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The highly anticipated documentary, which takes place primarily in Antarctica as well as Greenland, seamlessly weaves several narratives together focusing on the consequences of climate change and the first overwintering expedition in Antarctica led by Belgian explorer Adrien de Gerlache. The documentary features IPF founder Alain Hubert, Hélène de Gerlache de Gomery (granddaughter of Adrien de Gerlache), UC Irvine glaciologist Prof. Eric Rignot, the late Swiss glaciologist Dr. Konrad Steffen and his son IPF technician Simon Steffen, IPF mechanic Tim Grosrenaud, IPF systech engineers Nicolas Herinckx and Aymar de Lichtervelde, and several scientists who have spent time in Antarctica at the Princess Elisabeth station.

The filmmakers travel with Hélène de Gerlache de Gomery to the Antarctic Peninsula where she sails in the same waters first traversed in 1898 by her grandfather, Adrien de Gerlache, and which are today aptly called the Gerlache Strait. The audience is also taken along for a ride with IPF Founder Alain Hubert on a field expedition to support scientists, Prof Eric Rignot studying the consequences of a warming climate and ocean on the King Baudouin Ice Shelf, and with engineers as they do their daily job to run the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the world’s first and only zero-emission polar research station.

2050 was first shown to a large public audience on February 8th, the closing day of the Oostende Film Festival. 1,500 people came to see the film. It was chosen as one of the audience’s favourite films of the festival.

Next, MOS Vlaanderen, an educational organisation that integrates environmental stewardship into local school curricula, presented the film to teachers at two locations in Belgium:  in Leuven on February 18th and in Ghent on February 19th. Each event was followed by a panel discussion with Eric Goens and scientists who had been to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica to do research.  At the event in Ghent, IPF Education and Outreach manager Mieke Sterken also joined the panel discussion.

And finally, the film’s official avant-premiere at Kinepolis in Antwerp on the evening of Thursday February 27th welcomed hundreds of people to the red-carpet event attended by ministers from the Belgian government and the Flemish Parliament, along with several Belgian scientists who have been to Antarctica, including Jean-Jacques Derwael, who took part in Belgian expeditions to Antarctica in the 1960s.

IPF Founder and BELARE expedition leader Alain Hubert, freshly arrived from Cape Town after finishing the 2024-25 research season in Antarctica, joined Hélène de Gerlache de Gomery, Simon Steffen and filmmakers Eric Goens and Kristoff Van Den Bergh on the red carpet before viewing the film. 2050 was screened in two different rooms in the cinema complex. After each screening the filmmakers and members of the cast answered questions about the film and their experiences working in Antarctica.

Filled with breathtakingly beautiful landscapes, 2050 shines a light on past and present science taking place in Antarctica and Greenland, and how changes in the polar regions have widespread implications for the rest of the planet. It’s certainly not a film to miss!

Watch the trailer here

Where to see the film in Belgium

And yet, in an endless stream of fake news, most people seem to have lost track of reality. How sick – or healthy – is our climate? What is fact, and what is fiction?

In 2050, we travel to the most remote place on Earth: Antarctica. A world of ice, wind, and absolute silence. But also a world that is now crying out louder than ever. Because to truly understand the state of our planet, we must go to the place where the impact of climate change is most acute.

"The pace at which Antarctica is melting is unprecedented. Some people worry about their garage being flooded for a day. We must realize that these symptoms are not temporary but permanent. The melted ice water is moving fast, at an alarming rate."
— Eric Rignot, International Glaciologist & Founder of NISAR (NASA)

With award-winning documentary filmmaker Eric Goens as our guide and legendary polar explorer Alain Hubert — founder of the International Polar Foundation (IPF) and leader of the research expeditions that take place at the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station — as our compass, 2050 offers a raw and confronting look at the heart of scientific climate research. We follow dozens of scientists to Antarctica and join them in the search for sustainable solutions.

