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Uncovering secrets of the Antarctic

A Northumbria University academic is to travel to the West Antarctic to investigate ice streams which are critical to understanding how the area as a whole will respond to climate change. Glaciologist Dr John Woodward will use radar and seismics to map and understand the movement of water underneath the ice sheet and look at how that changes the way the ice moves to the sea.

Dr Woodward said: “West Antarctic is potentially highly unstable and may have a major impact on sea level change over the next 200 years. The response of West Antarctica to climate change is the current unknown but there is the potential for catastrophic change. This project is about investigating the controls on this change.’’

Dr Woodward will join two American partners – Dr Slawek Tulaczyk from the University of Santa Cruz in California and Dr Ian Joughin from the University of Washington – in the mission next year and the year after. They will use satellite imagery and global positioning systems to look at changes on the surface of the ice streams. During their stay in West Antarctic the team will endure temperatures of -20° and will live in tents in the field.

Later this year Dr Woodward will be one of a team of scientists on a mission to explore one of the last unchartered corners of the Earth - a subglacial lake buried beneath 3.4km of Antarctic ice. Northumbria is part of consortium of 14 universities, institutions and scientists from Chile, USA, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and New Zealand that aim to be the first to search for life in such an extreme habitat.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .