Meteorologist Tamsin Gray releases a weather balloon at the British Rothera research station on the Antarctic Peninsula to help record temperature and other data from the freezing air. Apart from helping predict the weather, the balloons are also giving scientists clues to global warming.

As you can see, it starts off about 2 metres across but how big it is when it reaches about 25 km above the ground?

a) it shrinks to the size of a tennis ball

b) it swells to the size of a double-decker bus

c) it drifts off into space unchanged

Gray, of the British Antarctic Survey, says that data from the atmosphere about 5 km above Antarctica are helping to confirm findings by the U.N. Climate Panel that greenhouse gases are warming the planet.

She says that layer is warming three times faster than the global average during winter, or about 0.75 Celsius over 30 years, which is what computer models predict if man-made emissions are to blame for raising temperatures.

“It’s confirming the theory that warming is caused by greenhouse gases,” she said.

The balloons are let off around Antarctica and are giving clues both to weather and to the long-term climate.

 …and the answer to the question is “b” — after it swells to the size of a double decker bus because of a lack of pressure high up in the atmosphere it pops and falls to earth, along with the small measuring device that is then lost on the ice.

 In a rare Antarctic soccer ‘international’, staff at a British base on the Antarctic Peninsula beat the crew of a visiting U.S. research vessel 2-0 on Saturday on a pitch with a view out over mountains and icebergs.

About 30 of us watched from the sidelines of the pitch (actually, the area in front of the aircraft hangar) at the Rothera research station on the Antarctic Peninsula with the occasional snow flurry in temperatures just below freezing. The cheerleaders tried to keep warm by leaping around  (below).  

 Carpenter Chris Hobson (above, in blue) was the hero for Rothera, scoring both goals in the first half — the first from the rebound after a disputed penalty awarded for handball. The second after a goalmouth scramble.

He’s now known as “Cristiano”.

The Americans from the Laurence M. Gould vessel, on a research cruise along the Antarctic Peninsula, had a few good chances but never managed to score. A few weeks at sea may have upset their balance.

No one took it too seriously (there wasn’t even a referee) or tackled too hard — (it’s easy to get hurt falling over on the gravel; I know, from a training match earlier this week).

The crew of the Gould were making a weekend visit to the base. Apart from Chris, players included meteorologists, geologists, electricians, plumbers, glaciologists and marine biologists.

The game is an annual fixture on the little-reported Antarctic circuit.

The picture below shows Rothera meteorologist Ali Price (right) shooting — he hit the post.

As a view out of your home it’s hard to match — a constantly changing vista of icebergs just outside the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera research station.

Every day the winds and tides on the Antarctic Peninsula shift them around — some break up  abruptly with a loud splash while many simply slowly grind into ice cubes against the shore and disappear. I’ve tried to take a picture every day from the main balcony here (there’s a metal mast on the right hand side of each photo).

Walking along the shore here you can hear a bubbling as air in the ice melts out into the water. The old ice is the clearest — good for putting in cold drinks. Some form gravity-defying shapes such as arches or big holes — one in the bay a few days ago looked like a giant catamaran.

Icebergs cracking off glaciers in the distance can sound like an artillery shell exploding and big lumps falling into the sea send a wave across the bay. Seals lie on the beach, some of them snoring or nonchalantly scratching themselves — completely unbothered by the people passing by.

                                                                         Friday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

For anyone who thinks (like I did) that Antarctica is a bone-chilling freezer lashed by constant blizzards, a visit to the Antarctic Peninsula is a surprise.

As you can see from the picture, you can even play soccer at the British Rothera research station -- Stuart Mc Dill of Reuters TV (a skilled left winger) and I (unskilled) joined in a game last night and I have the grazes to prove it. Our team managed to win, 4-2, on the gravel pitch outside the plane hangar -- meteorologist Ali Price brilliantly knocked in three, even though he was wearing a pair of clunking hiking boots.

And last weekend, staff had an outdoor barbecue with steaks and a cooler for drinks made from snow scooped up by a bulldozer.

At Rothera, summer temperatures now are comparable to the winter in England, where the British Antarctic Survey has its headquarters in Cambridge. On "warm" days, when temperatures climb to about 7 Celsius, some in Antarctica staff wander around outside in tee-shirts and even shorts.

Temperatures today are 0.5 Celsius (32.9 Fahrenheit), not much cooler than 4.4 Celsius (39.9 F) at BAS headquarters.

In recent days, it has rained at least as often as it has snowed at Rothera.

Of course there has been rain here long  before anyone ever thought about global warming. But BAS glaciologist David Vaughan (who took the picture above) says that temperatures on the peninsula have risen by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 F) in the past 50 years -- making rains more likely.

And all of Antarctica is getting warmer, according to a report in this week's edition of the journal Nature. Until now, scientists have reckoned that the warming is limited to the Antarctic Peninsula but the U.S. study (for a story, click here) says that warming extends far wider across the frozen continent.

Staff at research bases, who relax by playing soccer, are trying to work out the risks of warming -- a melt of ice sheets would add to sea level rise and have unknown impacts on wildlife from penguins to tiny mosses that have adapted to freezing temperatures.

Even the fussy Princess in the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale might slumber peacefully in an Antarctic tent.

She turned up at a castle unannounced in a storm and married the prince after proving she was royal by complaining of a sleepless night because of a lump in the bed — a single pea the Queen placed as an identity test beneath the 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds.