"We are the first generation to both understand the problem and know the solution," says Eric Goens. "It is our duty to protect this planet from even greater disasters. We owe it to all the generations that will come after us."
— Eric Goens

“Science is our compass in navigating the future of our planet. If we truly want to preserve Earth, we need to invest in polar research — especially in Antarctica, where the delicate equilibrium of our planet's climate hangs in the balance. History has shown us the power of international collaboration, from Belgium’s pioneering Antarctic expedition of Adrien de Gerlache in 1897, to the world’s first zero-emission research station, the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica. Today, as we embark on designing the next generation of zero-emission research station, the Andromeda Earth Observatory, we must embrace the knowledge science provides and take responsibility for the choices that will define our future.”
— Alain Hubert, President and Founder of the International Polar Foundation

The project is proudly supported by Syensqo, a pioneer in science and sustainability. "125 years ago, our founder Ernest Solvay backed the groundbreaking Antarctic expedition of Adrien de Gerlache. Today, we continue that same commitment," says Dr. Ilham Kadri, CEO of Syensqo.

After a warm reception at the Ostend Film Festival, where it was named one of the audience favorites, 2050 is now preparing for its official cinema release on March 5th.
But the mission goes beyond the big screen. This documentary aims for an international audience—because the future starts here. And the clock is ticking.

2050 – In Belgian cinemas from March 5th!

Watch the trailer here

Switching to winter mode

This season’s last group of scientists from the PASPARTOUT, EXPOSOILS, NISAR and CRYOS projects left last Friday, February 14th to head back home, leaving only 12 station crew left behind for the final days of the season. Everyone was very happy with the research they were able to accomplish this season and were very happy with the logistical support they received.

Those left at the station have started putting the station into winter mode, which is a lot of work for the whole team.

Firstly, all scientific equipment that cannot be left outside during the harsh winter is either safely packed away at the station or prepared for being sent to the university or research institution that deployed it. Instruments are kept functioning for as long as possible before being packed away so they can continue collecting data. The launch of weather balloons every other day for the ACME project to get a radiosonde profile of the atmosphere will continue until two days before departure.

Now that supplies that arrived a few weeks ago on the cargo ship have been put away and added to current inventory, the team has been doing inventories of all the spare parts for vehicles and construction at the station and the food stocks to see if anything new needs to be ordered for next season.

Another important task to complete before departure is to raise the station’s annexes, which sit on a moving glacier.  While the main building of the station is firmly fixed to granite ridge, its annexes sit on a very slowly moving glacier, which can move 10-15 cm a year. Thankfully a new system the IPF team devised a few years ago makes this task a matter of adding some metal plates to pylons beneath each annex at the start and end of each season.

And of course the water treatment system must be shut down for the winter. One by one systems that use water are closed for use. About five days before departure, the toilets are shut down, which means only dry toilets can be used. The following day the showers and the laundry are shut down.  Once everything has been shut down, plumbers Simeon Polet and Laurens Gonzalez then need to drain the tanks of the bioreactors and empty all pipes of any excess water that cannot freeze during the winter months.

A season to be proud of

The season passed by very quickly and the team at PEA worked together like a well-oiled machine to solve any problem scientists may face - which is inevitable in Antarctica - on the spot.

Scientists were very happy with their stay at PEA and they are pleased with the data they were able to collect. Overall, 17 scientific projects were supported by the International Polar Foundation staff during the course of this season. Three expeditions took place with heavy logistic at remote locations from PEA for several weeks at the time. Left alone, the scientists working remotely (with the help of the staff on site), PEA was able to welcome a total of 24 scientists this season. This is close to the number of staff members present to support them, which is an impressive ratio.

Bad weather has forced the staff to prepare the station and surroundings for overwintering a few days in advance, but according to forecasters, the weather will clear over the weekend and the remaining 12 members of the 2024-25 BELARE team will leave on Monday, February 24th, with the goal of reaching Cape Town the following day. It will be the end of a very successful season, full of great accomplishments and memories.

The Princess Elisabeth will be well prepared to survive the next eight months unoccupied - until the 2025-26 team starts her up again in November!

While the other three teams had already finished their work for the season several days ago and had started to pack up their samples and equipment for the trip home, Prof. Eric Rignot and his team from UC Irvine only returned on Tuesday after spending 24 days doing fieldwork at the coast.

