its 'Global Science in the Antarctic Context' (GSAC) research programme, and its preparations and involvement for the coming International Polar Year 2007-2008. The interview took place at BAS in Cambridge.

Professor Rapley, within the context of your newly launched 2005-2010 Global Science in the Antarctic Context's (GSAC) eight research programmes and 18 projects, what would you say are BAS's particular research strengths?

Before they were incorporated into our umbrella GSAC programme, all of our research programmes were peer reviewed as being in the top twenty percent in world science. The process that we went through to develop the programme really started with our figuring out what we are for, where we are going, and what the science priorities in the Polar Regions are. So I would say that it would really be invidious to pick out any particular programme. They are an integrated set and they really represent what we believe is the best way for us to spend £40 million a year of the taxpayers' money on Antarctic science.

If you are asking what are BAS's overall strengths in polar research, they are sort of the obvious ones: that we've got fantastic access to the Antarctic and that we can just go and do what we want to do with our ships, aircrafts, and bases. We've also got some very good teams of people, some with over sixty years of collective experience of working down there, so although it's a hard place to work, we are pretty effective at doing so.

The other thing is that although we do not have any social science at BAS because there are no indigenous peoples of the Antarctic, we do have pretty much everything else, from space scientists to geophysicists. So I would also express our strengths as the ability to be highly interdisciplinary and highly strategic about how we address things. Interestingly, I have just been speaking to a European colleague, and we are even finding ourselves slightly out of step with many of the people that we work with because we've been through a process where we have a very strategic view of what the key issues are that we want to address, the timescales on which we want to address them, and how we are going to do it. In the United States and elsewhere in Europe and the world, I think there is still more of a university/academic approach to science where it's more blue skies, more of a situation where one individual happens to be interested in a particular theme or aspect, so they go for that, which is great - some of the best science is done in that way - but we've said, well that's fine, but we really want to tie it all together into a really powerful programme where the sum is greater than the parts.

This is a very privileged position to be in.

Yes, it is. And what we've said is, we've got this opportunity, so we're really, really going to take it seriously. The process we went through from four years ago, was to say: 'Forget what we've done before. What are the really important things on which we should spend our annual £40 million budget? What is the best way to spend it?". Now of course, the location of our bases and the infrastructure we have does dictate to some extent what we end up doing, but we try to think afresh about what the real issues are.

Which leads me into the next question: Would you say that the understanding of climate change and its implications is increasingly becoming one of the central objectives for BAS and other polar research organizations?

I prefer the phrase global change, so if climate change is read as global change, then I would say, yes, that's true. Because if you ask what is the role of the Antarctic in the Earth System, then whether you are talking about the glaciology and the physics, or whether you are talking about the biology, it is a litmus test of change, and it is a significant player in any change in the Earth System. You would not be spending your money wisely if you were not concentrating on change. Particularly because you expect to see change amplified in the Polar Regions, and indeed, we do see evidence for that.

Do you have a lot of interaction with the government on that front?

Only in the sense that we try to provide evidence for their evidence-based policies. In particular there are two specific areas where we work with the government on an annual basis. One is the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) for which we provide scientific advice, the other is the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), the body responsible for managing the Southern Ocean fishery. We provide quite a lot of input to the annual CCAMLR meetings (taking place in Hobart, Australia, right now), where the international community agrees what the total allowable catch of krill and fish is for the next year. The Southern Ocean fishery is quite unusual in that it has always been managed as an ecosystem, rather than on a species to species basis. However, other fisheries are now also moving in that direction. Otherwise, aside from the ATCMs and CCAMLR, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the channel through which a lot of our views on the state of the Antarctic in particular get expressed.

You were at least partly responsible for the idea of organizing and launching the next International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007-2008. How did the idea first arise and what early steps were taken to make it a reality?

