Shanghai team advances knowledge of ice sheets
By Cai Wenjun |
April 10, 2013, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
SCIENTISTS in Shanghai have used three-dimensional radar to provide more information on how ice sheets grow from the bottom up, according to members of a team that returned from the Antarctic to their city base yesterday on the Xuelong icebreaker.
Ice melts at the bottom of ice sheets, and the water helps the sheets slide across the ground below, according to research published in 2011 in the journal Science. Water can refreeze to the bottom of the sheets and push them up, researchers reported at the time.
However, local scientists contributed to the knowledge of this process by using advanced radar imaging.
The images provide information "on the stability of the ice sheets and their effect on sea levels, which have a critical effect on climate change," said Sun Bo, vice head of the expedition team. "Current uncertainty about sea levels is exactly from our poor understanding of ice sheets."
The expedition also collected a deep ice core at the Dome A ice plateau.
It can reveal climate information from thousands of years ago, Sun said.
Ice melts at the bottom of ice sheets, and the water helps the sheets slide across the ground below, according to research published in 2011 in the journal Science. Water can refreeze to the bottom of the sheets and push them up, researchers reported at the time.
However, local scientists contributed to the knowledge of this process by using advanced radar imaging.
The images provide information "on the stability of the ice sheets and their effect on sea levels, which have a critical effect on climate change," said Sun Bo, vice head of the expedition team. "Current uncertainty about sea levels is exactly from our poor understanding of ice sheets."
The expedition also collected a deep ice core at the Dome A ice plateau.
It can reveal climate information from thousands of years ago, Sun said.
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