After unloading cargo and supplies from the traverse convoys that had arrived last Thursday with the help of the entire team and scientists who were at PEA, Eric Rignot and his team from UC Irvine finish up their work collecting data on the King Baudouin Ice Shelf and started heading back to PEA with their mountain field guide Daniel Mercier  

Eric and his team (Ratnakar Gadi from UC Irvine, Nolwenn Chauché from Aberystwyth University) had gone along an 80-km transect of the entire ice shelf from its edge on the Southern Ocean to the grounding line (where the ice flowing off of the continent leaves the bedrock and starts flowing out over open ocean), doing ApRES radar transects, CDT samples, and seismic surveys to get a clearer picture of the ice shelf thickness and the sea floor depth beneath it, and to determine to what extent warming ocean water is melting the ice shelf from below.

As he and his team weren’t able to continue with hot water drilling past a certain point on the ice shelf after technical issue in the second borehole (they had planned to drill in five across the 80 km transect), the team decided to make the best use of their time in the field and do even more radar transects and seismic soundings on the ice shelf and above the grounding line. This allowed them to get a lot more data about the extent of the grounding zone of the ice shelf and make an interesting discovery: a meltwater channel near the grounding line. However, instead of digging a valley in the ice, the ice on both sides of the meltwater channel is compressed and raised - something very unusual. Eric and his team will dig through the data they’ve collected to determine exactly what caused this formation.

Summer days are gone

Now that the final weeks of the 2024-25 season are approaching, the warmer days of December and January are slowly transitioning to cooler days. It’s becoming obvious that the austral autumn is rapidly approaching.

In February, the sun starts to set for longer and longer periods each day. On the first day night returns, the sun dips below the horizon for less than an hour. However in the days that follow, daylight hours noticeably shrink from one day to the next as the sun stays down for longer and longer each night.

When the sun starts to disappear in this season, covered by clouds, behind mountains or at “night”, the winds that blow tend to be much colder as the windshield factor is applied. Temperatures at PEA can sometimes drop down to -25°C this time of year. Even during his last week at the coast (coastal areas tend to be a bit warmer), Eric Rignot said that at night temperatures could drop down to -17°C. And it’s still technically summer for another five weeks!

Antarctic weather conditions: always a wild card

BELARE expedition leader Alain Hubert and the IPF team that accompanied him to the coast spent several days unloading the cargo ship, which dropped off a large amount of supplies and equipment for the station. 

On Sunday, they finished unloading the cargo from the ship with ideal weather conditions. Only a few hours later a storm arrived and whiteout conditions hit the Queen Maud Land region of East Antarctica forcing the Prinoth convoy hauling the cargo back to the station to take a two-day about 128 km north of Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.

Unfortunately, bad weather in Antarctica can foil even the best laid plans. The force of nature is so strong there that it’s always safer to err on the side of caution. If you get caught in a whiteout, sometimes the best thing to do is just stay put until the storm blows over. Whiteout conditions can be extremely dangerous as it’s often impossible to see only a few metres ahead. It’s easy to get confused when navigating through a whiteout, especially if you get tired so it was the right decision to stop and wait it out.

When the weather cleared, the convoy continued on Wednesday to Perseus Airfield, and then made it to PEA on Thursday where the unloading of all the goods and material could take place.

Progress on the ice shelf

Meanwhile, Professor Eric Rignot and his team from UC Irvine are still at the coast with IPF Guide Daniel Mercier. They’ve made progress on their work studying how the King Baudoin Ice Shelf from its to the grounding line (where the ice shelf starts to float on the water, past the continent’s bedrock) might be being affected by a warming ocean and changing climatic conditions. They’ve managed to set up a second AWS near the edge of the ice shelf, take numerous radar transects, and drill boreholes through the ice sheet to measure ice thickness, temperature and salinity of the water beneath the ice sheet.

Along with the radar transects and the hot water drilling activities, the team is also studying the properties of the ice with a seismic device and performing measurements of conductivity, temperature and depth (with a CTD instrument) at several locations along the ice edge of the King Baudouin Ice Shelf.

With another week to go, they still have quite a lot of work left to do. But despite the setback, they’ll continue their mission until completion.

