Submarine reveals true state of Antarctic sea ice

• Main Authors: Williams, GD, Ackley, S
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Australian Geographic 2014
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; Glaciology; Antarctic; Bellingshausen Sea; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Wilkes Land; Antarc*; Antarctica; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://ecite.utas.edu.au/97128

A THOROUGH STUDY of the dark side of Antarctic sea ice has revealed the ice is thicker and more deformed than previously thought.An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) sent to explore Antarctic waters on the coastal regions of the Weddell Sea, the Bellingshausen Sea and off Wilkes Land in eastern Antarctica, has returned data showing sea-ice up to 16m thick and that three-quarters of it is deformed."Much in the same way a new microscope (or telescope) lets us see so much more, and then understand so much more.the 3D maps produced by the AUV provides a completely new view of sea ice structure and will inevitably lead to far greater understanding of the processes driving it," says Dr. Guy Williams, an oceanographer from the University of Tasmania, who co-led the study appearing this week in the journal Nature Geosciences.