* Ms. Ana Cabrerizo is currently working in Italy as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the European Commission, Air and Climate Unit. In her research she has utilized data collected by the WindSled in Antarctica, years 2011-2012, on organic pollutants.
” Research is ongoing search. A search that leads to venturing into the unknown. Venturing is risky and it is not until the end where the adventure makes some sense. This seems to have led Ramón Larramendi to design a vehicle capable of navigating through the ice in the most impressive and remote regions of the planet, the Arctic and Antarctica.
A vehicle that uses clean, renewable energy, the wind, which in polar regions is not a limiting factor. A sled driven by kites, larger than those we used to play with when we were kids. Kites able to reach the most remote places on earth without producing emissions of pollutants, almost impossible today. A tool also for other sciences such as glaciology, physics, etc where the presence and dynamics of atmospheric pollutants are studied locally and globally. The WindSled is very useful to investigate in those places where there is hardly any data as the Antarctic continent due to its inaccessibility.
The Arctic and Antarctica are paradises for scientists who study the Poles. The most fragile and remote places on the planet whilst the most vulnerable to climate change processes and so called persistent organic pollutants.
Although with natural “barriers” such as ocean and atmospheric circulation, the polar regions have accumulated contaminants in water, sediment, ice, biota, due to atmospheric transport of pollutants produced in industrialized continents and which have been able to reach and be deposited there, in a process called “cold trapping” due to low temperatures. Pollutants that are really persistent, toxic even at low concentrations and have long average lives. An increase in temperature caused by climate change could lead to a release of those kidnapped contaminants of which the magnitude and impact today is unknown.
It is here, in the sampling and determination of these pollutants using passive samplers, coupled to the sled designed by Ramón Larramendi, where we have the helping tool for future expeditions to the most inaccessible areas of the Poles. This would join scientific research efforts in the Poles that would allow further progress in the development of polar science. A sled, up front quite basic and sustainable, which I am convinced will signify a scientific revolution.”