Meanwhile back at the station

The storm has piled several metres of snow against the doors and walls of the station, which will need to be cleared away once the weather improves. The entrances to the garages where the vehicles are kept have been snowed in. The team has only been able to get out of the red front door of the building for the past few days, and only after regularly shovelling away snow that has accumulated in front of it.  

Now that the storm has passed and the traverse team is back from the coast with the Prinoth tractors, the entire team is now busy, unloading the cargo from the sledges and containers. Door by door the snow is being cleared away from the station so operations can get back to normal.

Ghent University researcher Paula Lampreapineda, who’s working on the BELSPO-sponsored PASPARTOUT project, has been installing a new and improved version of the volatile organic compound autosampler that can resist freezing temperatures better on the south shelter of PEA to collect samples of atmospheric particles over the coming year. The snow samples she took from trenches she dug at the coast last week are currently on the cargo ship that has left along with samples from the FROID and ULTIMO projects.

Björn Tytgat and Quentin Vanhellemont from Ghent University and the RBINS respectively, who are working on the BELSPO-funded EXPOSOILS project, have completed their first round of day trips from PEA to ten locations where they’ve been collecting data loggers and invertebrates samples from rock beds and open-top chambers that have been set up in the vicinity of PEA for several years now. With the weather set to be good again starting last Wednesday they may return to a few more sites to try to collect more of the microfauna for molecular analysis.

And Sergi Sergi Gonzalez from the EPFL in Lausanne, who is working on the CRYOS project, has continued to install a series of instruments on the antenna in front of PEA at three different heights. These instruments will measure blowing snow and heat fluxes at different levels above ground.

By this time next week, all of the scientists will be packing their gear to start heading home. The next flight out is scheduled for February 14th!

Financed by the Belgian Federal Science Policy (BELSPO) and the Université Libre de Bruxelles’ QUOI project, with strong logistical support from the International Polar Foundation (IPF), which is mandated to manage the zero-emission Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station by the Belgian Polar Secretariat, the team of scientists from the FROID project (“Finding the world’s oldest ice record around the Princess Elisabeth Station”) spent several weeks on a field campaign in the Nils Larsen Blue Ice Field near the Sør Rondane Mountains in December and early January.

The field team consisted of four scientists - Maaike Izeboud (VUB), Etienne Legrain (ULB/VUB), Veronica Tollenaar (VUB), and Harry Zekollari (VUB)  - who were supported by IPF field guide François Pallandre and IPF technician Nicolas Grosrenaud. They drilled shallow ice cores to date the surface age of the ice, took surface ice samples, planted stakes in the ice to see how much ice is being lost at the surface, and collected radar data to evaluate ice thickness. The data they obtain from all of this work will help the scientists figure out where the ice is the oldest, and therefore where to drill an ice core with the goal of retrieving million-year-old ice.

“Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet in most places, and the further down into the ice sheet you go, the older the ice is,” explained Prof. Harry Zekollari. “Air bubbles trapped in the ice, which formed as snow fell on the surface and turned into ice over time, can tell us how the composition of the atmosphere varied in the past and therefore what the climate was like going back hundreds of thousands, or even a million years.”

Some of the oldest ice in Antarctica lies at the bottom of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, where the ice meets the bedrock of the Antarctic continent. Previous international scientific expeditions to drill deep ice cores to find the oldest ice have been able to go back hundreds of thousands of years in climate history. The most well-known of these was the EPICA project (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which was able to retrieve an ice core going back 800,000 years at Dome C, one of the highest points on the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Recently, in a follow-up deep drilling project (Beyond EPICA), ice older than 1,200,000 years was recovered. However, many of these ice coring projects drilled straight down several kilometres into the ice sheet to retrieve the oldest ice. This method is technically difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

“The FROID project takes a different approach to finding very old ice without having to drill kilometres-deep ice cores,” explained Dr. Veronica Tollenaar. "It takes advantage of the location of blue ice areas on the continent. The Antarctic Ice Sheet slowly flows from the centre of the continent to its coasts due to gravity. As the ice approaches mountains, in blue ice areas, the ice at the bottom of the ice sheet is pushed up closer to the surface, making the oldest ice easier to access.”

