Antarctic Science
IMPACT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
We recognise the importance of climate related scientific research in Antarctica and offer logistical support to scientists conducting vital studies.
White Desert has been transporting scientists to their Antarctic research stations for many years, so are well equipped and experienced to offer this crucial support.
Annually 55 countries conduct research in Antarctica through their National Programmes. These studies range enormously, but a few examples are: the British Antarctic Survey’s investigation into Ice Cores and what they tell us about the atmosphere over the decades and millennia trapped in the ice; the South African Programme is studying Ice Shelves and the fracturing of the shelf edge; and the Australian initiative SAEF is investigating the microbial colonisation of rocks and how they have survived and adapted to the harsh ecosystem.
How can we help? There are many innovative and vital studies that aren’t able to receive the support of their own National Programmes. Many of these new studies have the academic grant from their Universities or Polar intuitions secured, but they don’t necessarily have the finance to get into the field in Antarctica to undertake the data collection. This is where the White Desert Foundation steps in.
The support we provide includes intercontinental flights into Antarctica from Cape Town, flights inside Dronning Maud Land, accommodation at Wolf’s Fang, field camp equipment (tents, sleeping bags, cooking equipment), field guide, weather communication and Search and Rescue back up.
Click on the menu on the left to see the research that our inaugural grants have supported.
Project BluePRINT
Blue ice: Paleo Records in New Terrain : Princeton University, US
Blue ice areas (BIAs) are an important and accessible archive of past climate. At these sites, ancient ice is exposed near the surface, circumventing the need for lengthy, logistically challenging deep drilling projects in the Antarctic interior. Despite their potential to expand ice-based climate records by millions of years, blue ice remains severely understudied compared to stratigraphically continuous ice situated at high-elevation domes.
We will make chemical and geophysical measurements of near-surface blue ice and adjacent bedrock to determine the age of the ice, past surface temperatures, ice-flow history, and past ice-sheet thickness in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. These parameters will provide an opportunity to assess the preservation quality of climate signals in a new BIA, ground-truth and refine ice sheet models, and inform field site selection for future drilling efforts. In all, this project aims to yield a record of past ice-sheet size and climate from Dronning Maud Land, providing a new and independent constraint on East Antarctic Ice Sheet history.
Project FANG : Flux Assessment using Noble Gases
Oxford University & Imperial College London, UK
Heat escaping from rocks beneath the Antarctic ice sheet can influence how quickly the ice moves and melts. This has a huge influence on predictions for future sea level rise. However, scientists still have surprisingly little information about how much heat is released by these rocks and how it is generated.
Our team will travel to Wolf’s Fang in East Antarctica to test a new way of answering these questions. We will drill ice cores in the top 20 metres of the Antarctic ice sheet and bring these back to Oxford to measure tiny amounts of helium that have travelled through the ice from the rocks below. The concentration of helium will vary with depth, and we will use these variations to determine the amount and source of geothermal heat.
We will combine these measurements with magnetic maps of the rocks beneath the ice to investigate both how much heat is reaching the base of the ice sheet and whether it comes from radioactive elements in the crust or from hot, volcanic fluids.
ICE MASS BALANCE
Project CHILLWolf – Characterising ice melt and refreeze
In January 2026, Dr. Felicity McCormack of Monash University’s Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future, with partners Prof Ricarda Winkelmann and Lena Nicola from MPI-GEA and PIK, led a joint Australia-Germany research team to better understand a central question in climate science.
That is, to what extent the melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet will contribute to global sea-level rise and over what timescales.
A critical component of this balance—the interplay between snowfall accumulation, surface melting, and refreezing—remains insufficiently understood. This project is generating new insights into the refreezing of surface meltwater within the snowpack of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Through detailed analysis of the structure and characteristics of melt layers, they aim to improve key inputs used in models of how Antarctica gains and loses ice.
Field measurements have been collected along a transect in Dronning Maud Land and supported by data from two automated weather stations. By filling this knowledge gap, it will help improve how models simulate these processes, ultimately enhancing forecasts of Antarctica’s future contribution to global sea-level rise.
