NSF VIDEO: DISCOVER MADE BENEATH ANTARCTICA'S MCMURDO DRY VALLEYS

NSF VIDEO: UNMANNED UNDERWATER VEHICLE TESTED BENEATH ANTARCTICA

NSF VIDEO: SCIENCE NATION - ANTARCTICA ROCKS

NASA SCIENTISTS RETURN FROM ANTARTICA

FROM:  NASA 

NASA aircraft and scientists have returned to the United States after a short ice-surveying mission to Antarctica. Despite having only a week of flying time, the team returned with crucial scientific data and a trove of spectacular aerial photographs.

The flights over Antarctica were part of Operation IceBridge, a multi-year mission to monitor conditions in Antarctica and the Arctic until a new ice-monitoring satellite, ICESat-2, launches in 2016. ICESat-1 was decommissioned in 2009, and IceBridge aircraft have been flying ever since.

Previous Antarctic IceBridge flights took off from Punta Arenas, Chile, but this time NASA’s P-3 took off from the sea ice runway at McMurdo Station, a first for the team. Operated by the National Science Foundation, the station is located on Antarctica’s Ross Island. Flying from McMurdo meant the IceBridge team was able to survey some areas that were unreachable from Chile.

In 43 hours across five science flights in late November, the P-3 collected more than 20,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) worth of science data. Instruments gathered information about the thickness of the ice over subglacial lakes, mountains, coasts, and frozen seas.

Laser altimeter and radar data are the primary products of the mission, but IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger almost always has his digital camera ready as well. On November 24, 2013, he took the top photograph of a multi-layered lenticular cloud hovering near Mount Discovery, a volcano about 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of McMurdo. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured a wider satellite view (second image) of McMurdo and New Zealand’s nearby Scott Base on November 30, 2013.

Lenticular clouds are a type of wave cloud. They usually form when a layer of air near the surface encounters a topographic barrier, gets pushed upward, and flows over it as a series of atmospheric gravity waves. Lenticular clouds form at the crest of the waves, where the air is coolest and water vapor is most likely to condense into cloud droplets. The bulging sea ice in the foreground is a pressure ridge, which formed when separate ice flows collided and piled up on each other.  Image Credit: Michael Studinger Caption: Adam Voiland.

NSF TO EXPLORE LIFE INT THE OCEAN ABYSS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 
Into the abyss: Scientists explore one of Earth's deepest ocean trenches
What lives in the deepest part of the ocean--the abyss?

A team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) will use the world's only full-ocean-depth, hybrid, remotely-operated vehicle, Nereus, and other advanced technology to find out. They will explore the Kermadec Trench at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The trench, located off New Zealand, is the fifth deepest trench in the world. Its maximum depth is 32,963 feet or 6.24 miles (10,047 meters). It's also one of the coldest trenches due to the inflow of deep waters from Antarctica.

The 40-day expedition to the Kermadec Trench, which begins on April 12, 2014, kicks off a three-year collaborative effort.

The project, known as the Hadal Ecosystem Studies Project (HADES), will conduct the first systematic study of life in ocean trenches, comparing it to the neighboring abyssal plains--flat areas of the seafloor usually found at depths between 9,843 and 19,685 feet (3,000 and 6,000 meters).

"The proposal to study the deep-sea environment as part of HADES was high-risk, but, we hope, also high-reward," says David Garrison, program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funds HADES. "Through this exciting project, we will shine a light into the darkness of Earth's deep-ocean trenches, discovering surprising results all along the way."

Among least-explored environments on Earth

A result of extreme pressures in these deep-sea environments and the technical challenges involved in reaching them, ocean trenches remain among the least-explored environments on the planet.

"We know relatively little about life in ocean trenches--the deepest marine habitats on Earth," says Tim Shank, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the participating organizations.

"We didn't have the technology to do these kinds of detailed studies before. This will be a first-order look at community structure, adaptation and evolution: how life exists in the trenches."

NSF HADES principal investigators are Shank, Jeff Drazen of the University of Hawaii and Paul Yancey of Whitman College.

Other participating researchers are Malcolm Clark and Ashley Rowden of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, Henry Ruhl of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, Alan Jamieson and Daniel Mayor of the University of Aberdeen and collaborators from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Oregon.

Telepresence technology aboard the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson will allow the public to share in the discoveries. Live-streaming Web events from the seafloor will include narration from the science team.

The researchers' work will also be chronicled in video, still images and blog updates on the expedition website.

How does life exist in a deep-sea trench?

What marine animals live in the Kermadec Trench, and how do they survive the crushing pressures found at that depth--some 15,000 pounds per square inch? These are among the questions the scientists will try to answer.

