maybe this will help -
researchers can live on antarctica year-round, though only a fraction of the summer residents do. i think the numbers for the american station are something like 1000 summer residents to less than 200 winter residents. (remember, seasons are backwards in the southern hemisphere, so our summer is really their winter)
the reason why i really am not drawn to any antarctic sources for my research is that the conditions down there are far different from those in the northern hemisphere. allow me to partially explain why antarctica is so different:
1. antarctica is an isolated continent with a circumpolar vortex in the air and the water, keeping the climatic environment more isolated in respect to the warmer air masses toward the equator. it's similar to an air conditioning system for the pole- circulating the cold temperatures around the borders with lower latitudes. this is why the ozone hole is focused around antarctica= once the cfc's and such get into the circumpolar vortex, they are essentially trapped there and left to deteriorate O3 (ozone) in the atmosphere.
2. there are no humans native to antarctica, nor any that live there for any purpose other than research.
3. cross-hemispheric atmospheric mixing is very restricted. the hemispheric air masses don't blend quite as well as you might think - northern hemisphere's air tends to stay in the northern hemisphere and likewise for the southern hemisphere. and since most of the world's land masses lie in the northern hemisphere, the air chemistry is different. and yes, the air quality is far better in the souther hemisphere, so long as you're not near the massive biomass burns occurring in the brazilian rainforest (the main culprit for s. hem. pollution)
4. it's an ice cap, like much of greenland but nowhere else in the north. much of the northern arctic aside form greenland is permafrost tundra. these permafrost zones store methane, a potent greenhouse gas (i think it's 4x more effective at insulating our atmosphere than carbon dioxide) as well as hosting a variety of flora, fauna, and 4 million humans.
5. antarctica is in a funny international political bubble. nothing but scientific research can be conducted, so the risks of environmental justice infractions are naturally low, especially since there's nobody to suffer from injustice (unless a researcher gets eaten or abandoned or something)
there are many many more reasons why the poles are different from each other, but this should at least give you enough info to understand why my research will not be focused on antarctica. however, there is much work to be done on the frozen continent - just not for me... yet.
i've attached 3 visual aids to help understand some of the points i've made. the first is a northamerican landcover image resulting from MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) data. second is a MOPITT (measurement of pollution in the troposphere) image of global CO2 concentrations in the troposphere (lower atmosphere). both of these sensors are on board the Terra satellite (launched by NASA in 1999 and still operating).
third, i attached an image from the NOAA (north atlantic oceanic and atmospheric association) website depicting the antarctic circumpolar vortex. according to their site, the strength of this vortex has been increasing over the past 30 years.
hope this helps, and as always, feel free to make comments or tell me when i've completely botched or missed an idea!
-jimmy
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