Separate to this research – while in the field – they were the first team to collect snow samples with the intention of analysing them for micro plastics. Not only will this study enable them to catalogue the types of micro plastics they find, but also where they came from around the globe.
Meteorite Microbial Research – Project LifeMet
“A recent study proposed 5000 Antarctic meteorites are lost per year due to rising temperatures and melting ice.”
The White Desert inaugural 2024-25 grant was awarded to an innovative research project studying meteorites in Antarctica and the unique habitat they offer to Antarctic microorganisms.
Dr Rachael Lappan, Professor Andy Tomkins and Dr Rachel Kirby are conducting this ground breaking study to determine how microbial ecosystems adapt and change to their harsh surrounding.
Meteorites provide an opportunity to study the formation of these ecosystems, since they provide a sterile new surface that is rapidly colonised by microbes – a process called primary succession. Meteorites become warm under sunlight due to their dark colour, are rich in iron, sulphur and some organics, all of which potentially serve as a source of energy for the microbes. This allows them to study their development and adaptations to their cold, dry and barren environment, where survival is tough.
The wider environment will change drastically as the continent becomes warmer and wetter, which in turn will significantly alter existing microbial ecosystems and the way they live. Now, at the beginning of an intense global warming phase (which the Earth hasn’t seen for thousands of years) we have an opportunity to understand how microbes might take advantage of the unusual meteorite habitat as it starts to experience rapid change.
It is important to conduct this research now, as Antarctic meteorites are at risk of being lost to science. As the continent warms and changes, meteorites currently on the icy surface are predicted to increasingly sink beneath the ice, becoming inaccessible. Currently up to 5000 meteorites are being potentially lost each year.
UPDATE:
The field work was successfully concluded in January 2025. The team collected a range of samples, including terrestrial rocks, several confirmed meteorites – including one formally named Henriksenskjera 24001 – with accompanying sediment samples, high-volume air samples and snow and ice samples to characterise the wider Antarctic microbial ecosystem and identify the sources of microbes that colonise meteorites and rocks.
In the lab, Dr Lappan is currently processing these samples by extracting DNA, which is then sequenced to provide comprehensive genomic data on all organisms present. These genomic data will be compared against global databases of microbial genomes to identify the microbes in each sample and the genes they carry. From this, the team can infer where meteorite-associated microbes originate, what nutrients and energy sources they use, how they survive in this extreme habitat, and whether the meteorite helps them survive in ways that other rocks do not.
We will keep updating the progress of this research as finding are made and publications become available.
Dr Rachael Lappan
Dr Rachael Lappan
Rachel Lappan is an environmental microbiologist who leads a research group at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (https://www.monash.edu/
Following her PhD (2019), she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Chris Greening’s lab at Monash, studying microbial communities that use atmospheric trace gases to survive in a range of challenging environments.
Rachael currently holds a prestigious DECRA Fellowship (2023- ) from the Australian Research Council with a research focus on microbial life in the atmosphere, on meteorites, and in glacier forelands. She is a Chief Investigator on Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (https://arcsaef.com/).
Publications:
-
Our perspective article on microbial colonisation of meteorites and in other settings: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
pmc/articles/PMC10098604/ -
The first publication characterising the microbial colonisation of Australian meteorites: https://www.
frontiersin.org/articles/10. 3389/fmicb.2017.01227 -
Analyzing meteorites as habitats for microorganisms: https://www.sciencedirect.com/
science/article/pii/ S0016703717304490
Prof Andrew Tomkins
Andrew Tomkins
Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Monash University.
Andy is a petrologist and geochemist who enjoys applying scientific principles that we’ve collectively learnt about the Earth to understand the evolution of Mars, the early Solar System and asteroids. He completed a PhD in 2002 at the Australian National University, then an Alberta Ingenuity Fellowship at the University of Calgary in Canada, before moving to Monash University. There, he initially held a 5-year Monash Research Fellowship position and then gained a tenured position in 2010. Andy’s research on Mars has focused on how life on Mars might use the minerals in meteorites and micrometeorites to gain energy, as well as what martian meteorites can tell us about atmospheric evolution.