It was long ago in 1997, before I came to BAS, when I was still the Director of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) - IGBP is one of the International Council for Science (ICSU) global change programmes. I wrote to ICSU to say that the International Geophysical Year's (IGY) 50th anniversary was coming up in 2007-2008 and that we should perhaps think about organizing a similar event, but I got a letter back that everyone was suffering from initiative fatigue! So there was no interest, and that was that. I was obviously disappointed.

Then we got to the end of 2003 and a bunch of other people also started to ask if we shouldn't have another IGY or IPY. So, this time I mentioned it in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and to the European Polar Board (EPB) and they asked if I would be prepared to try and rattle up more interest. This provided me with a legitimate international basis on which to do this, and because my career has taken a particular zigzag path, I just happen to know some of the key people who could be encouraged to get interested in this. With a small number of key enthusiasts, especially Robin Bell, I was able to call Thomas Rosswall at ICSU who got his board to approve it. We also got NASA and ESA involved on the space snapshot idea. We got the US National Science Foundation involved and it just kind of built up from there. We were able to draw together all the fragments of ideas that were already out there and finally, with some hard work, we managed to pull together ICSU and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which by this point had also been developing its own IPY plans. Then the story just sort of went on from there.

In the end, it just proved to be an extremely easy concept for people to grip onto. The funding agencies like it because it isn't an open ended commitment. It's a burst of activity, something that they can showcase. And at the same time it's a very pressing deadline which forces you to make decisions quickly. So it's just proved to be a very good vehicle to get things going.

What does the International Polar Year mean for an institution such as BAS? Has Global Science in the Antarctic Context (GSAC) been developed with the IPY in mind?

Partly, in the sense that the whole IPY idea was building up just at the time when we were finalising our programme proposal and putting it through peer review. So we've always seen GSAC as a major contribution to the IPY. And anyway, GSAC addresses what we think are the absolutely key issues in system science addressable through the Antarctic, so it will by definition make a major contribution to the IPY.

Will BAS be increasing its activities over the IPY's two year period?

I suppose the truthful answer is no, in the sense that we have got no extra money for IPY and that we have been working our assets to their limit anyway. We would have been working at the same intensity even if there hadn't been an IPY, but are focusing what we are doing in a way that reacts and responds to the IPY opportunity. So whereas we might have sent the ship to one place to do something, we are now trying to find out how we can deploy it in a way that not only addresses the scientific issues that we originally conceived, but how can we do that in the context of collaborations in the IPY.

The other thing, however, is that the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has put £5 million of new money on the table for Arctic IPY related research and our staff are involved in at least three of the proposals that have gone in. We should hear within a few weeks whether we've been successful or not. If we are successful with these proposals, then the answer is yes, because we will be doing work in the Arctic that we would not otherwise be doing.

And if you do get this money, does that imply a change for BAS in that you might stay involved in Arctic research beyond the IPY?

Yes, we want to do that anyway, but as I said, not just the Arctic, the whole Earth. At the moment, as agreed with the Foreign Commonwealth Office and NERC, anything up to 5%, maybe even up to 10% of our core program could be spent elsewhere on the planet, and of course the Arctic is a very obvious place for us to go for scientific reasons. And we expect to see that slowly increase over the period of GSAC.

Are there any specific international projects that you will launch during the IPY?

At any one time, there is a huge amount of cooperation between BAS scientists and the international research community, and within the context of the IPY, this involves some 40 projects which all feed into our umbrella Global Science in the Antarctic Context programme. I suppose most noteworthy amongst these are projects we are leading. For example the Air-Ice Chemical Interactions (AICI-IPY) and the Integrated Analyses of Circumpolar Climate Interactions Ecosystem Dynamics in the Southern Ocean (ICCED-IPY).

Is BAS more likely to collaborate with other European bodies or are you open to collaboration with non-European bodies?

We collaborate strongly within Europe, but we also collaborate strongly throughout the world. There isn't any special emphasis on European collaboration and I certainly don't instruct our scientists on who they should or shouldn't collaborate with.

 

Are there any particular roles envisaged for your ships RRS Ernest Shackleton and RRS James Clark Ross during the IPY?