Altogether this season the research team collected 15 shallow ice cores, more than 1000 surface ice samples, and did 200 km of radar transects. The ice samples are currently being shipped back to Belgium, where they will be analysed in the labs of the participating universities.

The field camp for the FROID project was located in the Nils Larsen Blue Ice Field 2300 metres above sea level, not far from the Sør Rondane Mountains, about 50-60 km from the Princess Elisabeth station.

The team encountered an interesting phenomenon during their field work.

“One thing we came across during our time up at the field was a liquid surface lake, which is very rare to find in Antarctica, especially at the high altitude where we were,” Dr. Maaike Izeboud stated. “However, there were several warm days in December with high temperatures, so this lake may have formed due to surface melt. We need to investigate this further by modelling the surface mass balance to see how exceptional the formation of a surface lake at that altitude might be.”

They also had some unexpected visitors right before the new year.

“On New Year’s Eve, several south polar skuas, which are large sea birds that typically live near the coast, paid us a visit,” Dr. Etienne Legrain recounted.  “While Henri Robert, the IPF Science Liaison Officer who is also a biologist, said it’s normal that skuas occasionally fly several hundreds of kilometres to breed in small numbers in the Sør Rondane Mountains, we were nonetheless amazed to see a form of life after so many days in the field!”

The FROID project plans to return to Antarctica for a second field campaign during the 2026-27 research season.

To the coast!

Last Saturday Eric Rignot From UC Irvine and his team from the NISAR project left for the coast 200 km from PEA with Alain Hubert, Tim Grosrenaud and mountain field guide Daniel Mercier in Prinoth tractors towing several sledges (scientific equipment and caboose) and a caterpillar-equipped Toyota Hilux.  One container equipped with a kitchen, wifi and communications infrastructure will be the living quarters for Eric and his scientific team for the next several weeks as they camp out on the coast.

Eric and his team will spend the next several weeks studying the thickness of ice at different distances from the grounding line to the edge of the King Baudouin Ice Shelf to see how much of it is melting underneath. In addition, they will install a GNS antenna to measure movement of the ice with the tides and ice shelf melting, conduct seismic transects and use a sledge hammer to get insights on the ice structure and thickness. Finally, they will be using a hot water drill to bore through the ice and deploy CTD sensors in the water beneath the ice shelf. Alain and Tim will remain in the vicinity to install a 3-metre tall automatic weather station (AWS) that Simon Steffen prepared before leaving for the PEACE project.

Cargo ship arrival

Alain and Tim will soon meet with Yann Perillot, Jacques Belley and Siméon Polet left PEA have left with a train of sledges and a container in prevision of the cargo ship arrival foreseen in a few days depending on the ice conditions in the area at the time of berth along the King Baudouin Ice Shelf.

One reefer container (set at -25°C) that has all of the surface ice and ice core samples taken by the scientists from the FROID project along with meteorite sediments collected by the scientists from the ULTIMO project will be loaded onto the cargo ship to be transported back to Belgium, where scientists will do their respective analyses in the labs of their universities.

Being unloaded from the ship and going back to the station will be many containers containing frozen food necessary for the coming seasons as well as all the pieces of a new hangar that will be build at the Winter Park next season. The ship will also bring fuel for the vehicles the BELARE team and scientists use as well as the planes that transport people to and from the station, or for the teams that spend some time at PEA using it as a base of operations, as is the case with AWI’s Polar 6 aircraft. Other aircraft also sometimes use PEA as a refuelling station to reach their destination on their trans-Antarctic journey from one base to another.

The loading and unloading of the cargo ship is a task that takes several days and a crew of at least five people. The ship is only staying in the area for a short time before moving on to resupply other stations, so the team has to work non-stop for the entire time the ship is there to make sure the job is completed as quickly as possible.

Serious snow studies

Separately on Friday Paula Lampreapineda from Ghent University, who is working for the BELSPO-funded PASPARTOUT project, and Sergi Gonzalez from the EPFL in Lausanne, who is working on the CRYOS project, left for the Princess Ragnhild Coast in a caterpillar equipped Toyota Hilux with their field guide Manu Poudelet.

