Cape Town, Nov An explorer and a glaciologist have embarked on a three-month mission to cross part of Antarctica on kite skis in search of ice that is 130,000 years old.
The goal of the French duo is to better understand the impact on world sea levels of any melting of the “white planet” if global temperatures rise, Matthieu Tordeur and Heidi Sevestre told AFP in Cape Town before flying to Antarctica’s Novolazarevskaya base.
“This is very much a pioneering expedition that combines lots of adventure, but also really ambitious science,” Sevestre, a world-renowned glaciologist, told AFP before the pair flew out from South Africa on October 29.
Taking place at the start of the southern hemisphere’s summer season, the “Under Antarctica” expedition is also timed to coincide with the COP30 climate conference in Brazil from November 10 and aims to galvanise efforts to curb global warming.
The challenge is formidable: in complete isolation and carrying everything they need, the pair aim to cover some 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles) in temperatures that could fall to minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 °F), Tordeur said.
They will be travelling on kite skis, in which the skier wears a harness that’s clipped into a kite that pulls them along.
“We can travel, if the conditions are right, 150 kilometres or even 200 kilometres (per day),” Tordeur told AFP.
The pair had a test run last year, when they travelled 1,500 kilometres on kite skis in Greenland for a month in June/July, collecting ice samples.
This time around they’ll need to complete a 4,000-kilometre journey in around 90 days.
“We will need to exit Antarctica by the end of January because after that there are no planes and no logistics that can help us out,” said 33-year-old Tordeur, who has travelled the polar regions for a decade.
