Robot Gliders Explain How Antarctic Ice Melts
With the help of underwater robot gliders, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have put together the most detailed picture yet of what might be going on beneath the surface of the Southern Ocean. The fact that the ice sheet on the coast of West Antarctica has begun melting at unprecedented rates has been a priority for scientists lately. In fact in May, NASA glaciologists declared the catastrophic melt of the ice sheet to be “unstoppable.”
Released and controlled by researchers at the University of East Anglia in England and the California Institute of Technology, the robotic gliders are able to explore underwater for long periods of time, rising only periodically in order to beam back the collected data, regarding temperature, salinity or current movement, via satellites and cell towers.