During their five-day trip, Paula will dig trenches to take snow samples to study atmospheric particles and deposits at different depth of the trench. Alain and Tim, who are nearby, will stop by while waiting for the ship to collect the snow samples the automatic snow sampler has been gathering since Paula's colleague Sibille Boxho installed it last season. Sergi will take snow samples and photogrammetric measurements along the transect they take to the coast to recreate the relief of the snow surface digitally as a way to determine potential albedo of the studied area.

The microscopic world

Meanwhile, Björn Tytgat and Quentin Vanhellemont from Ghent University and the RBINS respectively, who are working on the BELSPO-funded EXPOSOILS project, have been taking day trips to the several locations around PEA they and their colleagues before them have studied for many years.

As the project is tracking how climate change is affecting microbial communities in the vicinity of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, they will take samples of microorganisms such as collembola and mites around and inside  open-top chambers (OTC) installed in the field to locally mimic climate change. OTC’s and control plots are also equipped with data loggers that measures temperature and humidity. Study areas are equipped with time lapse cameras to assess how much of it is snow-covered from one season to the other and how precipitation affects the local conditions throughout the year.

On Saturday, January 11th, teams from the Belspo-funded ULTIMO and FROID projects headed home after each undertaking a very successful field campaign along with several crew, including  Simon Steffen and Doctor Martin Leittl who had been at the station for several weeks.

They were replaced by Eric Rignot and two colleagues from the University of California Irvine, who will work on the NISAR project; Paula Lampredapineda from the University of Ghent, who will spend five weeks in Antarctica for the BELSPO-financed PASPARTOUT project; and finally Bjorn and Quentin Vanhellemont, also  from the University of Ghent, who will work on the BELSPO-financed EXPOSOILS project.

New crew members include field guides Daniel Mercier and Manu Poudelet. They will be responsible for the safety of the scientists while in the field.

After they finish the requisite field training, and after the IPF team finishes putting the touches on the logistical support, the scientists want to head into the field as soon as this coming weekend.

Examining ice shelf dynamics

Professor Rignot and his team hope to spend three weeks on the King Baudouin Ice Shelf studying how it’s being affected by warming atmospheric and ocean temperatures. They will use various methods to look at the thickness of the ice shelf from the grounding line to the tip of the ice shelf at the coast.

Firstly, they will set up a second automatic weather station on the edge of the ice shelf that Simon Steffen had prepared before leaving (for the PEACE project). This will complement the AWS already installed at the grounding line. They will also install a GNSS antenna in order to measure any rise or fall of the ice shelf over time.

At various locations along the ice shelf, Eric and his colleagues will drill holes in the ice with a hot water drill and lower a CTD sensor to measure conductivity, temperature and depth into the ocean beneath the hole. This will give them an idea of how quickly the ocean beneath the ice shelf is warming.

Finally, they will take ground radar transects by hauling a radar sounder behind a skidoo in a grid pattern. This will give them an image of how thick the ice shelf is over its entire length.

During their stay at the coast, they will have the luxury of having one of the modified living containers with them. The container put together by IPF engineers has internet, a snow melter, a kitchen, and a living area. This helps make extended stays away from the station a lot more comfortable.

As Alain and Tim will be nearby preparing for the arrival of the cargo ship towards the end of this month, they will provide assistance to Eric whenever necessary.

Studying atmospheric particles

This year, Paula Lampredapineda from the University of Ghent will continue work that she and her colleague Sibylle Boxho from the ULB started last year studying atmospheric particles, their origin, and how they are transported to Antarctica through the atmosphere for the BELSPO-funded PASPARTOUT project.

Paula will head out to the coast for 10 days with IPF field guide Manu Poudelet to revisit a location that Sibylle had visited last year. This location is not far from where Eric will be stationed and where Alain and Tim will prepare for the offloading of the cargo ship.

Paula will bring to the coast a volatile organic compound (VOC) automatic sampler she had installed at PEA last season so it can start taking samples at the coast. Alain had installed a support battery pack, wind turbine, and solar panel so the VOC sampler can run autonomously for the entire winter.

At this location Sibylle Boxho installed a precipitation/snow sampler last season. The sampler rotated automatically every three months to collect precipitation from each of the year’s quarters. Paula will collect the precipitation samples and bring them back to Belgium for analysis.

