("Antarctica's Entrance Door") , motto = , anthem = , pushpin_map = Antarctica , pushpin_map_alt = Location within Antarctica , pushpin_map_caption = Location within Antarctica , pushpin_mapsize = 300 , pushpin_relief = yes , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 =

Province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...

, subdivision_name1 = Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and South Atlantic Islands Province , subdivision_type2 = Department , subdivision_name2 = Antártida Argentina , subdivision_type3 = Region , subdivision_name3 =

Graham Land Graham Land is the portion of the Antarctic Peninsula that lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee a ...

Antarctic Peninsula

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest co ...

, subdivision_type4 = Location , subdivision_name4 = Marambio Island , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title1 = Established , established_date1 = , established_title2 = Founded , established_date2 =
(1969–70 austral summer season) , extinct_title = Closed , extinct_date = , named_for =

Gustavo Argentino Marambio Gustavo is the Latinate form of a Germanic male given name with respective prevalence in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. It has been a common name for Swedish monarchs since the reign of Gustav Vasa. It is derived from Gustav /ˈɡʊstɑːv/, al ...

, area_magnitude = 1 E+4 , area_total_ha = , area_footnotes = , area_urban_ha = , area_urban_footnotes = , area_rural_ha = , area_rural_footnotes = , area_blank1_title = Indoors , area_blank1_ha = 2 , area_note = , elevation_m = 196 , elevation_footnotes = , government_type = Directorate , governing_body = Dirección Nacional del Antártico , leader_title = Operator , leader_name = Instituto Antártico Argentino , leader_title1 = , leader_name1 = , leader_title2 = , leader_name2 = , government_footnotes = , total_type = , unit_pref = metric , population_total = , population_as_of = , population_footnotes = , population_note = , blank_name_sec1 = Type , blank_info_sec1 = All year-round , blank1_name_sec1 = Period , blank1_info_sec1 = Annual , blank2_name_sec1 = Status , blank2_info_sec1 = Active and operational , blank_name_sec2 = Facilities , blank_info_sec2 = , timezone1 = ART , utc_offset1 = -3 , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code_type = , area_code = , iso_code = , website = , footnotes = Marambio Station ( es, Estación Marambio) is a permanent, all year-round

Argentine Antarctica Argentine Antarctica ( es, Antártida Argentina or Sector Antártico Argentino) is an area of Antarctica claimed by Argentina as part of its national territory. It consists of the Antarctic Peninsula and a triangular section extending to the ...

station named after Vice-Commodore

, an Antarctic aviation pioneer. It is located in Marambio Island,

, Antarctic Peninsula, some from the coastal civilian village of Esperanza. At the time of its construction it was the first airfield in

and is still one of the most frequently used ones due to its suitability for wheeled landing, for which it is called "Antarctica's Entrance Door" ( es, Puerta de Entrada a la Antártida). It is also Argentina's most important station in the continent. Marambio is one of 13 research stations in Antarctica operated by Argentina.

History

The increased

Antarctic The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and o ...

activity that Argentina developed since 1940 created the need for an aviation runway operable throughout the year for wheeled units. The flight of Vice-Commodore to the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

, the newly built United States

McMurdo Station McMurdo Station is a United States Antarctic research station on the south tip of Ross Island, which is in the New Zealand-claimed Ross Dependency on the shore of McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. It is operated by the United States through the Un ...

and the frequent operations launched from the Matienzo Station showed the need to secure better transport and communications in the sector. The

Argentine Air Force "Argentine Wings" , mascot = , anniversaries = 10 August (anniversary) 1 May (Baptism of fire during the Falklands War) , equipment = 139 aircraft , equipment_label = , battles = * Operation Independence * Operation Soberanía * Falkl ...

set about to find a suitable spot to construct an airport. On 25 November 1968, two helicopters operating from the icebreaker ARA ''General San Martín'' descended on the Marambio Island as part of such survey. Their report favoring the place was decisive: it lacked large obstacles that could trouble aircraft maneuvering, and its long plateau was virtually free of ice. DHC-2 Beaver matrícula P-03

On 30 August 1969, an Air Force team led by Vice-Commodore Olezza occupied the island, carrying with them the elements needed for the construction of the projected landing track. When initially opened, the ''05/23''-oriented runway had a length of . It was the first one in the continent. The task took three months of work and culminated when a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver, set with conventional wheels, took off from Matienzo Station and landed on the new airport. Before the end of October the runway had already reached . Base Marambio y el Hercules

The station was founded on 29 October 1969. That day a Fokker F-27 Friendship of the Argentine Air Force manned by Vice-Commodore Erwin Roberto Kern, left Rio Gallegos and landed directly in

Marambio Airport Marambio Airport is an airport serving Marambio Base, an Argentina, Argentinian research station on Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula. Marambio is the main air-support node for most local and foreign stations in Argentine Antarctica, prov ...

