image: Anna Wåhlin, Professor of Oceanography at the University of Gothenburg.
Credit: Johan Wingborg
Antarctica’s glaciers are deteriorating at different rates. Now, a research project led by the University of Gothenburg aims to find out why. A new underwater vehicle, purchased to replace Ran after it disappeared beneath a floating glacier in 2024, could provide answers.
On the surface, two glaciers in Antarctica may look identical. But while one is wasting away due to global warming, the other may remain almost intact. The European Research Council has awarded €14 million to polar researchers from four European universities to find out why.
The focus of the research project is the 400-kilometre-long Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. An ice shelf is the outermost part of a glacier that has extended from the land into the sea, where it floats on the seawater – a floating glacier.
Rising sea levels
The ice shelf acts as a protective barrier, preventing the glacier behind it from sliding into the sea too quickly.
“Despite their enormous importance, we still don’t fully understand what affects the stability of these vast ice shelves. Without this knowledge, we cannot make reliable predictions about future sea-level rise,” says Anna Wåhlin, Professor of Oceanography at the University of Gothenburg and corresponding principal investigator of the research project.
The researchers will therefore study processes beneath, on top of and within the ice – and how these processes interact. Warm seawater flows into cavities beneath the ice, melting the ice and weakening it from below. Increasing snowfall makes the ice heavier, possibly leading to more melting and weakening it from above. Cracks, channels and shearing weaken the ice from within.
The data collected during the project will also be important for assessing the future of other glaciers in Antarctica, such as Thwaites Glacier, also known as the Doomsday Glacier. Thwaites Glacier is enormous, and its collapse could have major consequences for sea levels.
New underwater robot go beneath the ice
“Our hypothesis is that the hidden structure within the ice shelves determines how external influences from the ocean and atmosphere cause them to break down. Hopefully, the data we collect will give us a better understanding of this,” says Anna Wåhlin.
Anna Wåhlin will be using the underwater robot Ran II, a replacement for Ran, which disappeared beneath the Dotson Ice Shelf in January 2024. Like its predecessor, Ran II will be sent beneath the ice shelf to map its underside and investigate how ocean currents affect melting.
“From the outside, it might seem completely crazy to send another extremely expensive robot beneath several hundred metres of thick ice. But it is the only way to collect the data we need on how ocean currents affect melting. The alternative would be to stop doing this research because it is too expensive and risky. Fortunately, there are organisations that fund high-risk research,” says Anna Wåhlin.
Bringing together different areas of expertise
The researchers will make several expeditions to Antarctica over the six years of the project. The first expedition is scheduled for early 2028.
“That is why large European grants like this are so important. Existing observations and models cannot capture these interacting processes. We are therefore putting together an entirely new team with expertise in different fields, including oceanography, meteorology, glaciology, satellite data and modelling,” says Anna Wåhlin, who is now planning her ninth expedition to Antarctica.
Facts: Research project Stability and Known Unknowns of Antarctic ice shelves (SKUA)
ERC Synergy is one of the EU’s larger funding schemes for fundamental science research. Its aim is to bring together researchers with different areas of expertise to tackle complex problems that no individual researcher or institution could solve alone. All prinicipal investigators must be among the best in their respective fields.
Principal investigators (PI):
- Anna Wåhlin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- Ruth Mottram, Danish Meteorological Institute, Denmark
- Roderik Van de Wal, The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Netherlands
- Peter Davis, British Antarctic Survey, United Kingdom