Blubbery ‘researchers’ lend fin to climate science

Into the Antarctic enigma, the puzzle of a place with too few researchers chasing too many climate mysteries, slowly waddles the elephant seal.

The fat-snouted pinniped, two ugly tons of blubber and roar, is plunging to its usual frigid depths these days in the service of climate science, and of scientists’ budgets.

“It would take years and millions and millions of dollars for a research ship to do what they’re doing,” Norwegian scientist Kim Holmen said of the instrument-equipped seals, who are giving investigators valuable data.

Climatologists and others say the icy continent has been monitored too thinly for too long in a warming world. Weather stations, glacier movement detectors and research treks over the ice are too few and far between.

The reason to worry is clear: If all the land ice here melted, it would raise ocean levels 187 feet (57 meters) worldwide.

“Antarctica is huge, so even a small change would make a big difference,” said Jan Gunnar Winther, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute which operates this research station in East Antarctica.

Even a 1 percent loss of Antarctic ice would raise sea levels 2 feet (65 centimeters), a slow-motion disaster for global coastlines.