Robot Submarine to Explore Melting underneath West Antarctic Ice Sheet
02.10.2009 - Water & Oceans, Land & Geology, Ice & Snow, Other, Antarctic
Geologists from Northern Illinois University in partnership with researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Montana State University and several others will be undertaking a five-year investigation of melting at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Dubbed WISSARD, (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling), the multi-million dollar project funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) will make use of a 24 foot (7.3 metre) long collapsible robotic submarine.
Once reduced to its two-foot collapsed size, the submarine will be able to be lowered through a drill hole melted through the ice. The device, which was built by the California-based Deep Ocean Exploration and Research (DOER) Marine, will be equipped with lights, sonar and instrumentation to collect samples.
The new technology will now offer the possibility to observe the melting at the interface between seawater and the base of the glacial ice, as well as investigate the sea bed and sediment layers underneath. In exploring the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, one of the last untouched aquatic environments on Earth, the device is expected to shed new light on the dynamics of subglacial lakes and the complex community of microbial life they host.
While one of the major objectives of the project is to reach the bottom of the Ross Ice Shelf, the data to be collected is widely expected to help climate modellers improve their projections of future sea level rise.
