When people go to conflict, issues can get a bit sneaky. Clandestine bolt-holes and covert bases of operations are the brand new regular – and so they’re not at all times capable of be repurposed when conflict ends.
Scientists flying in a NASA Gulfstream III jet to measure Arctic ice with a radar subsequently acquired one thing of a shock once they discovered simply such a secret base, lengthy since given over to the weather and buried deep below the ice sheet of Greenland.
“We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” says cryospheric scientist Alex Gardner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We didn’t know what it was at first.”
Camp Century was inbuilt northwest Greenland by the US Military Corps of Engineers between 1959 and 1960 by excavating a system of 21 tunnels measuring a complete of three kilometers (1.86 miles) in size below the ice sheet, giving the bottom its nickname: town below the ice.
This base was designed to deal with as much as 200 troopers, year-round, and home as much as 600 nuclear medium-range ballistic missiles. Because it was so distant, it was powered by a nuclear reactor.
It was the primary stage of Undertaking Iceworm, an formidable venture to construct a community of nuclear launch websites that would face up to a primary strike. However the ice sheet wasn’t as steady as first thought, and Camp Century was by no means accomplished.
As an alternative, the US deserted the bottom after simply eight years, in 1967, abandoning 1000’s of tons of waste, together with radioactive materials. Since then, the collected ice and snow has buried Camp Century beneath 30 meters (100 ft) of ice.
It is by no means actually been misplaced. Scientists have important considerations about what will occur to all that waste ought to the ice sheet proceed to soften.
It is attainable that liquid waste – 200,000 liters of fossil gas and 24 million liters of different moist waste akin to sewage left behind on the web site – may permeate the ice sheet additional because it degrades, and even enter the ocean.
Radar surveys often present proof of the bottom, lurking there like an environmental time bomb below the ice. However in April 2024, utilizing NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Automobile Artificial Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) strapped to the stomach of the airplane, scientists have been capable of resolve Camp Century in a brand new degree of element.
“In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” says cryospheric scientist Chad Greene of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Again within the Nineteen Sixties, the belief was that the ice sheet would care for the issue. There was no have to do something about waste disposal, as a result of the snow would bury and freeze it without end. So, slightly than bear the painstaking course of concerned in absolutely decommissioning Camp Century, the bottom was merely left to the weather.
This, as hindsight so painfully reveals now, was a remarkably shortsighted strategy. The Greenland ice cabinets have misplaced 35 p.c of their quantity since 1978, and the ice loss is occurring worryingly quick. The melting ice and consequential rising sea degree may speed up the contamination from the trash left behind.
For now, although, the imagery of Camp Century obtained utilizing the UAVSAR is not going to be used to attempt to resolve the issue instantly. The researchers are centered on measuring the thickness of the ice sheet general for a greater understanding of how the melting ice goes to have an effect on our planet.
“Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” Gardner says.