Relevant publications:
- Ni, G., Lappan, R., Hernández, M., Santini, T., Tomkins, A.G., and Greening, C., 2022. Functional basis of primary succession: Traits of the pioneer microbes. article for Environmental Microbiology, DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.16266. Invited.
- *Tait, A.W., Wilson, S.A., Tomkins, A.G., Hamilton, J.L., Gagen, E.J., Holman, A.I., Grice, K., Preston, L.J., Paterson, D.J. and Southam, G., 2022. Preservation of terrestrial microorganisms and organics within alteration products of chondritic meteorites from the Nullarbor Plain, Australia. Astrobiology 22, 399–415.
- Tomkins, A.G., *Alkemade, S.L., *Nutku, S.E., Stephen, N.R., Finch, M.A., and Jeon, H., 2020. A small S-MIF signal in Martian regolith pyrite: Implications for the atmosphere. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 290, 59-75.
- *Tait, A.W. Gagen, E.J., Wilson, S.A., Tomkins, A.G., and Southam, G., 2020. Eukaryotic Colonization of Micrometer-Scale Cracks in Rocks: A “Microfluidics” Experiment Using Naturally Weathered Meteorites from the Nullarbor Plain, Australia. Astrobiology 22, 399–415.
- Tomkins, A.G., Genge, M.J., Tait, A.W., *Alkemade, S.L., Langendam, A.D., *Perry, P.V., Wilson, S.A., 2019. High survivability of micrometeorites on Mars: Sites with enhanced availability of limiting nutrients. Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets 124; 1802-1818.
- *Tait, A.W., Wilson, S.A., Tomkins, A.G., Gagen, E.J., Fallon, S.J., and Southam, G. 2017. Evaluation of meteorites as habitats for terrestrial microorganisms: Results from the Nullarbor Plain, Australia, a Mars analogue site. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 215, 1-16.
- *Tait, A.W., Gagen, E.J., Wilson, S.A., Tomkins, A.G., and Southam, G., 2017. Microbial populations of stony meteorites: Substrate controls on first colonisers. Frontiers in Microbiology 8, PMCID: 5492697.
Science Grant Applications
“Opportunity for scientists seeking logistical support to Antarctica.”
White Desert Foundation offers logistical support to scientific research projects requiring assistance to conduct their field work in Antarctica. Grants are awarded to innovative research projects that are directly related to climate change or impact on the Antarctic environment.
Utilising White Desert’s infrastructure, the field work must be conducted in Dronning Maud Land Antarctica – where we have been providing logistics to scientists and National Programmes since 2005.
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED FOR THE COMING 2026-27 SEASON.
Application deadline 31 July 2026.
CLICK HERE to download PDF application form
Enquiries can be directed to applications@white-desert.foundation
Grant Advisory Panel
Prof Steven Chown
Chair
Prof Steven Chown
Steven Chown is Professor of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and Director of Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future, an Australian Special Research Initiative.
His research concerns biodiversity patterns and their evolution; conservation responses to environmental change; and the human-environment intersection in natural, agricultural and urban settings, including the science-policy nexus.
Steven has represented the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, which set policy for and regulate the region.
Steven is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his science and policy work in the Antarctic he has received the French Republic’s Medal of the 30th Anniversary of the Madrid Protocol (2021), the SCAR Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research (2014), and the inaugural Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica (2009).
Prof Nicole Webster
Independent Antarctic Scientist
Prof Nicole Webster
Nicole Webster’s research career has focussed on uncovering the contributions of marine microbes to the health, survival and adaptation of reef organisms. Nicole is currently Executive Director at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania where she has responsibility for improving understanding of temperate marine, Southern Ocean and Antarctic environments, their resources, and their roles in the global climate system through research, education and outreach.
Nicole was previously Chief Scientist of the Australian Antarctic Program where she worked to develop innovative and collaborative pathways needed to improve understanding, management and conservation of this wild and fragile ecosystem.
