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Captain Robert Scott has had a poor press. He is denounced by many as an incompetent whose poor planning led to the deaths of himself and his team in Antarctica in 1912. Susan Solomon disagrees. She believes he was undone by freak weather. Solomon knows a thing or two about the Antarctic atmosphere: she has studied it for 15 years. In the 1980s she discovered the cause of the ozone hole. She even has a glacier named after her. But her first book is about Scott. Gabrielle Walker asks why she felt the need to rehabilitate him.

What made you so interested in Scott?

I knew nothing about him when I first went to Antarctica in 1986. I arrived at McMurdo, the main American base, got to my room, looked across Winter Quarters Bay and there was Scott’s hut. It looks very modern, almost like a mountain cabin in Colorado where I live. It’s got the veranda, the wood, the sloped roof. Then I found out it was 80 years old and I was intrigued. So I started reading up about Scott and I found out that he and four of his men died on their way back from the South Pole.

Many people have claimed that the deaths were Scott’s fault, and that rather than being a hero he was a hopeless blunderer. Did you start off with that view?

I just thought he might have misjudged what the conditions would be on the ice shelf on the way back, because I knew enough about the meteorology to see how easily anyone could go wrong.

How did you come to your conclusion that all the doubters were wrong?

It took about 15 years of research. First I read the diaries and everything else I could find, then I collected the expedition’s meteorological data and compared it with modern data. Then I had one of those wonderful moments of scientific epiphany when you say: “Oh my gosh, I understand this now.” No one could have predicted the persistent cold weather that Scott faced. In 17 years of direct data from the area where he died, there’s only been one year like that. George Simpson, Scott’s meteorologist, was convinced that the weather was highly unusual, but he couldn’t prove it and I could. That’s when I knew I had to write this book.

Why was the cold such a problem?

The average daily low should have been around -30 °C in March. That feels toasty once you’ve acclimatised. But -40 °C is an entirely different matter. You feel as if your nostrils are being freeze-dried, and frost forms at the edge of your eyes. That kind of cold has really serious consequences for an expedition. First there’s the danger from frostbite, which is what did in Captain Oates. Then, when it’s very, very cold in the Antarctic, the winds drop. Scott’s men had planned to attach a sail to the sledges and use the prevailing southerly winds to sail on home. Instead they had to keep pulling. The final whammy is that when the snow gets really cold, it starts to stick like sandpaper and it’s much harder to pull the sledges. As those extra-cold temperatures set in, Scott talked about the sledge becoming as heavy as lead.

What did it feel like to read those diaries?

When you delve that deeply into a person’s life you learn a lot about them. Take the two men who died with Scott at their final camp. Edward Wilson was very descriptive. Henry “Birdie” Bowers was one of the most determinedly optimistic people you could hope to meet. That’s another reason I wrote the book: regardless of what you may think about Scott-and personally I think there are plenty of reasons to respect him-you also owe it to the others not to tar them with the same brush. They were such remarkable men that I wanted to tell all their stories.

The early explorers had none of the comforts available now in Antarctica. Do you think that makes it easier for people today to feel scornful about Scott?

Yes, I think it does. It makes us feel safe to go down there and say: “We’re smart and well prepared and nothing can possibly happen to us.” Well think again. Bad things happen even to very smart people. It happened to Scott. It’s happened since. The South Pole station came very close to burning down a few years ago, and if it had, the people in it would have died. One of the British Antarctic Survey’s labs on the Antarctica Peninsula did burn down completely two weeks ago. But we don’t really want to admit how dangerous Antarctica is.

Have you ever experienced that danger yourself?

I’ve tasted it. I went to Antarctica twice during the late winter, making some of the key measurements that were used to explain the ozone hole. In the end we showed that CFCs really were the culprits, coupled with the intense cold there. To measure atmospheric composition we used a system of mirrors to reflect moonlight. The mirrors were on the roof of our laboratory about a mile from the main base. One night I was observing and at about 3 am it clouded over so I went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning a howling blizzard was under way-with my mirrors still up on the damned roof. So I went up there and tried to get the things down, and the wind was gusting up and I was pushed several feet across the roof. I dropped down spreadeagled and crawled back and finally got the mirrors down.

Do you think Scott took too big a risk by travelling in March, close to the end of the Antarctic summer? Amundsen, who reached the pole first and survived, was safely home by then

I don’t think so. Amundsen used only dogs and could set off early. Scott had to wait because of his ponies. Scott knew there was a risk. But the weather he was anticipating is what you’d see perhaps 19 years in every 20. And if they had had average conditions, I have very little doubt that they would have made it. Was it stupid? Was it unthinking? Absolutely not. Did it have risk? Sure. Everything has risk. Amundsen also took risks. He put his winter camp on the floating ice shelf, which he wrongly thought was on solid ground. If he had been there in 2000 when that part of the ice broke off, he would have floated out to sea. That kind of break-off happens about 1 year in 20. So he took a 1 in 20 chance-albeit unknowingly-that he was going to float out to sea. Scott took a 1 in 20 chance with the weather. One of them was unlucky and the other wasn’t.

You say the cold temperatures were Scott’s downfall, but he wrote in his diary about being trapped by a 10-day blizzard

I believe frostbite from the intense cold killed Scott, not the blizzard. Yes, they were stopped by a blizzard. On 20 March they made camp because the wind had got so strong they couldn’t see to navigate. But I don’t think the blizzard lasted 10 days. I delved into the data from exactly the region where they died and, again, in 17 years of direct measurements there has been only one year with a blizzard lasting four days, let alone ten. For a while I thought Scott had been unlucky on top of unlucky. First to get this terribly cold weather and then to get the mother of all blizzards. But now I think that he was so badly frostbitten he couldn’t continue, and that his two remaining companions-Wilson and Bowers-gave up their lives to stay with him.

Why didn’t they say so in their diaries?

That would imply that they had died because of him and I don’t think a gentleman of that era would have done that. It would have cast the blame for the failure and for their deaths onto Scott, who was clearly a very dear friend. I believe Wilson and Bowers lied to Scott about the weather, telling him the blizzard was continuing even after it had stopped. I can’t prove it but I think it’s a lot more likely.

What draws you to Antarctica?

I started out as a theoretician, and my first field trip was Antarctica in the winter. I loved it from the minute I stepped off the airplane. I loved the wildness of it. I loved the pristineness, the emptiness, the ferocity, the absolutely unforgiving nature of that environment. I love the things about nature that remind us how powerful it is and how puny we are, and Antarctica is as fierce and beautiful as you can get.

You have a glacier named after you. Tell me about that

There’s a board that decides on geographic names in Antarctica and my name was chosen. It’s kind of funny how I found out. I received a fax from a colleague at the National Science Foundation that said “congratulations”. I turned the page and saw “Solomon Glacier” and didn’t read the fine print. I thought, “Ha ha, very funny.” There was some guy called Solomon who was with Shackleton or something and he has a glacier named after him, and I thought he was making a joke about it. I didn’t look at the fax again for about a week, then I read the fine print and saw it was me.

Have you seen the glacier?

Not with my own eyes. It’s not an easy thing to get to. But I have a photograph of it. It’s not a big glacier but it’s fantastically beautiful and I am very, very honoured.

How does your work on Scott relate to the research you were doing in Antarctica?

Temperature has always been very much a part of my research, both with the ozone layer and with Scott. What the extremes of cold do to chlorine chemistry is one thing I have done, and what they do to the human body and the human spirit and this kind of endeavour is another thing. In both cases I found that the weather is everything.

Were you pleased that your work finally vindicated Scott and his men?

I developed sympathy for these men, I found them to be highly intelligent and I felt annoyed that they were being portrayed as fools. Once I reached that conclusion, I wanted to do my part to set the record straight. I’m not really a crusader. I’ve been involved with controversial issues for the past 20 years and I know how difficult it can be. I often look back on the peaceful days before the ozone hole was discovered, and they were some of the happiest of my scientific life. But one of the duties of a scientist is to inform, so I had to tell this story.