Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

Cold Temperatures Greet Emergency Physician Spending Winter in Antarctica

By Kenneth V. Iserson, MD, MBA, FACEP, FAAEM | on March 15, 2016 | 0 Comment
Features
  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
Print-Friendly Version
Cold Temperatures Greet Emergency Physician Spending Winter in Antarctica
Mt. Erebus as seen from a helicopter. Photos: Kenneth Iserson

“How do you get to Antarctica?” may be the third most common question I get when I tell people I’ll be spending the winter there. (The first, of course, is, “How cold is it?” The answer? “Colder than a … !” You get the idea.)

You Might Also Like
  • Emergency Physician Embarks on Second Medical Expedition to Antarctica
  • Prepping, Packing Among Challenges of Providing Medical Care in Antarctica
  • Fun, Friends, Flexible Hours Part of Providing Medical Care in Antarctica
Explore This Issue
ACEP Now: Vol 35 – No 03 – March 2016

After several days’ delay in Christchurch, New Zealand, due to very bad weather on The Ice, I arrived at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. The 2,180-mile trip took about five hours in a US Air Force C-17 plane. If we had taken the alternative, a C-130, the trip would have been an excruciating eight hours. Neither plane has the amenities you expect when flying. They do provide a bag lunch, but heating is minimal, there are few windows, most seats are webbing, and the “bathroom” is a bucket surrounded by drapes.

Antarctica, the continent I’ll be living on for the next seven months, has a surface area of 5.4 million square miles, 1.4 times the size of the United States. This makes it the fifth largest continent. Almost 98 percent of the continent is covered by an ice sheet that averages 6,000 feet (more than one mile) thick. Antarctica has 70 percent of the world’s fresh water, frozen as ice. Yet, to our knowledge, explorers only reported seeing it in 1820 and landed on the continent in 1821. Explorers first “overwintered” there in 1898, a tradition I will be continuing.

McMurdo Station sits at the southern tip of the volcanic Ross Island, at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea. The 13,300-foot Mt. Erebus, an active volcano, towers above the station. Our plane lands on a constantly maintained airfield on the Ross Ice Shelf. It’s disconcerting to realize that this enormous cargo aircraft is setting down on ice covering the very deep Southern Ocean. I’m comforted in knowing that experts maintain this airfield—a huge undertaking given the extreme cold and frequent gale-force winds—throughout even the mildest (everything is relative) times of the year.

Antarctic Welcome

The hospital clinic at McMurdo Station.

The hospital clinic at McMurdo Station.

When do you really know you’ve arrived? As the plane descends toward the airfield, everyone receives the instruction to “bundle up,” meaning that they should don all of their extreme cold weather (ECW) gear. This sounds extreme until they open the passenger door and we’re suddenly hit by the brutal cold.

Pages: 1 2 3 | Single Page

Topics: AntarcticaEmergency PhysicianKenneth V. IsersonProfile

Related

  • Aerospace Medicine Residency Program Pushes the Envelope

    June 25, 2025 - 1 Comment
  • Dr. Joe Sachs and “The Pitt” Are Redefining Public Health Education Through Storytelling

    June 11, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • ACEP Defending “Prudent Layperson” in Court

    September 5, 2018 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now: July 2025

Download PDF

Read More

No Responses to “Cold Temperatures Greet Emergency Physician Spending Winter in Antarctica”

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603