NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is developing robots to gather data beneath Antarctica’s ice shelves » Yale Climate Connections

TRANSCRIPT:

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers are developing robots that can spend months gathering data beneath the massive ice shelves of the Antarctic.

Ice shelves form where land meets sea and extend over the water. They’re fed by ice sheets on land. As the climate changes, warming ocean waters are eating away at the underside of ice shelves. And if they collapse, the melting ice on land will flow much faster into the ocean, dramatically accelerating sea level rise.

So scientists need to better understand how quickly the bottoms of the ice shelves are melting. But it’s a hard place to gather data.

Glick: “The distances are long, temperatures are cold. It’s one of the least explored places on planet Earth.”

Robotics mechanical engineer Paul Glick and his team are developing the IceNode robots.

They’re about eight feet tall, with spring-loaded legs that can attach to the underside of the ice.

The robots have a large battery so they will be able to stay underwater for several months.

Glick: “And that’s really essential because it lets us measure this melt rate over a long period of time and see how things change over daily … and seasonal cycles.”

This data will help scientists better predict how fast seas will rise so coastal communities can prepare.

Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media