We're also hopeful that we will be able to contribute to the Census of Marine Life, and so we may divert James Clark Ross a little to contribute something unique to that, but don't know yet quite what that would be. I should point out that Ernest Shackleton really isn't a platform to do science from. It's a logistics ship.

 

And will you be taking foreign scientists on board?

Yes. We do already. There are 55 berths on board the James Clark Ross and we'll fill them up with our own researchers and collaborators as appropriate for the science. But we are also very keen to get new nations involved in IPY, and the Malaysians in particular. I was in Kuala Lumpur about a year ago and I was really impressed by how bright the young post-docs were there, including expertise in taxonomy, which has been largely lost in western countries. So we have an arrangement with the University of Malaysia whereby we are going to take two of their young scientists to our summer base on Signy (an island of the South Orkney archipelago off the Antarctic Peninsula). They are particularly interested in comparing and contrasting biology that they have done in the tropics with that of the Polar Regions.

Halley station was first established during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58 and obviously the building of Halley VI during the IPY is quite symbolic in terms of continuity, but how will you manage the building work without disturbing the research activities already going on at the existing station?

Because the new station is 60 kilometres south of the existing station, the existing station will be maintained until the new station is ready. Some of the equipment will simply be replaced by new equipment and some of it will be moved. But things are being planned so that there will be no interruption in important data sets such as the ozone data set.

Of course, the logistics will be complicated as we will have to bring the normal Halley V team to do their science work, as well as the construction team to do the Halley VI work. For this we will need extra ship capacity and we are investigating the possibility of sharing that burden with other nations who also need extra capacity during that time. One of them is Germany which is rebuilding its Neumayer Antarctic station.

Are you intending to give special emphasis to communicating BAS's work - or polar research in general - to the public during the IPY?

Yes, definitely. One of the big things that we want to achieve with IPY is huge public awareness and public interest. We are very committed to that and have a very good media outfit in BAS and they are already thinking very hard about what they might do. Another initiative which by chance will come about during the IPY is a collaboration with the Natural History Museum who are producing a traveling exhibition called 'Antarctica'. They have put about £1 million into that, and there are two big documentaries being done on Antarctic research which again will focus on the IPY. But what I will say is that this is the side of the IPY which is the least well developed as yet, because so much effort has been put in sorting out the science.

The IGY 1957-58 was an outstanding success, characterized by cooperation between nations in the gathering, analyzing and exchange of data. The success of the scientific work paved the way for the Antarctic Treaty of 1961 setting aside territorial claims. What major developments can be expected from this IPY and should the IPY aim for any particular legacy?

At the time of the IGY, there were very few organisations or bodies that attempted to coordinate science, whereas for this IPY we've had to negotiate with anything from 30 to 40 bodies. So one of the legacies I would like to see is a much simplified structure to coordinating things. I think that would help everybody.

More generally, if we could come away from the IPY with a more coherent approach to evidence-based policy in the Arctic, that would be great. I think the Arctic, with its social science based component will feature particularly strongly this time around. Even if it isn't possible to come up with the equivalent of the Antarctic Treaty for the Arctic, we might come up with a much smoother and well structured approach to evidence-based policy in the Arctic, based on science. The other legacy we are after is that, if you look down the North Pole, pretty much the whole of Northern Russia is data-sparse at the present moment. Indeed, even the networks that were established in the IGY have been allowed to collapse - one problem being that the Russians charge very high access fees, for permits to carry out science, particularly in the marine areas. So if somehow we could overcome that, it would be terrific.

The other things that we are trying to leave are a new generation of polar scientists who will have been drawn in by the IPY in the same way that many of us got interested in science were drawn in because of the impact of the IGY.

In the Antarctic, the IPY might give even greater impetus to the work of the Antarctic Treaty System, although, by and large that works exceedingly well. But the overall benefit will hopefully be a global interest in environmental science through the looking glass of the Polar Regions. Remember that one of the themes of the IPY is the connections of the poles and the rest of the planet, so although the work is focused on the Polar Regions, if someone works in the tropics in a way that shows the connection between the tropics and the Polar Regions, this can be part of the IPY. So the IPY is in fact more of an IGY than people might realize.

