Antarctic ocean, when defined in three phrases would simply be brutally windy, unfathomably cold, and disturbingly isolated. Not even a single person would deny the fact that Antarctica is the most remote region we aren’t fully familiar with. We may have been furnished with the extreme conditions it is home of, but there would be no arguments or deliberations while claiming that it would be the last place anyone would want to visit unless someone trying to solve a climate change mystery. To explore the unexplored, a Northeastern University’s graduate Alek Razdan in conjunction with professor Hanumant Singh’s research group set sail from New Zealand aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer.
B. Palmer, a type of ship referred to as an icebreaker is believed to be capable of even smash glacial waters. The expedition was the first ever to deploy an underwater robot into the Antarctic Ocean during winter. The study’s focus was to analyse the reverse role of ice in Antarctica as it is expanding unlikely to the conditions of the rest of the world where the statistics are nearly diminishing. By reflecting away the sun’s rays, huge sheets of sea ice assists in cooling the Earth. Formation of ice produces dense waters that sink deep into the ocean. This dense water drives underwater currents in controlling temperatures and climates across the globe.
In a paper published in Science Robotics, Singh and his colleagues described the culmination of all the data they’ve collected so far, writing, “This is the most comprehensive and the only high-resolution 3-D view of Antarctic sea-ice morphology to date.” A side of sea ice that has seemed invisible is displayed by the maps they have spawned. There are deformations under the water surface that couldn’t account for old-school drilling measurements for determining change. Researchers presume that the sea ice is way thicker than they apprehended. There is so much more regional variability than anyone can think.
Harminder Singh