Horizon

This is Antarctica,

the last great wilderness.

It's the coldest, windiest, driest and most isolated place on Earth,

and it's home to the British Antarctic Survey's

Halley Research Station.

Here, cutting-edge science is making vital discoveries

about how our lives are vulnerable to the sun's activities

and threatened by man-made climate change.

It's 27th of January, 2016, and we're at 75 degrees south.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been on this ship behind me,

the RRS Ernest Shackleton, crossing the Southern Ocean.

We're making this journey to resupply the research station,

but this is also something of a rescue mission.

Although it appears to be on solid ground, Halley actually

sits on a constantly-moving and cracking ice shelf -

an ice shelf that's developed a chasm that threatens to

cast the station adrift on a massive iceberg -

and our cargo is part of the effort to stop that happening.

I'm Peter Gibbs,

and my job is working for the Met Office as a BBC weatherman

but back in my younger days

I worked as a meteorologist in Antarctica for over two years,

and I never, ever thought I'd get the opportunity to return.

'This is my journey to investigate the threat to Halley's future...'

OK, Hilmar, here we go, then. Yeah.

It's going over the edge that's the worst bit.

'..and science at the end of the world.'

It is just phenomenal.

My journey starts at the southern tip of Africa.

Here, the Royal Research Ship Ernest Shackleton is waiting for me.

As I go below to find my cabin and stow my bags...

..we're soon underway.

We're heading out of Cape Town harbour -

you can probably see Table Mountain in the background behind me -

on our way to the frozen continent of Antarctica.

Now, we're expecting it to take about two weeks.

It's around about 3,000 miles.

We'll be going at ten to 12 knots,

so at just about a brisk cycling pace.

We're also heading through some of the roughest seas in the world,

so I'm a little bit nervous about that,

but really, really excited to be heading for Antarctica.

Well, it's the fourth day at sea.

About 660 miles south, now, of Cape Town.

The air temperature at the moment is ten degrees.

I've got the extra layer on.

The sea temperature's not much higher than that -

around about 11 degrees -

and you might notice we've got a big swell heading up from the south,

the direction we're heading.

The Ernest Shackleton has been making this long journey

across the Southern Ocean to resupply Halley since 1999,

but British scientific research goes back much further

and has a surprising beginning.

The modern-day British Antarctic Survey

actually has its roots in a secret wartime mission from World War II,

which was based up here on the peninsula

at Port Lockroy and Deception Island.

The idea of the operation was to protect

the waters around Antarctica,

particularly towards the Drake Passage towards South America,

from Nazi submarines.

But, even though the men based there were far from the bullets and bombs

of World War II, it certainly wasn't an easy posting -

Spartan living conditions, thousands of miles from home

and tremendous isolation.

But, in the event, it turned into more of a scientific expedition.

The men set up a weather station, one of the first on Antarctica,

and it provided viable data that's still used today

to assess climate change.

After the war, territorial claims led to 12 nations signing

the Antarctic Treaty, and this untouched landscape became a home

purely for scientific exploration.

For the British Antarctic Survey,

this meant a research station on the Brunt Ice Shelf.

And that's our destination - Halley Research Station.

The original building's long gone.

Even the buildings I lived in have long since drifted off,

entombed in the ice of an iceberg.

We've still got a long way to go - the best part of a week.

In fact, we are not even on the edge of this map yet.

Various incarnations of the Halley Research Station have endured

some of the most hostile conditions found on Earth for over 60 years.

The weather here is extreme.

Temperatures drop to over minus 50 Celsius,

winds can reach almost 150km an hour,

reducing visibility to just a few metres...

..and, for over three months every winter, the sun never rises.

Antarctica is also about as remote a place as you can find on Earth...

..but it's this remoteness that allows experiments to be

performed at Halley that simply can't be done anywhere else.

Well, this is the real deal now -

a huge iceberg that probably broke off the continent decades ago.

The point is, though,

if we were here in this spot at the end of winter, there would be

several hundred miles of continuous sea ice between us and the coast.