Above is Daniel Fitzgerald, a field assistant at the British Rothera research station, carrying a bag that contains a foam mat, sheepskin rug, sleeping bag and other layers used to spend a night out in bone-chilling temperatures – in total there are 10 layers separating you from the ice and snow.

Reuters TV reporter Stuart McDill and I spent a night on Reptile Ridge on the Antarctic Peninsula — for a story, click here. (We slept in the middle two-person tent in the picture below.)

Temperatures were only just below freezing — but can plunge to minus 20 Celsius in mountains to the south of here in midsummer, meaning you probably need all the layers.

If you are planning a camping trip to British Antarctic Survey standards, here is what you need to pack:

At the bottom, the tent has an inner liner that goes on a hole you dig in the snow. Above that you lay out a plastic groundsheet.  On top of that goes a wooden board.

Then you unpack the green bag and unroll another seven layers — from the bottom, it contains a foam mat, an inflatable mattress, a sheepskin rug, a thick green waterproof sheet, a fleece blanket, a sleeping bag and a cotton sheet to line the sleeping bag.

I’d thought, wrongly, that all polar scientists spend weeks shivering. If anything, it was too warm. 

You also cook inside with stoves and lamps run on paraffin. Those can also add a burst of heat if you need to warm up or hang up your socks to dry them out ( … probably not something a Princess would do).

This won’t hurt, I promise….

Training for a couple of weeks’ stay in a British Antarctic Survey research base on the Antarctic Peninsula, Reuters Television reporter Stuart McDill and I have learnt emergency first aid ranging from how to wield a scalpel to ways to bind up a person’s neck injured in a plane crash.

We’ve also learnt the basics of how to sew up wounds, insert tubes into people who cannot breathe and even get the air out of a punctured lung — jabbing in a giant needle between the ribs just below the collar bone to release the pressure.

Most doctors spend years studying to be allowed to do any of these procedures. But safety is a top priority in Antarctica where things can very easily go wrong — the theory goes it’s better for people to have an inkling than no idea at all.

“We’re not expecting you to be a paramedic or a doctor,” says doctor Jason Coventry (pictured above, giving us a lesson). “Just help out until they can be brought back to base — I will fix them up.”

 Many people spend weeks on two-person expeditions – what Antarctic experts oddly call “in the field” – i.e. camping out on a freezing glacier, ice sheet or on a barren mountain in a tent.

That means everyone has to know a bit of everything — especially first aid.

The course has another side-effect — knowing that your companion might be your surgeon scares you into taking a lot of care.

Many people hope to come back from a wildlife safari with close-up pictures of lions or elephants – this picture below is my best attempt from a search for the largest land animals in Antarctica.

If you look hard you can see a reddish blob at the tip of the thumb — it’s Antarctica’s most aggressive land predator, an eight-legged mite known as Rhagidia.

Pete Convey, a biologist at the British Antarctic Survey (that’s his thumb), says that such tiny creatures evolved in Antarctica over tens of millions of years — they can freeze their bodies in winter in an extreme form of hibernation.

Penguins, seals and whales are the best known animals in Antarctica, but none live year-round on land, where the biggest creature is a flightless midge whose name is ”Belgica antarctica” and who’s about 0.5 cm long.

Global warming could mean problems for some of these tiny creatures if it keeps going — the Antarctic Peninsula where Pete showed us the creatures has warmed by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) over the past 50 years, the fastest rate in the southern hemisphere.

Some other creatures might be able to survive in a warmer climate and threaten mites like Rhagidia.

Pete is a genius at finding the creatures — the second rock he picked up had one of these red mites on it…I picked up about 50 and found none.

Here is Pete on his hunt being filmed by my colleague Stuart McDill of Reuters TV: (for a text story, click here)

 And here’s a much better close-up of a monstrous Antarctic mite, related to Rhagidia:

The U.S. Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel has just set off for Antarctica where it will deploy a tiny unmanned yellow submarine beneath an ice shelf to seek clues to rising world sea levels, and carry out a series of other research projects. See story here.

Palmer was an explorer and seal hunter who was among the first people to spot Antarctica in 1820 — part of the Antarctic peninsula is named after him.

The 94-metre ship, operated for the National Science Foundation, has been in Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile preparing for the voyage.

Chief scientist for the mission, Stan Jacobs of Columbia University, took time out to show Reuters TV’s Stuart McDill and me around the spotless red and yellow vessel (bridge shown right) just as the final preparations were being made.

Safety first — we had to wear lifejackets just to climb up the gangway (there was even a net to catch us before we hit the water if we fell off) and hard hats on deck. Noisy cranes were busy loading supplies.

Going on a trip to the Antarctica sounds like a dream to many people — for polar researchers it is a fantastic chance to make discoveries for instance about whether the continent is starting to thaw because of global warming, something that could raise world sea levels.

But there are a lot of hardships too.

Try the following checklist to see if you’d make it:

– 54 days at sea, some of them noisily crashing through ice.

– You will probably have to share a small bedroom with another colleague, rather than get a single room.

– No fresh fruit or vegetables.

– No alcohol.

– Some of the stormiest seas in the world.

– Freezing cold outside.

– Long working days.

– For recreation you have a training room with weights machines, a canteen, a TV room and access to the Internet: your contact with family and friends.

…When we went through the main relaxation room with sofas, a large TV was playing a comedy movie that showed a man struggling to carry a stuffed polar bear up the stairs of a house. As every school child learns, polar bears live only in the Arctic. The movie made us laugh, but even in your few moments of relaxation, you may end up getting reminded about the poles.

So would you like to go on such a cruise?