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Thwaites Glacier - Future
Science /
Ice and Snow
Monday May 17, 2021
The massive Thwaites Glacier on the coast of West Antarctica is falling to pieces because of climate change. Shifting ocean currents are bringing warm sea water up under its vulnerable underside, melting out the ice at its base and accelerating its movement into the ocean.
Thwaites Glacier - Present
Science /
Ice and Snow
Monday May 03, 2021
Thwaites Glacier is melting fast because of climate change, causing sea levels to rise the world over. Of all the world's glaciers, it's the one that scientists are most worried that a catastrophic collapse could happen quickly and affect coastal regions everywhere.
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Apr
21
2021
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Thwaites Glacier - Past
Antarctica's massive Thwaites Glacier is melting because of climate change, and if it collapses completely, could add about two feet to global sea level. Glaciologists are tracking it with alarm, as Thwaites has lost a tremendous amount of mass over recent decades, but its remote location in West Antarctica makes getting an up-close look at it extremely difficult.
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Jul
13
2020
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Where the Ice Layers Grow
Hunting for the perfect patch of ice can be a herculean task. Knut Christianson, of the University of Washington, spent three weeks with his research team in a barren and remote part of Antarctica, scouring the landscape for the perfect spot.
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Jan
26
2020
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Hunting For the Oldest Ice
For scientists, ice cores are an indispensable window into the past. A research team using ancient ice recovered from Antarctica, announced recently that they'd identified some of the oldest air samples ever discovered, as far back as 2 million years ago, and that they're going back for more.
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Nov
05
2019
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SALSA Part I: Scratching the Surface
A team of researchers and drilling engineers recently spent six weeks in West Antarctica carefully drilling through nearly a mile of ice to study Mercer Subglacial Lake. This body of water is buried under an ice stream, and likely hasn't seen the light of day for at least thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands, of years.
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Mar
18
2019
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The First Wave of the "Thwaites Invasion"
The U.S. and U.K.-funded International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) officially kicked off its science field research in January, when four researchers and their support teams set foot on a remote, fast-melting glacier in West Antarctica, establishing a beachhead for an unprecedented international project to determine the glacier's fate.
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Jul
26
2018
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Buried Treasure
A team of researchers has brought home samples of some of the oldest ice ever discovered, more than twice as old as most previous samples. In the remote Ong Valley, the team drilled into a bed of ice - that first fell as snow two million years ago, or more.
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Jun
27
2018
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IceBridge Flies High
In late 2017, a specially modified airplane contracted by NASA crisscrossed Antarctica, mapping the ice below and filling in a data gap left by a now-defunct NASA satellite called ICESat, which measured the elevation of the ice surface using a laser. Operation IceBridge flights are bridging the gap between ICESat and its successor, ICESat-2.
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Feb
14
2018
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Circumnavigating the Pole Hole
In January, researchers went for a more than 750-kilometer drive around the South Pole. The team followed the arc of the 88th parallel for a quarter of its distance ringing the South Pole. Their cargo was a sensitive GPS unit to record the exact elevation of the ice sheet they drove over. The effort is in support of NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, a mission devoted to measuring ice levels around the world, particularly in the polar regions.
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Jun
14
2017
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Dating The East Antarctic Ice Sheet
The history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is written in stones along the Transantarctic Mountains. Over the past two years, researchers ventured to remote areas along the mountain range to decipher how high ancient glaciers reached, by studying the rocks they left behind. By measuring the amount of cosmic radiation the rocks have been exposed to, the research team can map out the reach of ancient glaciers at different points in the past.
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Apr
20
2017
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Ancient Ice Levels
Today, a massive sheet of ice covers nearly all of West Antarctica, but it hasn't always been that way. Over the past few hundred thousand years, researchers think that the ice sheets have waxed and waned, varying in size as the region's climate changed. To gather evidence of how dynamic the ice cover has been in the past, John Stone of the University of Washington and his team traveled to a remote region of the continent this past season.
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Sep
27
2016
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Capturing a Collapse
Not much remains of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, but what is left can teach scientists a lot about how mighty masses of ice fall apart, especially when its last lingering sliver finally crumbles. Researchers traveled to the Scar Inlet along the Antarctic Peninsula to study the remnants of the former ice shelf in February to better understand the peril that glaciers around Antarctica are facing.
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Jul
05
2016
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Little Pieces of Outer Space on the Frozen Continent
The Antarctic ice is home to stuff "not of this Earth." Each year, scientists travel to remote sections of the frozen continent to look for these pieces of outer space. They're hunting for meteorites; the charred remains of asteroids and other space debris that fell to Earth. This year, after five weeks out in the field, the eight-person Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) team returned with 569 likely meteorites.
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Apr
12
2016
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Getting to the Bottom of SPICECORE
The South Pole Ice Core project, known more succinctly as SPICECORE, wrapped up its two-year drilling effort at the South Pole in late January, having exceeded even their most ambitious goals. Researchers collected ice samples from 1,751 meters (5,744 feet) below the surface, more than 200 meters (656 feet) deeper than their original target.
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