A new underwater robot allowed researchers to create a 3D map of Antarctic sea ice, revealing some surprisingly thick sea ice.
The robot allows scientists to measure ice thickness in previously inaccessible regions, allowing them to gain more insight into the effects of global climate change, the British Antarctic Survey reported.
Researchers can measure large-scale ice thickness from space, but snow cover can often interfere with the accuracy of this data. The ice cover can also be assessed from boats, but they are limited in what regions they can access.
The new Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) known as SeaBED went below the surface and looked at the ice cover using upward-peering sonar in order to fill in some of the data gaps.
"SeaBED's maneuverability and stability made it ideal for this application where we were doing detailed floe-scale mapping and deploying, as well as recovering in close-packed ice conditions. It would have been tough to do many of the missions we did, especially under the conditions we encountered, with some of the larger vehicles," said Hanumant Singh, an engineering scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) whose lab designed, built and operated the AUV.
The data from SeaBed, combined with other methods of ice measurement, is expected to dramatically increase researchers' knowledge of total sea ice volume and thickness.
"The AUV missions have given us a real insight into the nature of Antarctic sea ice - like looking through a microscope. We can now measure ice in far greater detail and were excited to measure ice up to 17 meters thick," said co-author Jeremy Wilkinson from British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
In the future the researchers plan to perform large-scale surveys using the technology that can be compared to other methods of measurement.
The findings were published Nov. 24 in the journal Nature Geosciences.
