A 1916 photographic print shows Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress
If you’re worried about summer heat setting on San Antonio too quickly, the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club is offering a free presentation this Tuesday that could lower the temp.
The organization’s Tales from the Antarctica Presentation will delve into Ice Station Weddell, a drifting research station in the Antarctic Sea run cooperatively by the United States and Russia and covering the same area in which Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was crushed by pack ice and sank in 1915.
The area proved useful in providing the first modern measurements of sea ice thickness, density, ocean circulation and polar ecosystems.
Presenter Stephen Ackley, associate professor of research, earth and planetary sciences at UT-San Antonio, will discuss his 30-plus years of navigating this unforgiving terrain, its unique logistical anomalies and the findings of the first scientific station built on a bobbing platform of roving sea ice.
Free, 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, William R. Sinkin Eco Centro, 1802 N. Main Ave., (210) 486-0417, sierraclub.org.