THE sea ice ringing Antarctica is revealing its secrets for the first time, thanks to a sub that can rove on its own far under the ice. With its help, scientists are starting to gain a comprehensive picture of Antarctic sea ice thickness – a critical unknown in current climate models.
Polar oceanographer Mark Brandon at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, wanted to fill that gap in the global climate picture. “In the Arctic there have been tens of thousands of kilometres of ice-thickness data collected by nuclear submarines,” he says. “In the Antarctic, sea ice data has been…
