First Mexican Antarctic campaign announced in Guadalajara

Guadalajara, Jal., The Mexican Agency for Antarctic Studies (AMEA) and the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco (Ciatej) announced what will be the first Mexican Antarctic campaign, which will allow a group of national scientists to go to the southern polar cap of the planet and for five years develop research at the Ukrainian Vernadsky base, with six projects that were selected referring to issues of biodiversity, climate change, microbiology and biotechnology.

Patricia Valdespino, president of the AMEA, specified in a press conference that the projects refer to the methane cycle, heat flows from the bottom of the ocean, geology to understand ecosystem changes over time, Antarctic krill and algal blooms in the snow.

“There is numerous evidence of the effects of climate change in Antarctica and on the planet. We are talking about thousands of reports, databases, scientific evidence that has to do with climate changes in the Antarctic system and its implications on ecosystems, on marine currents, on atmospheric dynamics, which impact the entire planet,” he said.

The oceanographer also showed a slide of a map of southern and southeastern Mexico, which showed “an approximation, a model of sea level rise, which is one of the most obvious effects of the warming of Antarctica with the melting of the Antarctic polar caps,” showing the scenarios of flooding and saline intrusion inland.

“As sea level rises, saline water will also enter the aquifers that permeate and feed the populations of our country in these areas (…) All these communities that live in the coastal area will have an important impact that at the same time will increase the social gaps in our country,” he stated.

He recalled that the deepest ice core that has been collected on the planet comes from Antarctica and has made it possible to reconstruct climate history going back 800,000 years, which means “the most compelling evidence we have to understand the increase in carbon dioxide and the climate change that we are experiencing today.”

He highlighted the importance of the project for Mexican scientists, because in the case of environmental sciences, Antarctic microbiology and biotechnology related to microbiological exploration, horizons of new products and new antibiotics are reached to face the superbacteria crisis that exists on the planet.

Regarding the integration of Mexico into scientific projects in Antarctica, he indicated that there are around 700 people including scientists, students, allies and companies, added to the support of federal government institutions such as the Secretariats of Science and Technology, the Economy “and even the Presidency has been in contact with us to express its support for this Antarctic campaign.”

In that sense, Mexico’s entry into the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) stood out, which brings together and coordinates all projects on the white continent, allowing direct and intermediary-free access to 45 frontier science programs, international science, with the support of icebreaking ships, helicopters and, in particular, with the Ukrainian Vernadsky base.

“Ukraine has been the detonator of this project, with a very clear vision of friendship, cooperation and development for science,” he mentioned, after remembering that in 1996, that European country inherited this base in the middle of the Antarctic Peninsula, which is “one of the areas with the highest warming on the planet” which makes it a suitable place to study the global dynamics around warming.

Valerii Olefir, representative of Ukraine also present at the conference, highlighted that this is a “very important milestone of scientific cooperation” between nations that share the same values.

Ukraine is a consultative member of the Antarctic Treaty system and has carried out, since England inherited the base, 28 scientific expeditions, 850 scientific publications and has a history of atmospheric monitoring dating back to before 1996 and which allowed confirming the processes of depletion of the ozone layer predicted “by the way in his research by the Mexican doctor Mario Molina (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1995).

The collaboration agreement was signed just last August, with a duration of five years, between the AMEA and the National Antarctic Center of Ukraine, which will allow Mexican scientists to carry out their projects on board the Noosfera ship and at the Vernadsky base.

Pablo Gerardo Torres Lepe, director of the AMEA, reported that exploration work has already been carried out by Mexican scientists, but that upon the return of the group that will soon leave for the southern tip of the planet there will be meetings to gradually report what has been obtained in the investigations, which in turn will allow inviting “collaborations from relevant actors that can help Antarctic science.”

He stated that the importance of the mission transcends science because Antarctica influences not only the global climate, but also the ocean currents and weather patterns that affect Mexico, including the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, which is why one of the objectives is to “prepare the country for climate change.”