Last Season for Decade-Long Ice Shelf Project
03.11.2009 - Atmosphere & Space, Water & Oceans, Land & Geology, Ice & Snow, Flora & Fauna, Other, Antarctic
This year, Australian researchers will return to the Amery Ice Shelf, the largest ice sheld in East Antarctica, to finish a decade-long project studying the effects of climate change. Known as AMISOR (Amery Ice Shelf Ocean Research), the program for this season will have scientists measuring and sampling through the Amery Ice Shelf at several test sites through an average ice thickness of 650 metres.
The program, which aims to provide information on the climate history of the area and its possible response to global warming, has directly measured ocean characteristics, sea water circulation and melt-freeze processes at the base of the ice shelf, and will also sample sea-floor sediments at depths up to 1,000 metres below the top of the ice shelf.
Recent observations in the region found that parts of the ice shelf were permeable and proved the existence of previously unreported complex sea-floor communities, providing a more favourable context for the estimation of future changes and their consequences. Antarctic ice shelves such as the Amery Ice Shelf are important to the climate system and the multi-disciplinary approach of the AMISOR project provides a more comprehensive picture on which to base future estimates of climate.
