international
polar
foundation

A peak in the Sør Rondane Mountains now bears the name of Professor Tony Van Autenboer, a geologist and leader of many Belgian geological research expeditions between 1958 and 1970.

For more than ten years, meteorite scientists from Belgian universities have been using the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station as a base from which to search for meteorites, which can give clues to the origins of our solar system.

The International Polar Foundation mourns the death of a legend in climate change research.

During the 2021-22 and 2022-23 austral summer research seasons, Quinten Vanhellemont from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences spent several weeks at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica installing and maintaining instruments for the Horizon 2020 Hypernets project, which is measuring surface radiation reflectance at different points of the globe, including Antarctica.

In this interview Quinten describes the objectives of the project and what they were able to accomplish over two seasons at the world’s first zero-emission polar research station.

Since 2012, with the help of its partners from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in Zürich, Switzerland and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), the International Polar Foundation (IPF) has maintained and expanded a network of automatic weather stations (AWS) under the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Climate Experiments (PEACE) project.

The 2022-23 season is drawing to a close. The BELARE team had been very busy with the final tasks before their scheduled departure at the end of this week.

The team of four led by Alain Hubert who had gone to the coast to offload cargo from the ship made it back to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Wednesday afternoon.

Since the departure of the VIPs from the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica more than two weeks ago, the BELARE team has been busy preparing for the arrival of the cargo ship, which contains the components of the station’s new water treatment system, and finishing upgrades to the hangar at Perseus Intercontinental Runway.

Over three days last week, the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica welcomed a number of VIPs, including South African Minister for Environment, Barbara Creecy and her civil engineer colleague in charge of energy strategy, Mphikeleli Amos Ndlela. 

Members of the Belgian Polar Secretariat, the public-private partnership that manages activities at the Belgian station, also visited the base, as well as Eric Rignot, Professor of Earth Systems Science at the University of California Irvine (UCI) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and French Ambassador to the Polar Regions, Olivier Poivre d'Arvor.

The new year signals the halfway point during the season. While the only scientists present at the station this season wind up their work before heading home next week, the BELARE team prepares for the arrival of another flight at Perseus Intercontinental Runway and the arrival of the supply ship at the Queen Maud Land coast.