Study offers new light on Scott's death
By Jack Williams, USATODAY.com

Since Robert Falcon Scott and his four companions died in 1912 on their way back from the South Pole, historians and exploration buffs have generally blamed Scott's many mistakes for the deaths.
They say Scott's blunders and Roald Amundsen's wise decisions explain why the British explorers died while Amundsen and four other Norwegians reached the Pole a month before Scott¹s party and returned in good health.
Now, that opinion has to be reconsidered.
Two scientists show in the November 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that Scott "and his men perished following a battle with conditions far colder than average."
Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration¹s Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and Charles R. Stearns of the University of Wisconsin in Madison conclude that an unusually long and deep cold spell was the final straw for the Scott party.
They reach this conclusion based on Scott's detailed weather records from the fatal journey and modern-day data from automated weather stations along Scott¹s route.
Solomon said in an interview that even though Scott made many mistakes, "these alone would clearly not have been sufficient to cause all of them to die had the weather been normal."
Deep, persistent cold caught Scott party
Members of Scott¹s expedition, who waited at their base camp for his return, found the bodies of Scott and two of his companions on Nov. 12, 1912. They were in a tent only 12 miles from a supply cache of food and fuel that might have saved them.
A weather log, diaries and other papers were found with the bodies. In a "Message to the Public," Scott listed the expedition's troubles, and concluded: "... no one in the world would have expected the temperatures... which we encountered at this time of year. . . our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not seem to have any satisfactory cause."
Over the years, many have dismissed this statement as Scott making excuses for his bad decisions. Many have assumed that of course they encountered cold, windy weather. They were in Antarctica.
But, Solomon and Sterns write, their study of Scott's temperature records and today's data show that: "Scott was correct rather than petulant" in his final message.
From Feb. 27 through March 19, 1912 - when the record ends - Scott recorded low temperatures of minus 30 or colder each day but one. Solomon and Stearns write that based on records from automated weather stations along Scott's route, these temperatures are 10 to 20 degrees colder than average for that time of the year.
The modern record, which begins in the mid 1980s, also shows the March 1912 cold was unusually persistent for that time of the year. On the average since the mid 1980s, temperatures have dropped below minus 30 on only nine days each year between Feb. 25 and March 19. The only year since the mid 1980s with cold as persistent as in March 1912 was 1988.
Solomon and Stearns say comparing temperatures recorded since the mid 1980s with those early in the century is legitimate because Scott's party made good, well-documented weather observations, both at the base camp and during trips such as to the South Pole.
For instance, while Scott and his men were near the South Pole in January 1912, they recorded an average daily low temperature of minus 24.1 degrees, which is a degree and a half warmer than the average from today¹s automated station there.
Also, various records show that The Ross Ice Sheet, where Scott¹s party died, has not warmed. "It's not global warming that makes temperatures warmer now than in 1912," Solomon says. "Over the century it's become only about a degree warmer."
Even though the sun is up 24 hours a day at the South Pole in January, its elevation of more than 9,000 feet above sea level helps keep it cold all year. In December and January, the warmest months there, the average high temperature in only minus 15 degrees.
Scott and his men were looking forward to reaching the Ross Ice Shelf (they called it the Great Barrier), at sea level elevation where it would be much warmer.
In fact, when they reached the Ice Shelf, they found above zero temperatures. On Feb. 9, Scott wrote, "Tonight is wonderfully calm and warm."
How Scott and his men died
During this period, when temperatures were still relatively warm, the first of the five, Edgar Evans, died on Feb. 17, possibly from a head injury suffered in a fall into a crevasse.
The cold that began on Feb. 27 made more difference than those not familiar with Antarctica might think, Solomon says.
"The cold temperatures influenced not only the men's physical comfort, but also their ability to pull the sledge. As any cross-country skier who has skied at temperatures below minus 15 knows, as it gets cold, the glide of the snow diminishes. This is a big problem when you are dragging 100 or more pounds of supplies behind you on a wooden sled."
Unlike Amundsen, who used sled dogs, Scott and his men dragged their supplies part of the way to the pole and all of the way back themselves - "man hauling."
Also, Solomon says, people don't tend to become frostbitten except on exposed skin when the temperatures are warmer than minus 20 to 25. With their shortage of fuel, Scott and his men couldn¹t keep their tents warm at night.
One of the four left after Evans died, L.E.G. "Titus" Oates, suffered such extreme frostbite on his feet that the tissue died and he could hardly walk. Around March 15, knowing he was holding the others back, Oates left the tent after saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time." His body was never found.
Scott and the two men found in the tent with him, Henry Bowers and Edward Wilson, are believed to have died around March 29.
The scientists who conducted the study
Scott¹s main base at Cape Evans is about 15 miles from today¹s U.S. McMurdo Station. The route Scott followed to and from the Pole is roughly the same as today¹s air route from McMurdo to the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
Stearns has been installing automated weather stations in Antarctica since the mid 1980s as part of the National Science Foundation¹s U.S. Antarctic Program. The stations along Scott¹s route supply data for better forecasts for pilots flying to and front the South Pole as well as building a record of average weather at different times of the year.
One of these stations is about 30 miles from where the bodies of Scott, Bowers and Wilson were found.
"Chuck (Stearns) didn¹t know the station was 30 miles from where Scott died until later," Solomon says. "He was flying around in an LC-130 in 1985 when they picked the location because there weren¹t too many crevasses. it was a safe place to land and set up a station."
Solomon first went to Antarctica in August 1986 as the leader of a group of researchers that helped discover why ozone high above Antarctica almost disappears each September forming the "ozone hole."
Since then she¹s made three other trips to Antarctica, including her first visit to the South Pole in January 1997 as part of a commission studying the need for the USA to build a new South Pole station.
"It was amazing to me, standing in the place where Scott stood almost 85 years to the day," she says. "I first got interested in Scott right after I arrived at McMurdo (in 1986) and saw Scott's hut and felt the allure of Antarctica."
Since then she¹s read all of the available diaries from Scott¹s expedition and has been collecting books, some rare, about Antarctic exploration. She is also writing a book about Scott.
Did El Niño play a role?
Was Scott correct when he wrote that the March 1912 severe weather on the Ross Ice Shelf has "no satisfactory cause?"
In their paper on the cold Scott encountered, Susan Solomon and Charlees Stearns comment, "It is intriguing to note that 1912 was an El Niño year." The other year on record as cold as March 1912 on the Ross Ice Shelf, 1988, was also an El Nino year. While they weren't as cold as 1988 or 1912, the strong El Niño years of 1982 and 1997 also saw cold March weather on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Whether it is the global weather pattern associated with warm water in the eastern tropical Pacific known as El Nino, or something else, "the evidence suggests that some process does modulate Antarctic climate variables on a time scale of about 4 years," Solomon says.
Solomon adds that while El Nino might have played a role, "I don¹t think it was the main thing" that caused March 1912 to be so cold. Scientists know that Antarctica's weather has global consequences and is affected by weather in other parts of the world, but they are far from completely understanding how the connections work.
No matter what the cause, Solomon and Sterns say that "Scott and his last two companions died near the 29th of the month after enduring that might be dubbed 'The coldest march.'"

scott polar research institute