Last week we celebrated Antarctica Day, 50 years after the Antarctic Treaty was signed. This treaty includes an agreement to protect Antarctic ecosystems. But what if, unintentionally, this protection also covered clues of life beyond Earth? In this Image of the Week, we explore how meteorites found in Antarctica are an important piece of the puzzle in the search for extraterrestrial life. Meteori ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Antarctica Day
The International Geophysical Year hut at Halley Bay, 1957. [Credit: L. W. Barclay. Copyright L.W. Barclay. Reproduced courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey Archives Service. Archives ref. AD6/19/X/25/11 ]
Today, 1st December 2017, marks the 58th anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. The Antarctic Treaty was motivated by international collaboration in Antarctica in the International Geophysical Year (IGY), 1957-1958. During the IGY over 50 new bases were established in and around Antarctica by 12 nations- including this one at Halley Bay which was maintained for over a decade b ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Does size really matter? A story of ice floes and power laws
The retreating Arctic sea ice is one of the most well-known facets of Climate Change. Images of polar bears desperately swimming through polar seas searching for somewhere to rest and feed resonate strongly with the public. Beyond these headlines however, the Arctic Ocean is displaying a rapid transition from having mostly permanent ice cover to a more seasonal cover. The Marginal Ice Zone As both ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Ice Stupas: a solution for Himalayan water shortage?
Ice cones in the high altitude deserts of Ladakh, Himalayas. [Credit: Dadul Lobzang, Ice Stupa Project]
As the world searches for practical innovations that can mitigate the impact of climate change, traditional methods of environmental management can offer inspiration. In Hindu Kush and Karakoram region, local people have been growing, or grafting, glaciers for at least 100 years. Legend has it that artificial glaciers were grown in mountain passes as early as the twelfth century to block the advan ...[Read More]
Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!
Figure 1: A68 sets sail from Larsen C.
Sentinel 1 SAR image [Credit: Adrian Luckman, Swansea University].
Sentinel 1 SAR image [Credit: Adrian Luckman, Swansea University].
Much of the Antarctic continent is fringed by ice shelves. An ice shelf is the floating extension of a terrestrial ice mass and, as such, is an important ‘middleman’ that regulates the delivery of ice from land into the ocean: for much of Antarctica, ice that passes from land into the sea does so via ice shelves. I’ve been conducting geophysical experiments on ice for over a decade, using mostly s ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Sea-ice dynamics for beginners
A block of ice in a pressure ridge. The scientist has to cross the ridge with equipment to continue measuring the sea-ice thickness on the other side. [Credit: Marius Bratrein, Norwegian Polar Institute]
When I ask school children or people who only know about sea ice from remote references in the newspapers: ‘How thick do you think is the Arctic sea ice?’, I often get surprising answers: ’10 meters? No, it must be thicker – 100 meters!’. It seems like sea ice, often depicted as a uniform white cover around the North Pole and as a key element in accelerated warming of the Polar Regions, imposes a ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Karthaus Summer School 2017
Glaciologists often undertake fieldwork in remote and difficult to access locations, which perhaps explains why they happily travel to similar locations to attend meetings and workshops. The Karthaus Summer School, which focuses on Ice Sheets and Glaciers in the Climate System, is no exception. The idyllic village of Karthaus, located in the narrow Schnalstal valley in Südtirol (Italy), has been h ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Powering up the ground in the search for ice
In an earlier post, we talked briefly about below-ground ice and the consequences of its disappearing. However, to estimate the consequences of disappearing ground ice, one has to know that there actually is ice in the area of study. How much ice is there – and where is it? As the name suggests, below-ground ice is not so easy to spot with the naked eye. Using geophysical methods, however, ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Bioalbedo: algae darken the Greenland Ice Sheet
Fig 1: This aerial image shows the surprisingly dark grey-brown colour of the Greenland Ice Sheet surface, around the ‘Black and Bloom’ camp. [Credit: 'Black and Bloom']
Most of the energy that drives glacier melting comes directly from sunlight, with the amount of melting critically dependent on the amount of solar energy absorbed compared to that reflected back into the atmosphere. The amount of solar energy that is reflected by a surface without being absorbed is called the albedo. A low albedo surface absorbs more of the energy that hits it compared to a high ...[Read More]
Image of the Week – Drilling into a Himalayan glacier
Fig.1: Drilling a borehole on Khumbu Glacier, Nepal Himalaya. In the foreground, the drill stem can be seen hanging off a tripod, attached to a spool of hose. Hot, pressurised water is supplied to these units from a pressure-washer in the background. [Credit: Katie Miles]
How water travels through and beneath the interior of debris-covered glaciers is poorly understood, partly because it can be difficult to access these glaciers at all, never mind explore their interiors. In this Image of the Week, find out how these aspects can be investigated by drilling holes all the way through the ice… Hydrological features of debris-covered glaciers Debris-covered glaciers ca ...[Read More]