In 1961, American broadcaster CBS reported that television legend Walter Cronkite visited a military base. His show filmed Camp Century’s giant ice tunnel being excavated and showed U.S. Army engineers relaxing in an underground nuclear barracks, reading and listening to records.
Now they are all buried under a thick layer of ice. Colgan said he and his research team were unable to discover parts of Camp Century, such as the fuel depot, and feared disturbing it too much. “It’s cold and deep, so don’t poke it,” he said.
There are many ways Camp Century could pollute the environment. One is if the ice and snow melts, releasing toxic waste (such as the 200,000 liters of diesel fuel beneath the ice, Colgan said) into the ocean. The other is when the ice containing the base breaks off and forms an iceberg. It is highly likely that neither will materialize within this century. The latter, on the other hand, will probably take thousands of years.
However, the timeline will change slightly depending on how much the world warms in the coming decades. Despite varying predictions, a United Nations report released last October suggests that the Earth will rise between 2.6 degrees Celsius and 3.1 degrees Celsius this century, exceeding the totemic goal agreed in Paris in 2015. There is no possibility of limiting the temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“It’s just a couple of fights,” Colgan said. “Two or three degrees Celsius is the difference between Camp Century staying under the ice or melting.”
Climate change in microcosm
Camp Century itself was crucial to scientists’ understanding of climate change. In the 1960s, scientists extracted ice cores from it. This is a frozen soil sample that is still studied today for insight into climate patterns hundreds of thousands of years ago. Colgan said the station remains a scientific “supersite” and that he, along with many other climate researchers, visit the base every year.
