Antarctic climate study enters deep freeze

Australia is launching a globally significant research campaign in remote Antarctica to understand a ‘canary in the coal mine’ of catastrophic climate change: a glacier holding 1.5m of potential sea level rise.

The Denman Glacier in East Antarctica. Picture: NASA / AFP

Australia is launching a globally significant campaign in Antarctica to understand a ­“canary in the coal mine” of catastrophic climate change: a glacier that could result in a sea level rise of 1.5m.

The research collaboration will next summer deploy 40 scientists and support personnel to a camp near Denman Glacier, East Antarctica – 450km from the nearest research station.

Prefabricated “melon” huts and tent bases were set up at the camp in the Bunger Hills over the summer just gone, in readiness for the land-based science blitz over six weeks next summer.

Three Antarctic research bodies will combine for a vast array of studies, from icecore drilling to wildlife and microbial surveys and use of airborne radar. It will be followed in the 2024-25 summer with a ship-based blitz of similar scale, as part of an effort to determine the scale of threat posed by East Antarctic glacier melt.

“We already know the Denman Glacier is vulnerable to ­climate change and holds a potential sea level rise of 1.5m,” said Australian Antarctic Division chief scientist Nicole Webster.

“Field work and research will address the risk of ice mass loss on timescales from the next few decades to centuries.”

The Denman Glacier is part of the East Antarctic ice sheet ­recently identified as one of 16 “tipping elements” for high-­impact climate change.

Professor Webster said the hope was to replicate the kind of concerted effort already underway to determine the likely extent of loss of the so-called “doomsday” Thwaites Glacier, in West Antarctica.

“One of the primary objectives of this campaign is to improve the projections and lower the uncertainty about the behaviour of the ice sheet and how it’s going to contribute to sea level rise,” she said.

“It is one of the most critical current Antarctic research questions: what is the contribution of the East Antarctic ice sheet, ­including the Denman Glacier, to sea level rise? Are there going to be tipping points?

 

“These questions need to be answered – by analysing ice and rock cores, to not only study ­current change over the last ­couple of decades, but to look deep into the past.”

Duanne White, co-ordinating the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science’s ­involvement of the campaign, said there were similarities between the “doomsday” Thwaites glacier and the Denman.

“It’s been subject to the same sorts of processes and has the same geography, in terms of a large marine basin where the land goes well below sea level,” Dr White said.

“It’s one of the basins in East Antarctica which could potentially contribute up to 15m of sea level, if they were all to collectively go. It’s one of the canaries in the coal mine.”

Setting up the deep-field camp at Bunger Hills took a small team of trades and field personnel 55 days during December and January, often in challenging conditions, including winds up to 100km/h.

Research at Denman Glacier will include drilling and analysis of ice cores, analysis of subglacial hydrology and composition, study of sediments and deeper-earth geology, ocean circulation and biogeochemical analysis, airborne radar, and deployment of autonomous monitoring equipment.