Ice Change

In April 2008, an airship dubbed Dirigeable is slated to fly from Spitsbergen to the Canadian coast via the North Pole, and then on to Alaska. Along the way, an onboard electromagnetic sensor, "EM-Bird," will continually measure ice thickness across the Arctic.

The resulting dataset will help scientists determine how the ice has changed over time and also will serve as a reference point for future projects. "There is almost no information about regional distribution of ice thickness in the Arctic and Antarctic", said Christian Haas, a geophysicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. "This lack of knowledge is a consequence of major methodological problems associated with measuring ice floes of only several meters thickness, and of the logistical difficulties of venturing into the central Arctic."

How ice cover in the Arctic is changing is a key question in climate-change research and thus among the core research topics of the International Polar Year from 2007 to 2008. The project is funded by the French oil company Total.  

--LiveScience Staff

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Credit: Total