It’s been almost four years since Kincheloe Elementary School’s flag flew over Antarctica.

It was taken by former Kincheloe student, Brian Seifferlein, to encourage current students to learn more about the frozen, southern continent.

Seifferlein, who has been there three times, left on the long journey from Lincoln, Neb., in November 2006.

He works there as a videographer for Nebraska Educational Television, and formed part of a crew filming a documentary for NOVA.

“Secrets Beneath the Ice” premieres tonight, Dec. 28, on PBS (WNIT, Channel 10 on Comcast).

Seifferlein explained, “The project is a long one because we are following a project called ANDRILL. ANDRILL is an international science project to do some of the deepest drilling ever done in the history of Antarctica, and in one of the toughest places.”

In prehistoric times, Antarctica underwent dramatic climate changes.  It was once warm enough for forests to grow, as evidenced by some fossilized beech tree leaves Seifferlein found there.

Scientists from the United States, New Zealand, Italy and the United Kingdom work together to study changes in detail by taking rock samples from beneath the ocean floor.

The drill, positioned on an ice shelf, first bored through roughly 200 meters of ice, then dips through 900 meters of ocean water to drill into the sea floor and obtain core samples from 1,000 meters into the rock.

Seifferlein told Kincheloe students by e-mail at the time that to get to Antarctica visitors first go to New Zealand.

This is the best time of year to visit because it is summer in the southern hemisphere.

In New Zealand, crews pick up their ECW, Extreme Cold Weather gear, then hop a C-17 military transport for the five-hour flight to McMurdo, the largest base in Antarctica.

Seifferlein said, “At its peak period, the ‘town’ has about 1,000 people living in it.  Some are science-related folk and others are support staff — anything from janitors or cafeteria workers to firefighters.”

During part of his visit, Seifferlein left McMurdo to camp in a tent between mountain chains near an area called the Dry Valleys.

“The Dry Valleys are unchanged over millions of years by anything except for wind. There is no precipitation and no human activity. This makes it a perfect science lab to study,” Seifferlein said.

The Dry Valleys are very rocky, and not a very good spot for camping, so the group put up their tents on a frozen lake in Beacon Valley formed when glacial snow melted in the summer sun, then smoothly refroze in the low parts of the valley.

Seifferlein photographed scientists taking ice cores from up on top of the glacier, hundreds of feet above the valley floor.

“With these ice cores, the scientists could look at the air and gas bubbles trapped in the ice to see what the atmosphere was like when the water froze millions of years ago. These scientists would be in a group one would label as ‘stablists’ — meaning they interpret evidence leading them to hypothesize that Antarctica has not seen a warm period (been stable) for a long, long time (at least 14 million years) and the Andrill folks would be known as ‘dynamists,’ meaning they think Antarctica’s climate has been dynamic and changing over the years and may have been warm as little as 3 million years ago.”

When Seifferlein returned from Antarctica, he handed the flag off to his mother, Sandra Seifferlein, who at the time worked at Kincheloe as a lunch and breakfast aide.

She brought it back from Nebraska.

The flag was designed by Stacy Zablocki when she was a third grader in 1985.

Seifferlein happened to be in the same class.

One copy of the Kincheloe flag has hung in the gym ever since, and another was used only for special occasions, such as the first day of school and Field Day — or a long trip to Antarctica.