By Janet Raloff
MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA — Even when the December sun beats down 24 hours a day, most of Antarctica remains cold, if not brutally frigid. With one dramatic exception. Wind-blown clouds of steam rise year-round from a lava lake atop Mount Erebus, the planet’s southernmost active volcano.
This ice-covered cone belongs to a small chain of otherwise dormant peaks that make up Ross Island. Some 1,300 summer residents at the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo research station 35 kilometers away can revel in the picture-postcard backdrop that Erebus offers. Few, however, have scaled the nearly 3,800-meter summit to peer into its churning pool of molten rock — a lake of lava roiling at roughly 1,000° Celsius.