CAPTURING THE CORAL REEFS

OF ALL MY POLAR EXPEDITIONS, THE

ONE THAT HAD THE MOST PROFOUND EFFECT ON MY WORLD VIEW WAS MY

2018 TRIP TO THE ARCTIC. There isn’t a ‘hypothetical impact’ of climate change — this is something that’s happening now. It’s our history. Skiing to the North Pole won’t be possible in about five years’ time. The first time someone crossed the surface ocean to stand on the pole, having got there on two feet, was in 1969. In the space of a little over 50 years, we’ll have gone from the first to the last.

MY REASON FOR WANTING TO KEEP RETURNING TO THE POLES IS TO COLLECT DATA. I’ll go back to the Arctic with another team of women in 2022; we’ll be among the last humans to get out on high-latitude ocean sea ice. The world relies heavily on computer models to predict future scenarios, and those are only as good as the data we can collect.

HUMANS ARE VULNERABLE TO THE FORCES OF NATURE. When you’re out there standing on the ice, it brings home how inconsequential we are. I don’t just mean the power of sea ice or ocean currents but, say, the magnetic fields that cause Aurora Borealis and Australis. When you witness that one sunrise a year in Antarctica, or when you’re in Siberia

Emperor penguins at Snow

Hill Island, Antarctica and it’s -60C and you see materials like rubber become as pliable as clay, you realise most humans have a very limited vision of our existence.

WE’RE A TINY SPECK IN THE UNIVERSE, BUT WE PUNCH ABOVE OUR WEIGHT. Humans achieve incredible things and it gives me hope for our planet. I believe we’ll help ourselves through science and human spirit. We’re clever enough, and we should be smart enough.

SOMETIMES IT’S ALL ABOUT WONDER, NOT SCIENCE. I’m well versed in the science of the Northern Lights, but when you’re beneath them, it’s hard to believe they’re anything other than magic. All those folktales you hear about them being created by a celestial fox brushing the sky with its tail, or the souls of the dead playing football with the skull of a walrus — out there, under the endless sky, these make so much more sense than particles coming down a magnetic field.

Felicity Aston MBE is a polar explorer. She’ll be concluding her Royal Geographical Society speaking tour, Polar Exposure:

The Women’s Euro-Arabian North Pole Expedition, in November and December 2020. felicityaston.co.uk