Antarctica is one of the coldest places on earth, but not as cold as it used to be.

Miami University Biology Professor Richard Lee took his first trip to Antarctica in 1980 and 1981 as a post-graduate student, and began going back again in 2004 to conduct his on research on a wingless midge (Belgica Antarctica) that lives on the islands around Norsel Point, the isthmus that juts off of the Antarctic mainland near South America.

“My trips to Antarctica just happened to coincide with a tremendous time of global warming that has taken place there,” he told an assembly of sixth-graders Monday at Highland Elementary School. “That particular period of time, those 25 years, is when we’ve had the most drastic impact of global warming.”

The overall temperature of Antarctica has risen about 5 degrees Fahrenheit between his first visit and his most recent trip last winter.

“Which means that any plants or animals that live there have had to deal with the change,” he said.

Lee showed photos of the glaciers near Palmer Station, the research station where he goes to gather specimens, illustrating how they have retracted 400 meters since 1981.

More than 10,000 mating pairs of Adelie penguins, he said, have disappeared from the area because it has gotten too warm for them to hatch their eggs in the breeding period.

“They’re doing very well elsewhere, but they’re not doing well at Palmer Station,” he said.

The wingless midge that he studies, along with a colleague at the Ohio State University, live in the rocky islands near Palmer Station. At 6 to 7 millimeters long, they are the largest land animals native to Antarctica.

“Insects are by far the most abundant animals on earth,” Lee said. “They can live high in the mountains and out in the desert, but there is no insect that lives further south (than the wingless fly).”

Each year, Lee’s team gathers up to 10,000 specimens and brings them back to Ohio to conduct experiments to see what extremes they can endure and how.

“They can survive being frozen solid and they can survive being dried out,” he said. “They look like little raisins (when dried out), but if you add water to them, they plump up and wiggle away just fine.

“Our research team is trying to understand how these flies can tolerate all of these different stresses from where they live,” Lee said.

If scientists can understand how animals can be frozen and still live, they may be able to figure out how to freeze human organs for future transplants, he said.

Technology teacher Lindsay Boatright arranged for the visit as part of a unit on Antarctica that has been going on for several weeks. With the additional information from Lee, the students will spend the rest of the week working on a Power Point presentation about Antarctica.