Shackleton’s Endurance expedition – unlucky with the weather?

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• John C. King (BAS)
• Thursday 06 March 2025, 11:00-12:00
• BAS Seminar Room 2 and Zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Thomas Caton Harrison.

In December 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton and members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition sailed into the Weddell Sea on board the barquentine Endurance. The story of the entrapment, drift and sinking of the ship in the Weddell Sea pack ice, and the subsequent epic tale of survival and rescue of all of the expedition members are well known. However, there has been relatively little investigation into how weather conditions in 1914-15 may have affected the fate of the Endurance and her crew.

Regular meteorological observations were made as part of the expedition’s scientific programme up to the abandonment of Endurance in October 1915 and during the subsequent journey over the ice to the relative safety of Elephant Island. Remarkably, these records survived the expedition and are now kept in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute. Comparison of the Endurance observations with modern-era (1979-2021) data from the ERA5 reanalysis has revealed two unusual features of the weather encountered by Endurance in 1914-15. First, temperatures during the late summer and autumn of 1915 were consistently low, which would have promoted an early start to the freeze-up in the southern Weddell Sea. Second, pressure remained persistently high from late winter through spring, with the mean August-October pressure recorded by Endurance only being exceeded in one year of the ERA5 record. A persistent high-pressure anomaly in the Weddell Sea is associated with wind anomalies that oppose the northward flow of sea ice to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula which, in 1915, could have contributed to the failure of Endurance to break free from the ice and the consequent loss of the ship.

Although other factors, such as a lack of advance knowledge of ice conditions and the limited ice capabilities of Endurance, may also have contributed, the meteorological observations made by the expedition do suggest that some aspects of the meteorology of 1914-15 were exceptional and are likely to have played a role in the fate of the expedition. The Endurance observations also provide us with a unique record of conditions in the Weddell Sea sector from the early 20th century.

This talk is part of the BAS Atmosphere, Ice and Climate Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• BAS Atmosphere, Ice and Climate Seminars
• BAS Seminar Room 2 and Zoom

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