The Curious Ecosystems of Antarctica | Continent 7: Antarctica

I kind of joke with folks that January is the longest day of my year. The sunlight down there is incredible because you get to see animals, uh, go about sort of what they do in perpetual sunlight in 24 hours. Generally, if you have nighttime, if we've got an instrument on an animal or, uh, it gets dark out, you can't work. He's coming this way, Rowan.

So to have the constant sunlight in the summertime is pretty remarkable. In my opinion, the most important piece of research that's coming out of the Antarctic right now is understanding how different species cope with the changing environments: the rapidly warming air, the increased amount of precipitation, the decreased amount of sea ice.

There's not one specific sort of nugget of information, but just learning about how each species handles that sort of stress in different ways is really important. I think the most valuable thing people can know about climate change is that the animals that have adapted themselves for environments in extreme places, like the Antarctic, simply can't cope with change that happens as rapidly as it's happening now.

And so the rate of change is the most pressing thing for ecosystems around the planet. We need to share that information with people and let people know that the things that they do have consequences in other parts of the world, especially in places that we think are sort of immune to those changes, but really are probably more susceptible.