Signy Island
Encyclopedia
South Orkney Islands
The South Orkney Islands are a group of islands in the Southern Ocean, about north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. They have a total area of about ....
group locted at 60°43′S 45°36′W. It is about 6.5 km (4 mi) long and 5 km (3.1 mi) wide and rises to 288 m (945 ft) above sea level. Much of the island is permanently covered with ice. The average temperature range is 0 °C (32 °F) to about -10 °C in winter (i.e., in July). The extremes reach about 12 and -44 °C (53.6 and -47.2 °F).
Signy Island was named by the Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
whaler
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
Petter Martin Mattias Koch Sørlle after his wife Signy Therese.
The British Antarctic Survey
British Antarctic Survey
The British Antarctic Survey is the United Kingdom's national Antarctic operation and has an active role in Antarctic affairs. BAS is part of the Natural Environment Research Council and has over 400 staff. It operates five research stations, two ships and five aircraft in and around Antarctica....
maintains the Signy Research Station
Signy Research Station
Signy Research Station is an Antarctic research base on Signy Island, run by the British Antarctic Survey.-History:Signy was first occupied in 1947 when a meteorological station was established in Factory Cove above the old whaling station. It was the second research base on the South Orkney...
, a scientific station for research in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
. The base was opened on March 18, 1947, on the site of an earlier whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
station that had existed there in the 1920s. The station was staffed year-round until 1996; since that year it has been occupied only from November to April. It houses 10 people.
See also
- Composite Antarctic Gazetteer
- List of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands
- Scientific Committee on Antarctic ResearchScientific Committee on Antarctic ResearchThe Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research is an interdisciplinary body of the International Council for Science . It was established in February 1958 to continue the international coordination of Antarctic scientific activities that had begun during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58...
- Territorial claims in Antarctica