, carrying on board civil and military authorities. It was the first aircraft taking off in another continent and landing in Antarctica using conventional landing gear: Antarctica was no longer an isolated place; from that day onwards all domestic and foreign Antarctic stations got interconnected with the rest of the world throughout the year. It was the most important Antarctic event in the decade. By April 1970 the runway had reached . On 11 April 1970 the Argentine Air Force began landing their

C-130 Hercules The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally des ...

on Antarctica when the TC-61 commanded by Commodore Arturo Athos Gandolfi landed in Marambio, starting a long-standing and uninterrupted tradition of air-supplying the Antarctic Argentine stations from the mainland. The Fokker F28 Fellowship presidential aircraft T-01 ''Patagonia'' was the first jet to land in Antarctica when it touched down at Marambio on 28 July 1973, 13:28 h. Commercial passenger traffic from

Ushuaia Ushuaia ( , ) is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur Province, Argentina. With a population of nearly 75,000 and a location below the 54th parallel south latitude, Ushuaia claims the title of world's souther ...

has been announced for 2018.

Description

Marambio has 27 buildings with a total covered area exceeding . It can host a permanent crew of 45 men and a large complement of scientific personnel, totaling about 200 people, although on average it is populated with 55 members in winter and 150 in summer. Some of the facilities are: main, dining and recreation halls; emergency house with 28-bed capacity; personnel accommodation buildings; aircraft parking platform; flight deck; airline passenger terminal; flight ground support equipment; library; mail office; gym; a Catholic chapel; laundry; kitchen; two freezing chambers; snow melter; satellite dish for television and internet; radio communications station; towing and personnel carrier vehicles (including tractors,

truck A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...

s and forklifts); road maintenance tools and vehicles (several snow dozers,

tracked loader A tracked loader or crawler loader is an engineering vehicle consisting of a tracked chassis with a loader for digging and loading material. The history of tracked loaders can be defined by three evolutions of their design. Each of these evoluti ...

s and graders); mechanical, carpentry, blacksmithing, turning, plumbing and electricity workshops; laboratory with substations for APT (Automatic Picture Transmission) satellite imagery receiver,

ozone Ozone (), or trioxygen, is an inorganic molecule with the chemical formula . It is a pale blue gas with a distinctively pungent smell. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope , breaking down in the lo ...

and uv light measurement,

sounding balloon A weather balloon, also known as sounding balloon, is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a ...

and radiosonde setup and launching, a MBI International Meteorological Center, and others; several warehouses and deposits; fuel storage array;

potable water Drinking water is water that is used in drink or food preparation; potable water is water that is safe to be used as drinking water. The amount of drinking water required to maintain good health varies, and depends on physical activity level, ...

and sewerage network; incinerator and waste disposal module, and firefighting system. MuseoPatrullaSoberania

The station also has CATV and public and internal mobile phone service. The medical suite is attended by one doctor and three paramedics, and has three beds and

x-ray X-rays (or rarely, ''X-radiation'') are a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. In many languages, it is referred to as Röntgen radiation, after the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered it in 1895 and named it ' ...

dentistry Dentistry, also known as dental medicine and oral medicine, is the branch of medicine focused on the teeth, gums, and mouth. It consists of the study, diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases, disorders, and conditions ...

, coronary care and telemedicine facilities. Over of Antarctic gasoil are used every year for transportation, and to feed the 1,000 kW main power plant with its three Caterpillar generators. The station also has a sewage treatment plant. Most buildings are connected together by risen metal footpaths to isolate them from snow and ice. On 2010 the Argentine company CITEDEF designed and installed a wind generator on the station.

Airport

The station is supported by

Communications

The station is connected to the Argentine mainland and the world through a satellite downlink station with telephone, fax, TV and internet. They also have a DirecTV dish which provides their service to the whole station. Argentine mobile telephone company Claro and Spanish

Movistar Movistar () is a major telecommunications provider owned by Telefónica, operating in Spain and Hispanic American countries. It is the largest provider of landline, broadband, Mobile telephony, mobile services, and pay television (Movistar+) in ...

have an antenna for local coverage. Within the station and between stations, radio is the most used mean of communication, mainly through HF, Vox/Data, aeronautic

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

- AM and

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

- FM. Internet access is provided by Speedy Argentina, allowing the personnel in the station to be permanently connected to net services.

Wireless LAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

cover the entire complex, becoming one of the southernmost spots in the world with a wireless network. Telephone service is provided by Telefónica de Argentina at low national rates. In September 2006, a GSM mobile phone network was also added to the station, provided by the Argentine mobile operator CTI Móvil (now Claro).

Scientific activities

Scientific research at Marambio is planned and executed by specialized departments, usually during the summer campaigns: * Earth Sciences carries out

paleontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fos ...

stratigraphy Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers ( strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithost ...

, sedimentology, petrography, cryology,

glaciology Glaciology (; ) is the scientific study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice. Glaciology is an interdisciplinary Earth science that integrates geophysics, geology, physical geography, geomorphology, c ...

and

geodesy Geodesy ( ) is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's figure (geometric shape and size), Earth rotation, orientation in space, and Earth's gravity, gravity. The field also incorporates studies of how these properti ...

