Pine Island Glacier (A marks the spot)

Ocean2ice@URI is an investigation of glacial ice in the ocean around Antarctica. The Pine Island Glacier is the fastest melting glacier on Antarctica. It appears the melt is being caused by warm ocean water penetrating beneath the glacier. We will be using geochemical tracer recipes to map glacial melt and warm ocean water as they mix beneath the glacier and in Pine Island Bay.

Ocean2ice@URI is funded by the National Science Foundation, and is part of the UK-based iSTAR program (iSTAR: NERC Ice Sheet Stability Programme). Notice how “program” is spelled? – That’s how we know its UK-based.

[Source:iSTAR] Our mission is to improve understanding of what’s happening to the area of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where the greatest rates of ice loss over the last decades have been observed. New knowledge about the stability of this ice sheet is critical for making better predictions about how the ocean and ice will respond to environmental change, and what impact this may have on future sea level.


Geotracerkitchen Recipe: Measure equal parts helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon in seawater to get an estimate of melted glacial ice in seawater.