The only catch is the occasional polar bear and winter blizzards that send temperatures plummeting to minus 40 degrees. This week on Arctic Science Journeys Radio, producer Doug Schneider finds out what life is like for Dan Endres, the only scientist stationed year-round in the U.S. Arctic. At the end of a bouncy, dusty, dirt road, six miles across the tundra from Barrow, a remote community on the north coast of Alaska, is the Point Barrow Observatory. Each summer, scientists from all over the world come to this remote outpost to study the Arctic. Everything goes on here, from wildlife biology to plant physiology to atmospheric physics and chemistry, permafrost studies.
People are up here studying everything.
It's here that they inevitably meet Dan Endres. As the observatory's station chief, Endres helps researchers set up their experiments. And after the researchers go home in the fall, it's Endres' job to watch over the experiments throughout the cold, dark winter months that follow. It's a job he's had since 1984, and he says he wouldn't trade places with anyone. It's all just natural tundra with no housing, no development.