Being Green - 20 July 2018
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Antarctic Research Planned to Get a Handle on Climate Change
It’s the depth of mid-winter in the Antarctic now, so research activity is a little curtailed, and those who can carry on in the darkness and the cold are doing so with their usual focused enthusiasm – it’s the only way to go if you’ve got that far.
One of the big questions scientists hope to answer in the near future concerns the Larsen ‘C’ Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea. The Larsen ‘A’ and ‘B’ shelves made headlines a few years ago when they split up, and Larsen ‘C’ , further south, last year hived off the biggest iceberg ever seen, about 6000km of floating ice, estimated at a trillion tonnes. Although these events have been observed by satellite, it’s very difficult to get up close and personal with the ice-shelf in this region of the Antarctic, as the Weddell Sea is notoriously obstructive. Ernest Shackleton and his expedition discovered that to their cost a hundred years ago. And since that time, very few expeditions have done more than skirt around the Weddell Sea.
It’s the depth of mid-winter in the Antarctic now, so research activity is a little curtailed, and those who can carry on in the darkness and the cold are doing so with their usual focused enthusiasm – it’s the only way to go if you’ve got that far.
One of the big questions scientists hope to answer in the near future concerns the Larsen ‘C’ Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea. The Larsen ‘A’ and ‘B’ shelves made headlines a few years ago when they split up, and Larsen ‘C’ , further south, last year hived off the biggest iceberg ever seen, about 6000km of floating ice, estimated at a trillion tonnes. Although these events have been observed by satellite, it’s very difficult to get up close and personal with the ice-shelf in this region of the Antarctic, as the Weddell Sea is notoriously obstructive. Ernest Shackleton and his expedition discovered that to their cost a hundred years ago. And since that time, very few expeditions have done more than skirt around the Weddell Sea.
