It’s a fact: Antarctica is melting. According to researchers from Caltech, seawater surrounding the continent is slowly melting the ice. But exactly how did the warmer water come into contact with Antarctica? Using dolphin-like robotic gliders, the researchers have uncovered the answer: storm-like underwater eddies (water flows) are to blame.
The paper, co-authored by Karen Heywood, Andrew Thompson, and others, sheds light on the exact process.
“When you have a melting slab of ice, it can either melt from above because the atmosphere is getting warmer or it can melt from below because the ocean is warm,” explains lead Thompson, the assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at Caltech.
“All of our evidence points to ocean …show more content…
They are small (about five feet long), energy efficient and capable of exploring for much longer durations of time.
They have no propellers, and function by jettisoning seawater to alter its buoyancy. Every few hours, they surface to “call” its parent vessel using a device in the glider’s tail. Researchers can then download all the collected data.
From the information, researchers have found that the warmest water is actually sandwiched between the surface and the depths due to differences in salinity. Underwater eddies (swirling of fluid) are responsible for bringing the warm water up towards the ice sheets.
“Ocean currents are variable, and so if you go just one time, what you measure might not be what the current looks like a day later. It’s sort of like the weather—you know it’s going to be warm in the summer and cold in the winter, but on a day-to-day basis it could be cold in the summer just because a storm came in,” Thompson says. “Eddies do the same thing in the ocean, so unless you understand how the temperature of currents is changing from day to day—information we can actually collect with the gliders—then you can’t understand what the long-term heat transport
The paper, co-authored by Karen Heywood, Andrew Thompson, and others, sheds light on the exact process.
“When you have a melting slab of ice, it can either melt from above because the atmosphere is getting warmer or it can melt from below because the ocean is warm,” explains lead Thompson, the assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at Caltech.
“All of our evidence points to ocean …show more content…
They are small (about five feet long), energy efficient and capable of exploring for much longer durations of time.
They have no propellers, and function by jettisoning seawater to alter its buoyancy. Every few hours, they surface to “call” its parent vessel using a device in the glider’s tail. Researchers can then download all the collected data.
From the information, researchers have found that the warmest water is actually sandwiched between the surface and the depths due to differences in salinity. Underwater eddies (swirling of fluid) are responsible for bringing the warm water up towards the ice sheets.
“Ocean currents are variable, and so if you go just one time, what you measure might not be what the current looks like a day later. It’s sort of like the weather—you know it’s going to be warm in the summer and cold in the winter, but on a day-to-day basis it could be cold in the summer just because a storm came in,” Thompson says. “Eddies do the same thing in the ocean, so unless you understand how the temperature of currents is changing from day to day—information we can actually collect with the gliders—then you can’t understand what the long-term heat transport