Budding adventurers will be disappointed: registration is over.
A Franco-Swiss scientific exploration mission will send 20 volunteers to different regions with extreme temperatures to study how their bodies react in these environments.
Ten men and ten women "not soldiers, not astronauts, but ordinary people", aged 25 to 52, already left in December for 40 days in total autonomy in the Guyanese equatorial forest, with temperatures around 30 degrees and constant humidity.
They will then fly away in February for Finnish Lapland for the same duration, before going in May to the Saudi desert, where with a mercury approaching 50 degrees “closest to what the climate could be by 2050 ".
On site, the volunteers will carry out various activities (canoeing in the jungle, crossing on skis or on foot, etc.) by submitting each day to a series of scientific or medical measurements via electrodes to measure their sleep, altimeters for their mobility, questionnaires on their morale, etc.
Further examinations (blood test, MRI, etc.) will also be carried out within 30 days between each shipment.
The program, named “Deep Climate”, was initiated by researcher-explorer Christian Clot, who had already tested in 2021 the effects of the loss of spatiotemporal landmarks on 15 people sent to a mine for 40 days, and by around forty scientists from the CNRS, Inserm or the Brain Institute in particular.
Read also“Deep Time” project: first night in a cave in Ariège for 15 volunteers locked up for 40 days
“We are going through a period of profound change, particularly in terms of climate, which will involve significant transformations in the conditions in which we live,” said Christian Clot this Thursday during a press conference.
“The human capacity to adapt to the future”
“And the question that arises is that of the human capacity to adapt to this future.
How the body, the brain, but also everyday behaviors will react to temperatures that exceed 40 degrees, to 100% humidity or freezing cold, this is what we are going to study, not in the laboratory, but in real situation,” he explained.
According to UN climate experts (IPCC), global warming will indeed intensify extreme episodes, such as heat waves or winter storms, subjecting populations to harsher climatic conditions, with certain parts of the globe becoming unlivable due to lack of a human capacity to adapt to such conditions.
Without going so far as to send volunteers into hostile terrain, previous laboratory research has already shown that in the face of extreme temperatures, the human body can develop various symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, the formation of blood clots or irritability.
The first results of the “Deep Climate” mission are expected at the end of 2023/beginning of 2024.