Ariel Waldman

And you get all these other weird organisms eating each other in sort of like this food chain action through this slimy layer cake.

Delicious.

Now, the peninsula of Antarctica, which is very far away from where I normally work, is seeing a lot more of what you expect.

You can see some vascular plants there.

You can see huge moss beds.

And of course, that part of Antarctica is experiencing the most amount of global warming ever.

In the dry valleys, you have an area that is slowly starting to become warmer and wetter.

And it isn't as dire as in the peninsula, but you have something where you've got these frozen lakes in the dry valleys that have been frozen year-round for thousands and thousands of years.

And you have these entire microscopic communities and ecosystems that live in these frozen lakes.

But those lakes are expected to lose their ice and not be frozen year-round in just 10 to 40 years.

Wow.

So definitely our lifetime.

And it's expected and forecasted that those microbial communities that have been protected by that layer of ice for so long are probably going to churn up and experience a fundamental change into that ecosystem.

I haven't thought of it as a timeshare.

So you have this international Antarctic treaty and you have a lot of the major countries involved in it who have Antarctic stations.

So you have Russia and China, but you also have Italy and other countries involved in it.

And yeah, no one owns Antarctica.

There are countries that would like to claim that they own a piece of it, but it's not internationally recognized.

And through the international treaty, you have sort of a checks and balances system because Antarctica is only supposed to be used for science and not military purposes.

And other countries can come check in on other countries' stations unannounced.