How to fix a runway in Antarctica
In the coldest place on Earth, workers wage an epic battle with the extreme landscape – aided by specially trained penguin-movers.
Jimmy Bellis looked out of the window of the small Dash-7 aircraft he was travelling in, taking in the otherworldly Antarctic snowscape below. "Up there, in the air, it was clear. It was calm, and so vast," he remembers, speaking via video call from Antarctica. "The landscape doesn't change until, eventually, the runway comes into view and suddenly you get that ground rush."
Rothera airstrip, on Antarctica's Adelaide Island, is a dash of grey amid the seemingly endless expanse of snow and ice. It serves the largest British Antarctic facility, Rothera Research Station, a centre for biological research, and the 100 people who live and work there during the summer months. In the Antarctic summer, which lasts from October to February as the continent is in the southern hemisphere, the runway is surrounded by water. When the last smudge of yellow fades to grey as the sun dips below the horizon, the Antarctic winter sets in – and just 22 people can be found living at the station. In the months of darkness, persistent surface winds rush from snow-covered plateaus downwards towards the coast, and freezing temperatures as low as −128.6°F (−89.2 °C) grip this land of ice.
Now, work has begun to modernise the 32-year-old airstrip. Bellis, who heads up the air infrastructure project – and the airstrip upgrade – for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has been in Rothera for three weeks to supervise this unique construction challenge. Among the main difficulties: the Antarctic weather, and the ever-changing landscape.
One particularly windy day, Maria Gonzalez Rico, associate at engineering firm Ramboll and lead designer on the Rothera Runway project, walked along the runway to inspect some of the upgrade work. The runway is just 900m (3000ft) long and the stroll, which would normally take just 10 minutes, took more than half an hour due to the force of the wind blasting her backwards.
"I was thinking 'what am I doing here?'," Gonzalez Rico remembers. "Anything above 20 knots (37km/h or 23 mph) – and we knew it was going to be a hard working day." The following day, though, the sun shone in a clear blue sky and glittered on the pristine snow. "You get out and see the surroundings, and it reminds you – that's why. It was an incredible experience, absolutely."
Gonzalez Rico recently spent six weeks in Antarctica. "This was probably the highlight of my career so far," she says. "It was quite a leap from building, say, a road in Britain."
As the windiest, coldest place on the planet, Antarctica is not a natural habitat for humans. The continent is the only one on Earth with no indigenous population, and the land can't sustain any wildlife bigger than a midge – the penguins, seals and other creatures all live in the waters surrounding the icy continent . However, there is a community of hardy scientists and support staff that fluctuates from around 5,000 in the summer months to just 1,000 in the winter. Their supplies are usually brought in by ship, but the people tend to arrive by air.
The extreme weather and changing landscape do not allow for conventional runway construction. Snow and ice move, melt, freeze. Glaciers flow. Because of this, runways in Antarctica are not your usual runways. Some are made from groomed blue ice and some from compacted snow. Ski-ways allow for planes with skis instead of wheels.
Many of Antarctica's landing strips rely on design and technology dating back to the 1950s when Antarctic operations expanded rapidly. Since that time, polar exploration and research have continued to increase, along with the massive logistics operations that underpin them. For every day of research, nine days of logistics effort are required. In Antarctica, even basic logistical tasks like housing and feeding people can be a daily challenge, for example when storage facilities are buried in snow. (Read how the researchers' extreme isolation has even resulted in the formation of an Antarctic accent and slang.)
If seals or penguins need to be moved out of the way, trained personnel are on hand to do it
In this unique and fragile environment, special attention has to be given to assess any possible risks of construction work. The potential impacts of increased noise, dust, waste, light, fuel, and disturbance to native flora and fauna had to be considered, and strict guidelines adhered to.
"You see penguins and seals all the time," says Gonzalez Rico, "but there are very clear instructions what to do and what not to do if you encounter wildlife." If seals or penguins need to be moved out of the way, trained personnel are on hand to do it – but no more than five times a day per species. "The main thing to understand," Gonzalez Rico adds, "is this is their home, not ours. They take priority over anything else."
The major challenge of construction work in Antarctica, says Gonzalez Rico, is planning. "It took two and a half years," she says. "We went through every single possible scenario, and based the programme of works on the worst case scenario." And it paid off, she says. When snowfall came, the team were able to change what they were working on until the weather improved.
Efficiency is paramount since they need to complete certain jobs before the austral winter (the winter months in the southern hemisphere), when construction work outdoors becomes impossible.
"We have a great team of meteorologists," adds Bellis. "One evening, we were made aware there was snow on its way. By the time we woke up in the morning there was about 10cm (4in) of snow across the whole of Rothera, including the runway. There's nothing you can do. It's all about being able to adapt and get ready for when that snow is cleared enough to carry on."
As part of the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme (AIMP), which launched in 2017, the first thing the runway team worked on was upgrading the runway lighting, which is now more energy efficient than the old lighting, and maintains safe and reliable flying operations into Rothera. Next, the team began work to resurface the runway, increase its length by 17m (56ft) to 903m (2963ft), and add a turn pad.
Bbc.com