Paula will also repeat what Sibylle did last year: dig a two-metre deep trench in the snow and sample snow layers going back several years to determine what kind of atmospheric particles have been transported to Antarctica over this period of time.

As Paula only plans to be at the coast for 10 days or so, she and Manu will camp out in tents. Conditions at the coast tend to be warmer and milder in general, so they should have an easy stay.

Sergi Gonzalez from the EPFL will also join them to continue taking photogrammetry of the snow surface over square metres for the CRYOS project along with snow samples at different depths.

Sampling microbial life

The BELSO-funded EXPOSOILS project is back at the station, with Björn Tytgat and Quentin Vanhellemont from the University of Ghent representing the project this year.

During their month-long stay, they plan to revisit nunataks the project has visited several times to take samples of microbial life in their regular locations, during day trips not far from the station.  

They will also collect temperature and humidity loggers, check open top chambers installed on most nunataks near the station. They will also get data from their time lapse cameras installed last season that can monitor how much snow accumulates and how much is ablated when the sun hits it.

Preparing for the ship to arrive

The big logistical task BELARE Team Leader Alain Hubert, Tim Grosrenaud, and the rest of the IPF team need to prepare for is the arrival of the cargo ship, scheduled to arrive on January 24th. Alain and Tim have been doing reconnaissance over the past several weeks along the Princess Ragnhild coast to find the best place for the ship to offload each time they’ve been in the area.

On the ship will be fresh food for the rest of the season and the following one, supplies for the station, materials for a hangar the team plans to construct during next season, and fuel for the vehicles. The ship will take back with it ice core samples the FROID project took during the season along with samples from the ULTIMO project (mostly sediments to be sorted to find micro-meteorites) and logistical equipment for the next season (transportation boxes, reefer etc).

It takes years of expertise to make sure the offloading process goes safely and smoothly. Alain and the IPF team have what it takes to make sure it gets done properly!

While previous successful meteorite recovery missions in 2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2012-2013, 2018-2019, and 2022-2023 focused on blue ice areas closer to Belgium’s zero-emission Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station, the 2024-2025 campaign took place in the remote Belgica Mountains of Antarctica, more than 300 km southeast of the research station. In addition, the team also recovered several thousand micrometeorites, cosmic dust particles less than 2 mm in diameter, and abundant ice and rock samples. This research has been made possible through funding by the Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) and required heavy logistical support from the International Polar Foundation (IPF), mandated to manage the Princess Elisabeth research station by the Belgian Polar Secretariat.

The meteorite search team, consisting of three scientists from Belgian universities - Prof. Dr. Steven Goderis of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel as well as Prof. Dr. Vinciane Debaille and Dr. Gabriel Pinto of the Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium), and Dr. Hamed Pourkhorsandi, a research scientist at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in France - together with two IPF field guides Martin Leitl and Paul-Philippe Dudas, made a first stop in the Balchenfjella area in search of meteorites, before making their way to the Belgica Mountains on December 15th. The Belgica Mountains, located in the Queen Maud Land region in East Antarctica, were discovered by a Belgian expedition team during the International Geophysical Year Polar Expedition in 1958 during a reconnaissance mission by airplane. The reconnaissance had to be stopped after the airplane crashed on the blue ice there. The mountains were visited again by Belgian scientists in the 1960s, but have not been visited by a Belgian scientific team since then.

Meteorites can be found on blue ice fields near mountain chain where the ice is pushed up and eroded by strong katabatic winds. Systematic recovery programs have been running since the 1970s, as each meteorite holds relevant information about the formation and evolution of the solar system and the celestial bodies, including Earth, the Moon and Mars, as well as the arrival of water, volatile compounds, and organic matter to Earth, etc. 
Prior plans for travel by container convoy had to be abandoned for air transport due to difficult terrain. Conditions at the basecamp (essentially tents) were harsh, even for Antarctic summer, with temperature going down to -31˚C with the wind chill due to strong winds. The team of researchers would head out each day looking for meteorites on snow mobiles in a V-shaped formation, so they could cover large areas more systematically.