Stuart McFadzean
White Desert Operations Executive
Stuart McFadzean
Stuart is a values-driven leader with extensive senior management experience in both the private and public sectors. He has a diverse background across various industries, including utilities, aviation, logistics, healthcare, and construction.
He is attracted to complex roles that demand complex problem solving, having led business mergers, a new hospital development, and transforming the way White Desert and the Australian Government access and operate in Antarctica.
Stuart is internationally recognized as an expert on Antarctic aviation, having built two ice runways: the Wilkins Ice Runway, Australian Antarctic Division and White Desert’s Wolf’s Fang Ice Runway. Stuart has represented IAATO as the Aviation expert at COMNAP and Biannual Antarctic SAR Conferences.
Stuart’s role at White Desert is to lead its operations and logistics. This includes and inter and intra-continental flight program, over 5000km of ground traversing, ship based ‘over ice shelf’ resupply operations, as well as managing up to 6 field camps.
Dr Sebastian Skatulla
Independent Antarctic Scientist
Luke Brauteseth
Independent Antarctic Scientist
Dr Sebastian Skatulla was appointed as Senior Lecturer for Structural Engineering and Mechanics in the Dept of Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town in 2009. He was promoted to Professor in 2022. He graduated with a Masters degree in Civil Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2003. He was awarded his PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Adelaide in 2007.
He is the Director and founder of the Polar Engineering Research Group (PERG) at the University of Cape Town. His research activities are centred in multiscale and multiphysics continuum methods and modelling. Current activities comprise Antarctic sea-ice and shelf-ice dynamics. He led the Sea-Ice Team during the SCALE Winter Cruise 2019 aboard the S.A. Agulhas II to the Antarctic marginal ice zone studying the physical and mechanical properties of pancake ice along the Good Hope Line. He is currently the lead investigator of an international project funded by National Research Foundation (NRF) South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) investigating the dynamics and fracture mechanics of the Fimbul Ice Shelf.
Eleni Antoniades
Environmental Scientist
Eleni Antoniades
Eleni is an environmental scientist with more than 20 years experience in Environmental Impact Assessment and Management of strategically significant aviation and infrastructure projects. She has experience in Antarctica, Cyprus, Greece and the UK.
She is currently Vice President of the Institution of Environmental Sciences where she has helped shape the organisation’s strategy since 2016 and establish the EIA Community.
She has worked with White Desert Since 2016. This role includes environmental impact assessment of all activities, establishing their environmental management system and plans, setting the Net Zero Strategy & Science Based Targets, managing the carbon monitoring and off-setting, as well as ensuring compliance with the Antarctic Protocol, permit requirements and policy inputs.
Recent achievements include the first use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel in Antarctica in 2021, winning Ministry of Defence Sustainable Project of the Year 2019 for RAF Marham Project Anvil. As well as being a commended finalist in the ENDS Environmental Impact Awards 2017 and Partnership of the Year for Wolf’s Fang Runway EIA.
Rebecca Warne
Foundation Director
Rebecca Warne
Rebecca has 25 years of experience in strategic and marketing roles. Starting life in a London ad agency she was schooled in big brand thinking. She came to Cape Town 20 years ago working for both major agencies, as well as the marketing manager of leading local brands.
To ensure she truly understood what it took to grow a brand and company, she launched her own and grew it with great success of a 3 year period. While at Ogilvy SA she led “Ogilvy Earth” which focused on supporting NGOs, environmental businesses, and brands on their sustainability journey.
A passionate advocate of nature, environmental protection has always been at the heart of Rebecca’s search to understand the world we live in and how to live in it better, for the sake of our children’s children.
Luke Brauteseth
White Desert Operations Manager
Luke Brauteseth
White Desert Operations Manager
With a decade of experience at White Desert, Luke manages the complex logistics and operations for both guests and Scientists. His role encompasses overseeing the logistical execution of all Science projects – including the Science Grant – on the ice, bridging the gap between vision, planning and successful delivery in the world’s most remote environment.