Finally, should the IPY serve as a platform to raise awareness of global change and its impact on the Polar regions?

Definitely. Absolutely.

Could that be the legacy?

I suppose if you could demonstrate a direct link between the IPY and a more enlightened view of environmental science from the White House, then that would be a huge legacy, yes! People ask me: "Do you believe in global change?" and I tell them that I don't believe in global change, I look at the evidence and I see the evidence, and it's compelling that the world is changing in ways that are significant. What's more, my understanding of complex systems is that they are highly interconnected, incredibly difficult to figure out, and so you do one thing to them and all sorts of other unpredictable things happen.

You look at the planet and there it is, there are no spares, there is no instruction manual. I think it is very unwise to fool around with it unless you are pretty confident that you know what you are doing, and it's absolutely clear that we do not know what we're doing.

Which BAS programmes and projects would you say are the most relevant or pressing in the context of global change?

This is a very difficult question to answer. It's difficult to find one programme that isn't because they are all so interconnected. One way or another, they are all addressing aspects of global change. Even our Geospace programme, which for years has very successfully focused on the earth's magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind - the stream of charged particles from the Sun - has now moved on to look at the atmosphere as an integrated whole and how the influx of particles and changing magnetic fields from space might play their way down through the atmosphere and have an impact on the troposphere. So really, all the BAS programmes are covering one aspect or another of either global change or climate change. Even the biology programme. Biodiversity, Function, Limits and Adaptation from Molecules to Ecosystems (BIOFLAME) might be the furthest away in the sense that it's looking at evolutionary history and adaptation, but it also plays very strongly in the context of global change, because as the sea warms we believe that there will be very substantial mass-extinction of Antarctic benthic species. So BIOFLAME is part of the picture too.

How central is your Natural Complexity Programme (COMPLEXITY) and its new mathematical methods to the BAS objectives?

Well, I should say that this is a very interesting innovation. It's a low cost, high risk, but potentially very high payoff activity. What our bright young mathematicians and physicists have been told is that they can look anywhere in the BAS programme, and if they can find anything interesting from which they can either get some new insight from the use of their techniques, or that can guide them to generate data sets that would be tractable to new and radical techniques, then they should go for it.

How old is COMPLEXITY and was there something equivalent before?

Well, it is new, but obviously we didn't just invent it out of nothing. Two of our young guys who used to work in the predecessor to our current Sun Earth Connections (SEC) programme published a very interesting paper about two years ago showing how magnetic substorms, just like earthquakes and fluctuations on the stock market and so on, have a single power-law spectrum, meaning that the probability of a particular event is constant. This implies that you are just as likely to have a big one as a small one, and obviously allows you to say certain important things about them. It also demonstrates that the use of these new techniques can be valuable. And so it was really them (Mervyn Freeman and Nick Watkins) that we had in mind when we proposed this programme. But now we've also hired other people to carry it out.

Do you expect this COMPLEXITY programme to grow over time?

I don't know. I hope so, but it may be just like fractals and run out of steam. But if it proves itself to be useful, then we'll boost it, yes.

From a layman's point of view, I suppose there is something quite "sexy" about the way COMPLEXITY might pull all the data together and interpret it as an organic whole.

Absolutely! We had people queuing for the posts associated with this programme. People from all over the world wanted to be part of this. One of the people we hired is a guy who has been publishing up to four papers a year in the Journal of Physics E. There are not many people on the planet who are able to do that. So, it's not just sexy to the outside world. There are lots of scientists around the world who have recognized the opportunity.

And if you go back to our objectives, it is for BAS to be an Earth system science institute that uses the special features and access to the Antarctic to do something really worthwhile. So this COMPLEXITY programme really fits in to that.

By: Jean de Pomereu

The International Polar Foundation

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