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Antarctica 2006

April 11 - May 6

An international team of researchers, led by Hamilton College Professor of Geosciences Eugene Domack, began a month-long expedition to Antarctica on April 11. They probed deeper into the cause of the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf as well as the Antarctic Peninsula's response to warming.


View daily journal entries and images from the ship.
The researchers spent four weeks onboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer collecting water and core samples, using sonar systems to outline glacial flow patterns and mapping and sampling a newly discovered chemotrophic ecosystem.

The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts northward off the western part of the continent, is experiencing greater warming than almost anywhere on Earth. The peninsula warmed by approximately 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 60 years, and in the past three years the ice shelf decreased by 5,200 square miles. "Our work contributes to the understanding of these climatic changes -- where they are occurring first and with greatest magnitude and impact upon the environment," says Domack.

This project is funded through grants from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs.

View from the ship on the 2005 expedition to Antarctica
(L to R) Heather Schrum, Veronica Willmott and Ashley Hatfield collect samples from the Smith McIntyre grab.

News

 

Collapse of Antarctic Ice Shelf Unprecedented
The Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing greater warming than almost anywhere on Earth, a condition perhaps associated with human-induced greenhouse effects. According to the cover article published by Geosciences Professor Eugene Domack in the August 4, 2005 issue of the journal Nature, the spectacular collapse of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, is unprecedented during the past 10,000 years. More ...

Ecosystem Beneath a Collapsed Antarctic Ice Shelf Discovered
The chance discovery of a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf will allow scientists to explore the uncharted life below Antarctica's floating ice shelves and further probe the origins of life in extreme environments. Researchers on the 2005 expedition discovered the sunless habitat after reviewing a recent underwater video study examining a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea following the sudden Larsen B shelf collapse in 2002. More...