The biologists plan to conduct research at 15 stations, including sites in shallow water for testing purposes, sites along the trench axis and sites in the abyssal plain.

At each one, they will deploy free-falling, full-ocean-depth, baited imaging landers called Hadal-Landers and "elevators" outfitted with experimental equipment--including respirometers to see how animal metabolism functions, plus water-sampling bottles to investigate microbial activity.

The team will use Nereus, which can remain deployed for up to 12 hours, to collect biological and sediment samples.

Nereus will stream imagery from its video camera to the ship via a fiber-optic filament about the width of human hair.

The expedition will build on earlier studies of the Kermadec Trench by Jamieson and colleagues at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and the University of Tokyo. Using the Hadal-Lander, they documented new species of animals in the Kermadec and other trenches in the Pacific.

Ocean trenches: home to unique species

Once thought devoid of life, trenches may be home to many unique species. There is growing evidence that food is plentiful there. While it is still unclear why, organic material in the ocean may be transported by currents and deposited into the trenches.

In addition to looking at how food supply varies at different depths, the researchers will investigate the role energy demand and metabolic rates of trench organisms play in animal community structure.

"The energy requirements of hadal animals have never been measured," says Drazen, who will lead efforts to study distribution of food supply and the energetic demands of the trench organisms.

How animals in the trenches evolved to withstand high pressures is unknown, but Shank's objective is to compare the genomes of trench animals to piece together how they can survive there.

"The challenge is to determine whether life in the trenches holds novel evolutionary pathways that are distinct from others in the oceans," he says.

Water pressure, which at depths found in ocean trenches can be up to 1,100 times that at the surface, is known to inhibit the activity of certain proteins.

Yancey will investigate the role that piezolytes--small molecules that protect proteins from pressure--play in the adaptation of trench animals. Piezolytes, which Yancey discovered, may explain previous findings that not all deep-sea proteins are able to withstand high pressures.

"We're trying to understand how life can function under massive pressures in the hadal zone," says Yancey. "Pressure might be the primary factor determining which species are able to live in these extreme environments."

Trenches and climate change

Evidence also suggests that trenches act as carbon sinks, making the research relevant to climate change studies. The V-shaped topography along trench axes funnels resources--including surface-derived organic carbon--downward.

"The bulk of our knowledge of trenches is only from snapshot visits using mostly trawls and camera landers," Shank says.

"Only detailed systematic studies will reveal the role trenches may play as the final location of where most of the carbon and other chemicals are sequestered in the oceans."

-NSF-

MODIS IMAGE SHOWS LARGE ICEBERG SEPARATING FROM PINE ISLAND GLACIER IN ANTARCTICA

FROM:  NASA  
Pine Island Glacier 2013: Nov. 10

This MODIS image taken by NASA’s Aqua satellite on Nov. 10, 2013, shows an iceberg that was part of the Pine Island Glacier and is now separating from the Antarctica continent.  What appears to be a connection point on the top left portion of the iceberg is actually ice debris floating in the water.

The original rift that formed the iceberg was first observed in October 2011 but as the disconnection was not complete, the “birth” of the iceberg had not yet happened. It is believed the physical separation took place on or about July 10, 2013, however the iceberg persisted in the region, adjacent to the front of the glacier.
The iceberg is estimated to be 21 miles by 12 miles (35 km by 20 km) in size, roughly the size of Singapore. A team of scientists from Sheffield and Southampton universities will track it and try to predict its path using satellite data.  Image credit: NASA

DISCOVERY MAY CHANGE THEORIES ON GALAXY EVOLUTION

A galaxy cluster was discovered by this 10-meter wide South Pole Telescope, which is located at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica and funded by NSF's Office of Polar Programs. NSF manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. research and required logistical support on the continent as well as aboard ships in the Southern Ocean.  Credit: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation

FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
National Science Foundation-funded radio telescope in Antarctica has found an extraordinary galaxy cluster that may force astronomers to rethink how galaxy clusters and the galaxies that inhabit them evolve.
　
The galaxy cluster was discovered some 5.7 billion light years from Earth by the 10-meter wide South Pole Telescope (SPT) located at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, which is funded by NSF's Office of Polar Programs.
　
NSF manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S research and required logistical support on the continent as well as aboard ships in the Southern Ocean.
　
Officially known as SPT-CLJ2344-4243, the cluster has been dubbed the "Phoenix Cluster" because it is located in the constellation of the Phoenix and because of its remarkable properties. Scientists taking part in the SPT collaboration found the cluster using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, the result of high energy electrons distorting the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation through inverse Compton scattering, in which the low energy CMB photons receive an average energy boost during collision with the high energy cluster electrons.
　
Galaxy clusters, which are among the largest objects in the universe, contain enough hot gas to create detectable "shadows" in the light left over from the Big Bang, which also is known as CMB radiation.
　
"The mythology of the Phoenix--a bird rising from the dead--is a perfect way to describe this revived object," said Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the lead author of a paper appearing in the August 16 issue of the journal Nature. "While galaxies at the center of most clusters have been dead for billions of years, the central galaxy in this cluster seems to have come back to life."
　
Observations made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in space and by the NSF-managed Gemini Observatory and the Blanco 4-meter and Magellan telescopes in Chile corroborate the SPT discovery and show that stars are forming in this object at the highest rate ever seen in the middle of a galaxy cluster. The object also is the most powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster, and among the most massive of clusters. The data also suggest that the rate of hot gas cooling in the central regions of the cluster is the largest ever observed.
　
This light has travelled for 14 billion years across the entire observable universe to get to Earth. If it passes through a massive cluster on its way, then a tiny fraction of the light gets scattered to higher energies--the SZ effect.
　
Predicted in 1972, the SZ effect was first demonstrated to detect previously unknown clusters of galaxies by the SPT collaboration in 2009. Observations of the effect have since opened a new window for astronomers to discover the most massive, distant clusters in the universe.
　
"The beauty of the SZ effect for cosmology is that it is as easy to detect a cluster of galaxies in the distant reaches of the observable universe as it is for one nearby," said John Carlstrom, the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago and the SPT's principal investigator. "The magnitude of the effect depends on the mass of the object and not its distance from Earth."
　
Like other galaxy clusters, Phoenix contains a vast reservoir of hot gas, containing more normal matter than all of the galaxies in the cluster combined. The emission from this reservoir can only be detected with X-ray telescopes like NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The prevailing wisdom had once been that this hot gas should cool over time and sink to the center of the cluster, forming huge numbers of stars.
　
However, central galaxies in the cluster have formed very few stars over the last few billion years. Astronomers think that the super-massive black hole in the central galaxy of a cluster pumps energy into the system, preventing cooling of gas from causing a burst of star formation. The famous Perseus Cluster is an example of a black hole bellowing out energy and preventing the gas from cooling to form stars at a high rate.
　
With the black hole not producing powerful enough jets to halt cooling, the center of the Phoenix cluster is buzzing with stars that are forming 20 times faster than in the Perseus Cluster. This rate is the highest seen in the center of a galaxy cluster and is comparable to the highest seen anywhere in the universe.
　
The frenetic pace of star birth and cooling of gas in Phoenix are causing both the galaxy and the black hole to add mass very quickly--an important phase that the researchers predict will be relatively short-lived.
　
"The galaxy and its black hole are undergoing unsustainable growth," said co-author Bradford Benson, of the University of Chicago. "This growth spurt can't last longer than about a hundred million years; otherwise the galaxy and black hole would become much bigger than their counterparts in the nearby universe."
　
Remarkably, the Phoenix Cluster and its central galaxy and super-massive black hole are already among the most massive known objects of their type. Because of their tremendous size, galaxy clusters are crucial objects for studying cosmology and galaxy evolution, so finding one with such extreme properties as the Phoenix Cluster is significant.
　
The SPT collaboration has now completed an SZ survey of the 2500 square degrees of the southern sky that began in February 2007. It has found approximately 500 "SZ effect" galaxy clusters and published more than 20 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Further analysis of the collected data could reveal the existence of additional galaxy clusters.
　
The NSF-funded Physics Frontier Center of the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, the Kavli Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation also provide partial support for the SPT.

NASA : STUDY FINDS ANCIENT WARMING GREENED ANTARCTICA

Photo:  Antarctic Sea Ice.  Credit:  NASA
FROM: NASA 
WASHINGTON -- A new university-led study with NASA participation finds ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously 
suspected. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation
-- including stunted trees -- along the edges of the frozen
continent.

The team of scientists involved in the study, published online June 17
in Nature Geoscience, was led by Sarah J. Feakins of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and included researchers from 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Louisiana
State University in Baton Rouge.

By examining plant leaf wax remnants in sediment core samples taken
from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the research team found summer
temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15 to 20 million years ago
were 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than today,
with temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7
degrees Celsius). Precipitation levels also were found to be several
times higher than today.

