Due to a lack of funding resulting from the ongoing government shutdown, the National Science Foundation announced Tuesday it is shuttering all research in the region and shifting into "caretaker" mode.
Under caretaker status, the US Antarctic Program, which the NSF manages, "will be staffed at a minimal level to ensure human safety and preserve government property, including the three primary research stations, ships and associated research facilities," according to a statement issued by the USAP.
"All field and research activities not essential to human safety and preservation of property will be suspended," it continues.
In the meantime, the NSF said it will make the necessary preparations to restore research "to the maximum extent possible" in the case that funding does appear.
"It is important to note, however, that some activities cannot be restarted once seasonally dependent windows for research and operations have passed, the seasonal workforce is released, science activities are curtailed and operations are reduced," it writes.
Among the research programs affected by the shutdown is NASA's IceBridge campaign, responsible for measuring annual changes in the polar ice sheets.
The interruption of annual projects like IceBridge are problematic due to the gaping hole in data they create, scientists warn.
"It is very valuable to have a continuous unbroken data series," Andrew Fountain, a glaciologist at Portland State University in Oregon who works in Antarctica's Dry Valleys, told LiveScience. "Having a gap in the data makes the analysis of trends -- such as warming/cooling and growing/shrinking -- that much more difficult and the statistical analysis more challenging."
Peter Doran, a professor of earth sciences from the University of Illinois, lamented that significant money had already been spent in preparation of this season's Antarctic research.
"And the waste of money is just heartbreaking," he told NPR. "All the equipment that's been shipped down already for this field season, all the people having to reverse all that -- for nothing? It really kind of makes me ill."