LEGENDARY BRITISH EXPLORER RACES AGAINST TIME TO REACH AND RECORD THE WORLD'S EXTREME POLAR REGIONS BEFORE THEY ARE GONE.

British explorer Felicity Aston is a record-breaking, generation-defining polar explorer who has trained and led all-female novice teams on data collection expeditions to locations across the North Pole, Iceland, and Greenland. Aston’s current project, the Before It’s Gone (B.I.G.) Arctic Research Expedition, supported by the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, puts a spotlight on the instability of these Arctic regions. She hopes it will serve as an urgent call to reach and record sea ice data from these rapidly changing geographies so we can better understand, and ultimately protect, them.

Aston was just 19 when she first encountered the polar landscape that would guide her life’s work. A job with the British Antarctic Survey took her to a research station at the edge of Antarctica, where she spent two-and-a-half years methodically recording data about the region’s climate and ozone. Aston recalls a turning point a few months into the post, on her first solo experience off-base to check the field instruments. Away from the numbers and data, the vastness and seeming perfection of the polar landscape left her awestruck and determined to protect it.

From that initial survey expedition followed more than two decades of polar exploration, from the Arctic and Antarctic poles, to Greenland, Iceland and Canada: as Aston puts it, “All the cold places in the world.” She led an all-female team on an expedition across the Greenland ice sheet, became the first woman to cross Antarctica alone, and in 2015 was awarded an MBE for services to polar exploration.

The most recent chapter of Aston’s career began in 2015 on a massive nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker off the North Siberian coast. Aboard this 14-story juggernaut, Aston collected sea ice data as part of a citizen science programme. When the readings were added to an open database at the National Snow and Ice Data Center based in Denver, Colorado, it was discovered that the project’s data was the only entry for the year from the central Arctic Basin; an area estimated to have lost 85 per cent of the thickest multiyear sea ice by 2018. The mission for Aston was clear: they needed more data, and fast.

“YOU CAN COLLECT SOME DATA FROM SPACE, BUT THERE’S CERTAIN INFORMATION YOU CAN ONLY GET FROM BEING THERE ON THE GROUND, AND IT REALLY STRUCK ME THAT WE WERE RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO ACCESS THIS GEOGRAPHY IN ORDER TO COLLECT INFORMATION.”
Felicity Aston, Polar Explorer

The result of this alarm call is the B.I.G. Expedition, for which Aston gathered an all female team of citizen scientists to ski to the Geographic North Pole, recording sea ice data as they went, while it was still accessible on foot. Without this information, the computer models we use to explain the environmental changes in the Arctic, and predict what is to come, will give us an incomplete picture.

In the past three years, the B.I.G. Expedition, with support from the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, has attempted three expeditions to the North Pole, all of which were diverted just before departure by the very environmental conditions Aston was hoping to document and understand. The teams relocated to other Arctic regions, including Svalbard and Iceland, where they amassed an extraordinary quantity of snow and ice samples, all transported by human-powered sledge. The samples will be studied for evidence of microplastics and black carbon and could help to explain why we are seeing the impacts of climate change in the Arctic three times faster than anywhere else in the world.

Through Aston’s expeditions, there are also first-hand accounts of just how quickly we are losing the Arctic environments: rain and temperatures above zero in Svalbard, and the sight of grass-filled valleys when there should have been metres of snow in northern Iceland. For Aston, the support of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative offers the B.I.G. Expedition a connection to an extraordinary cast of Rolex Awards Laureates and Perpetual Planet Initiative partners, a spotlight for this urgent project, and a solid homebase from which to launch into an ever-shifting landscape.

“THE PERPETUAL PLANET INITIATIVE WITH ROLEX HAS CHAMPIONED PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY PUSHING THE ENVELOPE NOT ONLY IN UNDERSTANDING OUR PLANET, BUT HOW WE MAKE IT BETTER, HOW WE PROVIDE THOSE SOLUTIONS. BEING SUPPORTED BY THE INITIATIVE IS WONDERFUL IN TERMS OF THE CREDIBILITY AND COMMUNITY IT BRINGS.”
Felicity Aston, Polar Explorer

ABOUT THE PERPETUAL PLANET INITIATIVE
For nearly a century, Rolex has supported pioneering explorers pushing back the boundaries of human endeavour. The company has moved from championing exploration for the sake of discovery to protecting the planet, committing for the long term to support individuals and organizations using science to understand and devise solutions to today’s environmental challenges.

This engagement was reinforced with the launch of the Perpetual Planet Initiative in 2019, which initially focused on individuals who contribute to a better world through the Rolex Awards, on safeguarding the oceans as part of an established association with Mission Blue, and on understanding climate change via its long-standing partnership with the National Geographic Society.

An expanding portfolio of other partnerships embraced by the Perpetual Planet Initiative now includes: Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen in their work as conservation photographers; Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile, offspring organizations of Tompkins Conservation, which are protecting landscapes in South America; Coral Gardeners, transplanting resilient corals to reefs; Steve Boyes and the Great Spine of Africa series of expeditions, exploring the continent’s major river basins; the Under The Pole expeditions, pushing the boundaries of underwater exploration; the B.I.G. expeditions to the Arctic, gathering data on threats to the landscape; and the Monaco Blue Initiative, bringing together ocean conservation experts.

Rolex also supports organizations and initiatives fostering the next generations of explorers, scientists and conservationists through scholarships and grants such as The Rolex Explorers Club Grants.