"The ultimate goal of the study was to better understand what the
future of climate change may look like," said Feakins, an assistant
professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters,
Arts and Sciences. "Just as history has a lot to teach us about the
future, so does past climate. This record shows us how much warmer
and wetter it can get around the Antarctic ice sheet as the climate
system heats up. This is some of the first evidence of just how much
warmer it was."

Scientists began to suspect that high-latitude temperatures during the
middle Miocene epoch were warmer than previously believed when
co-author Sophie Warny, assistant professor at LSU, discovered large
quantities of pollen and algae in sediment cores taken around
Antarctica. Fossils of plant life in Antarctica are difficult to come
by because the movement of the massive ice sheets covering the
landmass grinds and scrapes away the evidence.

"Marine sediment cores are ideal to look for clues of past vegetation,
as the fossils deposited are protected from ice sheet advances, but
these are technically very difficult to acquire in the Antarctic and
require international collaboration," said Warny.

Tipped off by the tiny pollen samples, Feakins opted to look at the
remnants of leaf wax taken from sediment cores for clues. Leaf wax
acts as a record of climate change by documenting the hydrogen
isotope ratios of the water the plant took up while it was alive.

"Ice cores can only go back about one million years," Feakins said.
"Sediment cores allow us to go into 'deep time.'"

Based upon a model originally developed to analyze hydrogen isotope
ratios in atmospheric water vapor data from NASA's Aura spacecraft,
co-author and JPL scientist Jung-Eun Lee created experiments to find
out just how much warmer and wetter climate may have been.

"When the planet heats up, the biggest changes are seen toward the
poles," Lee said. "The southward movement of rain bands associated
with a warmer climate in the high-latitude southern hemisphere made
the margins of Antarctica less like a polar desert, and more like
present-day Iceland."

The peak of this Antarctic greening occurred during the middle Miocene
period, between 16.4 and 15.7 million years ago. This was well after
the age of the dinosaurs, which became extinct 64 million years ago.
During the Miocene epoch, mostly modern-looking animals roamed Earth,
such as three-toed horses, deer, camel and various species of apes.
Modern humans did not appear until 200,000 years ago.

Warm conditions during the middle Miocene are thought to be associated
with carbon dioxide levels of around 400 to 600 parts per million
(ppm). In 2012, carbon dioxide levels have climbed to 393 ppm, the
highest they've been in the past several million years. At the
current rate of increase, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are on
track to reach middle Miocene levels by the end of this century.

High carbon dioxide levels during the middle Miocene epoch have been
documented in other studies through multiple lines of evidence,
including the number of microscopic pores on the surface of plant
leaves and geochemical evidence from soils and marine organisms.
While none of these 'proxies' is as reliable as the bubbles of gas
trapped in ice cores, they are the best evidence available this far
back in time. While scientists do not yet know precisely why carbon
dioxide was at these levels during the middle Miocene, high carbon
dioxide, together with the global warmth documented from many parts
of the world and now also from the Antarctic region, appear to
coincide during this period in Earth's history.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation with
additional support from NASA. The California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

100TH ANNIVERSARY OF RACE TO THE SOUTH POLE

Photo:  Supply Delivery To Antarctica.  Credit:  U.S. Air Force.
FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
May 31, 2012
A Legacy of the Race to the South Pole: New Scientific Discoveries in Antarctica
Forbidding though Antarctica is, the stations located there are nevertheless irresistibly inviting to scientists, as Antarctica supports a cornucopia of unique life forms, geologic wonders, and marine and atmospheric conditions

This winter marks the 100th anniversary of the race to the South Pole. After crossing Antarctica-the coldest, windiest, driest continent on Earth-the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team arrived at the geographic South Pole on Dec. 14, 1911, the first people in history to reach the bottom of the Earth.

About one month later, on January 17, 1912, the British explorer Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his party arrived at the South Pole to discover that Amundsen had beaten them there. Sadly, Scott died on the ice while attempting to return from the Pole. Nevertheless, the work of the Scott team on their trek to and from the Pole-including hauling 35 pounds of rock and fossil specimens on their return journey-helped lay the foundation for modern Antarctic science.

If Amundsen and Scott could somehow magically be transported back to the South Pole now, they would probably be amazed and honored to discover that the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a massive, two-story, science-support structure, overlooks the spot they worked so hard to reach. Nearby is a 10-meter radio telescope that is currently being used to study the nature of mysterious dark matter.  Below the surface of the ice sheet ice is a cube-shaped detector--a kilometer on each side--searching for elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos.

Amundsen-Scott is one of three year-round stations operated by the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), which is managed by NSF under terms of Presidential Memorandum 6646. The other stations are McMurdo Station on Ross Island and Palmer Station on Anvers Island in the Antarctic Peninsula Region.