That's why it's impossible to get into Halley

for a good nine months of the year.

Back to the UK, now, and that frosty start in the south.

It's not going to last too long, though.

The sunshine, once it comes up,

clearing the frost fairly quickly, I think.

Further north, though, a bit of a different story...

'I've been waving my arms in front of weather charts for,

'well, 20-odd years now, '

but straight from university

I actually applied to the British Antarctic Survey.

I was taken on to be sent down as the weatherman

to their Halley Research Station, down in Antarctica,

but it was for two years.

That was standard back in those days.

This is a bit of a roughie-toughie shot,

but behind there you can see there's a pretty young man who is

just still getting to grips with the enormity of what he's...

he's actually taken on.

Once a month, we'd have a 200-word telex message in and out,

erm, but, to be honest, after a few months,

I was struggling to find very much to put into those 200-word messages.

And, essentially, for eight to nine months of the year,

there is no way to get anybody in or out

but, you know, I absolutely loved it. I really took to it.

Even after two years, when the ship came to actually take me away,

I... I didn't want to go.

I really didn't want to go.

Erm...

I had such an attachment to the place that

I really didn't want to leave it,

so to have the chance to actually go back is... is a big thing.

35 years on and e-mail has replaced telex,

but Halley is still as isolated as ever.

It's so far from civilisation,

it may as well be on another planet...

..and everyone posted there still needs to be utterly self-reliant.

I'm Jess. I'm the winter station leader

and I am in charge of making sure the station runs smoothly

over the winter, when we're down to a team of just 13 of us.

We don't have help, so all our emergency planning is

based on people on the station sorting themselves out.

We have to be prepared for any circumstances,

so, in an event like a fire, we have all our emergency supplies

elsewhere on station - in containers, in other buildings.

With outside help possibly months away,

the station has supplies to survive for almost 300 days.

Food allowances are calculated based on military rations,

and we add the polar allowance to that, which adds for the more...

more calories because of the colder weather.

We have a lot of stores -

1,500kg of tinned tomatoes and nearly 900kg of beef.

We never want to run out of food.

It's often said that the chef is one of the most important

people on the station.

My name is Victoria Stone and I'm the winter chef.

I'll be here, then, until 2017.

It is that kind of a world, you don't have to worry about things.

I mean, I haven't been out here long but I absolutely love it.

I think food is really important, working at Halley, because it's...

You're working in severe conditions.

You're away from friends and family and, you know,

that's the one thing that you look forward to,

and everyone talks about it -

what we're having for lunch, what's for evening dinner and...

So it's a very big responsibility, but I'm quite happy with that, so...

Even in summer,

sailing through the Southern Ocean to get to Halley is a challenge.

Well, we finally hit the edge of the Weddell Sea pack ice last night,

and I mean hit.

There was an almighty bang as we struck the first floe,

and I was startled awake.

The sound when you're actually inside the ship is just remarkable.

It's almost like you're inside a war zone,

and this is what the ship's

designed to...

do, power through ice.

I'll tell you what,

it's still a bit nerve-racking until you actually get used to it.

As we crunch through the ice,

the captain offers me the chance of a lifetime -

something I'd secretly been hoping to do -

drive his 1,800-tonne ship.

Are you sure about this, John?

Yeah.

At the moment we've got 83% pitch, which is basically your power,

which is giving us about ten knots, but it will build up,

cos we're in a patch of open water here.

So, just be careful what you hit at that sort of speed.

Yes, I will. But the...

It's a strange sort of feeling of power and terror, actually.

So, if you... You take that.

You've got some nice... nice new ice coming up, here,

and just aim for the crack

and she'll follow it along.

It's rather like a... That incredible -

the speed that crack's actually formed, right across the whole floe.

There's a good covering of snow

on most of these floes, as well. Oh.

So that'll be...

It's probably the best part of a metre thick,

with the snow on the top.

It's certainly slowed us down a bit. Yes.

And are we OK to hit this bit of ice coming up? Yup.