More impressive than the number were the types of meteorites found. The meteorites included at least two achondrites (stony meteorite representing planetary mantles), and several carbonaceous chondrites, the most primitive meteorites similar in composition to the original material of the Solar nebula, the giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust that formed our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

“Each new (micro)meteorite provides an essential piece of the puzzle we are trying to solve,” said Prof. Goderis about the importance of the samples he and his colleagues found.

“Based on some meteorite fragments, we can learn about planetary differentiation and collisions taking place in the early solar system, and in other fragments we find prebiotic molecules required for the evolution of life.” added Prof. Debaille.

The meteorites will be sent to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels for defrosting, curation, and detailed classification, after which they will become available for research to the involved research teams as well as the international scientific community. The most beautiful pieces will be put on display for the public to enjoy.

A successful field campaign

On New Year’s Day, the team of scientists from the BELSPO-financed ULTIMO project returned to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica from Mont Belgica via Basler transport plane. The team has spent nearly a month in the field collecting meteorites at two locations: Balchenfjella, and Mont Belgica. They’ve come back with 115 meteorites, 230 ice samples, 9 micrometeorite deposits, and numerous rocks.

Due to treacherous conditions between Balchenfjella and Mont Belgica, it became necessary to take the scientists across the glacier to Mont Belgica by plane and helicopter on December 18th. These aircrafts were kindly put at disposition by the SWIDA-RINGS project while waiting  for better weather condition for their field work.  Assisted by BELARE Team Leader Alain Hubert and Tim Grosrenaud, a Basler flight from Ultima Antarctic Logistics brought back the scientists and their equipment to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica on New Year’s Day.

The ULTIMO team is very happy with their field campaign this season and look forward to analysing their haul in labs at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and participating universities back in Belgium.

Making the most of their time

Meanwhile, scientists from the BELSPO-financed FROID project have also had a triumphant return from the field on January 6th. During their several weeks in the field, they took advantage of every day they’ve had in the field to drill shallow ice cores and take radar surveys of the bedrock beneath the ice around the Nils Larsen Blue Ice Fields southwest of the Sør Rondane Mountains, nearly 50 km from PEA.

While the scientists came back by skidoo, an IPF logistics team traveled out to their camp to haul back the scientists’ living containers, their equipment, and a reefer container that holds all of the shallow ice cores the scientists drilled this season at temperatures of -20°C.

With all of the ice core samples they’ve gathered (which will be analysed in a lab in Belgium later this year) and information they’ve gained from the topography of the bedrock (which will show where the bottom ice layers have been pushed up as they flow towards the mountains), the project team will be able to determine the best locations for drilling deep ice cores to find (hopefully) million year-old ice when they return next year with a drill that can core much deeper.

Keeping track of surface mass balance

In the meantime, Sergey Gonzales from the EPFL-CRYOS project has been taking photos of snow and ice around PEA - in particular sastrugi - the waves of frozen snow that are created by the strong winds in Antarctica. He’s been taking photos of standard square metres for photogrammetry study of the snow surface.  

The purpose of this exercise is to see to what extent the waviness of the sastrugi affects the albedo - the amount of solar radiation it reflects back into space from the snow surface. The more wavy the surface is, the more this affects the albedo. Monitoring albedo is important for studying surface mass balance of the ice sheet, as lower albedo leads to a higher absorption of solar energy, which in turn leads to a warming of the ice sheet.

The next step in the CRYOS project is to install a number of instruments on the tall mast at the station with the help of IPF’s field guide, Martin Leitl. However, they’ll need to wait until the weather improves, as a few days of inclement weather started just after the new year.

And for the 4th week in a row, the team of scientists and crew from AWI’s polar 6 aircraft has been trying to manage the logistical difficulties they’ve encountered with their plane, their equipment and the inclement weather. They’ve been trying to do radar surveys of ice shelves at the coast and their grounding lines as part of their contribution to the international SCAR-managed RINGS project.

Thankfully the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica is a very welcoming place that has been able to accommodate them for the duration of their trip, which has been longer than expected. We hope they will be able to complete their surveys in the coming days before finalizing their program from the South African Sanae station, and then finally the Norwegian Troll station.