In Antarctica, Canadian scientists have a 'momentous' chance to learn more about climate change

In the middle of an active volcano at the bottom of the world, dozens of fur seals bask in blowing wet snow. They are mostly unfussed by their two-legged guests. 

Around them lie cockeyed iron tanks and wooden boats from an early 20th-century whaling settlement, so weathered they're nearly absorbed by the black sand beach. Traces of Chilean and British bases appear just as humbled.

On the surface, Deception Island's Whalers Bay is still humanity's biggest imprint on Antarctica, outside of its 80 or so research stations. 

But a climate scientist might say otherwise.

Studies on this fragile continent have documented how temperatures, glaciers, oceans and wildlife are reacting to the warming consequences of fossil fuel emissions. A place this remote and isolated makes a perfect laboratory for grasping the past, present and future of the Earth's climate, according to many scientists drawn to Antarctica.

It's a case study with high stakes, says Natural Resources Canada scientist Thomas James, who is leading the first all-Canadian expedition to the region. 

"What happens in Antarctica doesn't stay here," he said, while recently walking the beach at Whalers Bay, as scientists gathered samples from the sand, snow and air around him.

It's understood that climate change doesn't acknowledge politically drawn borders. But James explains that Antarctica's ice and cold oceans play an outsized role in regulating our climate. 

Just this month, researchers identified that melting freshwater from Antarctica's glaciers is altering the water chemistry of the Southern Ocean. They predict that the changed salinity will slow the vital Antarctic Circumpolar Current by 20 per cent by 2050. The strongest current on Earth, the ACC's influence extends to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, pumping water, heat and nutrients around the world. 

The current also protects Antarctica's ice sheets — large masses of land-based ice — from warmer northern waters, preventing sea level rise, which would impact coastal communities around the globe. 

"We know that the Antarctic ice sheet is potentially unstable and could provide larger amounts of sea level change than the present models currently predict," said James. "It's a huge reservoir of fresh water."

He's studied Antarctica for more than 30 years, but his field work has mainly been in the northern polar region; this is only James's second time in Antarctica.

"We think that spending some time understanding the Antarctic ice sheet and the implications for sea level change is very important for Canadians."

It's not just ice sheets that are melting. Sea ice (frozen sea water) at the poles has reached record lows three months in a row.