An autonomous underwater vehicle, deployed by an international research team to monitor a glacier in Antarctica, has yielded the first detailed maps of the underside of an ice shelf, revealing clues to future sea level rise.
The findings are reported in the journal Science Advances.
“We have previously used satellite data and ice cores to observe how ice shelves change over time,” explains Anna Wåhlin, a professor of oceanography at the University of Gothenburg and the paper’s lead author. “By navigating the submersible into the cavity, we were able to get high resolution maps of the ice underside. It’s a bit like seeing the back of the moon for the first time.”
“Our ability to project the future of the global coastline from rising sea levels in a warming world critically depends on data we obtain from beneath Antarctic ice shelves,” adds David Holland, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and one of the paper’s authors.
The scientists programmed Ran, an autonomous underwater vehicle, to dive into the cavity of Dotson Ice Shelf, 350 meters thick and located in West Antarctica, and scan the ice above it with an advanced sonar system. Dotson Ice Shelf is considered to have a potentially large impact on future sea level rise due to its size and location.