. * Atmospheric Sciences research include

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our ow ...

and ionospheric observations, and

stratospheric The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air hi ...

ozone monitoring. The LAMBI Ozone Laboratory, managed by the Atmospheric Sciences station, started in 1994 to obtain ozone records by absorption. It is a joint program with the INTA ( Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology) * Geophysics analyzes the composition, structure and mobility of the Antarctic lithosphere by seismic, magnetic, magnetotelluric and gravimetric surveys. It researches on tectonic dynamics in order to define its configuration from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

to the present. It also conducts

paleoclimatic Paleoclimatology (British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of Earth's history, the reconstruction of ancient climate is important to ...

and paleoenvironmental studies to determine relevant trends during the late Cenozoic. * Dynamics and Chemistry of Ice investigates changes during the last decade in selected

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such a ...

s on the Ross and

Vega Vega is the brightest star in the northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United Sta ...

islands. It also examines significant changes in the

Larsen Ice Shelf The Larsen Ice Shelf is a long ice shelf in the northwest part of the Weddell Sea, extending along the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula from Cape Longing to Smith Peninsula. It is named after Captain Carl Anton Larsen, the master of the N ...

and provides essential information on the distribution of Antarctic

iceberg An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially-derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". Th ...

s along the tracks of vessels operating in the Antarctic. * Human Impact researches environmental processes in relation to possible disturbances caused by human activities over the terrestrial ecosystem dynamics in the area of Marambio. The program develops guidelines for environmental management and monitoring. In addition Marambio is home to various ongoing scientific projects: * The Museoantar historical

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts ...

program undergoes recovery, preservation and restoration of the refuges built by the 1901–04

Swedish Antarctic Expedition The Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1903 was a scientific expedition led by Otto Nordenskjöld and Carl Anton Larsen. It was the first Swedish endeavour to Antarctica in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Background Otto Nord ...

on Snow Hill Island. * In 2011, during the "Mars in Marambio" mission,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

scientists arrived at the station to test a new

space suit A space suit or spacesuit is a garment worn to keep a human alive in the harsh environment of outer space, vacuum and temperature extremes. Space suits are often worn inside spacecraft as a safety precaution in case of loss of cabin pressure ...

designed for future exploration of Mars. * In 2013 the Finnish Meteorological Institute in co-operation with the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional and with the

started a new continuous atmospheric measurement program in Marambio. Observations cover

greenhouse gas A greenhouse gas (GHG or GhG) is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor (), carbon dioxide (), met ...

es (mostly CH₄ and CO₂) while investigating the physical, chemical and optical properties of

aerosol An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog or mist, dust, forest exudates, and geyser steam. Examples of ant ...

particles and incoming and outgoing UV radiation. This scientific project made Marambio the most comprehensive atmospheric measurement station in the Antarctic continent. * The station has been chosen for the location of balloon launches of the French project ''Estrateole'' to study the ozone layer. MAR8019.JPG, Campamento cientifico.jpg, Panoramica base marambio.jpg,

Climate

In spite of its relatively low latitude, Marambio Station is situated in an

ice cap climate An ice cap climate is a polar climate where no mean monthly temperature exceeds . The climate covers areas in or near the high latitudes (65° latitude) to polar regions (70–90° north and south latitude), such as Antarctica, some of the northe ...

, albeit much less severe than in Antarctica's interior. Nonetheless, the climate is severe with mean temperatures that rarely rise above and the presence of strong winds. The strong winds produce a wind chill that makes the temperatures feel colder. In particular, gusts up to can occur during the winter months. Due to the partial melting of snow in summer due to above freezing daytime temperatures, animals as well as limited plant life (moss, lichens, and worts) are able to thrive during the warmer months of December, January, and February. Mean monthly temperatures range from in June to in December. During summer, the average high is above freezing while the average low is . However, temperatures can reach up to or fall below during summer. In winter, the average high is while the average low is . Occasionally, temperatures can reach above freezing during winter. This occurs when warm air from the northeast (characterized by high cloud cover and fog) or from the northwest moves towards the peninsula. As the warm air crosses the mountains in the peninsula, it warms as it descends, leading to warm and dry conditions in a manner similar to a Zonda wind. Its highest recorded temperature was on 23 March 2015. This was surpassed on February 9, 2020 when a temperature of was recorded at the station. Fog frequently occurs in the station. December and January are the foggiest months, averaging 16 to 19 days with fog while June to September are the least, averaging 9 to 11 days. The station is characterized by high cloud cover throughout the year in the form of stratus clouds. Summer is the cloudiest season, averaging 24 cloudy days while winters are the least cloudiest, averaging 10 to 11 cloudy days.

References

External links

Fuerza Aerea Argentina – Base Marambio

Dirección Nacional del Antártico

{{Antarctica Argentine Air Force bases Argentine Antarctica Populated places established in 1969 Outposts of Graham Land James Ross Island group British Antarctic Territory Chilean Antarctic Territory 1969 establishments in Antarctica