Marcus Butler
20 October 2015: The impact of climate on the Antarctic ice sheet will soon be determined more accurately thanks to a University of Canberra scientist and colleagues, who are analysing and dating the ice and rocks to assist future environmental modelling.
Assistant professor Duanne White at the University’s Institute for Applied Ecology and colleagues at the University of Tasmania and Durham University have received $148,000 from the Australian Government’s Antarctic Science Grant Program.
The overall project, led by University of Tasmania researcher Professor Matt King, aims to establish a better estimate of East Antarctica's contribution to present-day sea level rise, and to improve satellite measurement of changes to the ice sheet.
Dr White’s role in the project will involve dating boulders left behind by the ice sheet to measure how much and how fast the ice sheet has retreated since the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago.
Leaving in December, he will spend two months in Antarctica, where he will collect evidence of changes in the ice coverage in the East Antarctic region.
The Australian Antarctic Division will provide significant logistical support to enable Dr White and his colleagues to visit ice free areas and islands along 1,000 kilometres of rarely visited coastline, south of the Indian Ocean.
Dr White’s work will also contribute to our understanding of whether the topography beneath the ice sheet in this area makes it a candidate for future rapid ice loss.
“I’m interested to see if the areas of the ice sheet that sit on bedrock above sea-level respond as quickly to climate changes as those that drain through deep troughs,” Dr White explained.
His colleagues will be measuring ice thickness and its change over time in order to improve ice sheet reconstructions and determine a better estimate of East Antarctica's contribution to present-day sea level rise.
It will be Dr White’s fourth trip to the continent, with his previous research looking at contaminant remediation around Antarctic stations.