Forbidding though Antarctica is, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, McMurdo Station and Palmer Station are nevertheless irresistibly inviting to scientists because Antarctica supports a cornucopia of fantastic life forms, geologic wonders, and marine and atmospheric conditions that are found nowhere else on Earth.

For example, researchers are studying adaptations that enable various life-forms-from microorganisms to penguins to seals-to survive in Antarctica, and how research into those adaptations may ultimately benefit human health. Researchers are even looking at the living and working conditions of research teams already in Antarctica to get a better understanding for how people can survive in such extreme ecosystems.

Some Antarctic species, despite their adaptations, are under particular stress. The retreat of sea ice in some parts of Antarctica are critically affecting two penguin species with particularly restricted ranges, and recent warming of water temperatures may be influencing the proliferation of undersea giants, including extremely large sea stars, jellyfish and sea spiders.

                                          Photo:  Break-up Of Antarctic Sea-Ice,  Credit:  NASA 

Scientists are also investigating global changes for which Antarctica provides an ideal study site, such as the current state of our planet's ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet radiation, and the impacts that are emerging as global climate changes. Observations of Antarctica's response to a warming globe-such as ocean acidification and the calving of glaciers off of continental ice sheets-are important for understanding such factors as the effects of ice retreat on global sea level and, more broadly, serve as bellwethers for the planet as a whole.

WARM OCEAN CURRENTS CAUSE MAJORITY OF ICE LOSS FROM ANTARCTICA

FROM:   NASA

WASHINGTON -- Warm ocean currents attacking the underside of ice 
shelves are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, a 
new study using measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land 
Elevation Satellite (ICESat) revealed. 

An international team of scientists used a combination of satellite 
measurements and models to differentiate between the two known causes 
of melting ice shelves: warm ocean currents thawing the underbelly of 
the floating extensions of ice sheets and warm air melting them from 
above. The finding, published today in the journal Nature, brings 
scientists a step closer to providing reliable projections of future 
sea level rise. 

The researchers concluded 20 of the 54 ice shelves studied are being 
melted by warm ocean currents. Most of these are in West Antarctica, 
where inland glaciers flowing down to the coast and feeding into 
these thinning ice shelves have accelerated, draining more ice into 
the sea and contributing to sea-level rise. This ocean-driven 
thinning is responsible for the most widespread and rapid ice losses 
in West Antarctica and the majority of Antarctic ice sheet loss 
during the period studied. 

"We can lose an awful lot of ice to the sea without ever having 
summers warm enough to make the snow on top of the glaciers melt," 
said the study's lead author Hamish Pritchard of the British 
Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, United Kingdom. "The oceans can do all 
the work from below." 

To map the changing thickness of almost all the floating ice shelves 
around Antarctica, the team used a time series of 4.5 million surface 
height measurements taken by a laser instrument mounted on ICESat 
from October 2003 to October 2008. They measured how the ice shelf 
height changed over time and ran computer models to discard changes 
in ice thickness because of natural snow accumulation and compaction. 
The researchers also used a tide model that eliminated height changes 
caused by tides raising and lowering the ice shelves. 

"This study demonstrates the power of space-based, laser altimetry for 
understanding Earth processes," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program 
scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington." Coupled with NASA's 
portfolio of other ice sheet research using data from our GRACE 
mission, satellite radars and aircraft, we get a comprehensive view 
of ice sheet change that improves estimates of sea level rise." 

Previous studies used satellite radar data to measure the evolution of 
ice shelves and glaciers, but laser measurements are more precise in 
detecting changes in ice shelf thickness through time. This is 
especially true in coastal areas. Steeper slopes at the grounding 
line, where floating ice shelves connect with the landmass, cause 
problems for lower-resolution radar altimeters. 




ICESat was the first satellite specifically designed to use laser 
altimetry to study the Earth's polar regions. It operated from 2003 
to 2009. Its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2016. 

"This study demonstrates the urgent need for ICESat-2 to get into 
space," said Jay Zwally, ICESat project scientist at NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We have limited information on 
the changes in polar regions caused by climate change. Nothing can 
look at these changes like satellite measurements do." 

The new research also links the observed increase in melting that 
occurs on the underside of a glacier or ice shelf, called basal melt, 
and glacier acceleration with changes in wind patterns. 

"Studies have shown Antarctic winds have changed because of changes in 
climate," Pritchard said. "This has affected the strength and 
direction of ocean currents. As a result warm water is funnelled 
beneath the floating ice. These studies and our new results suggest 
Antarctica's glaciers are responding rapidly to a changing climate." 

A different picture is seen on the Antarctic Peninsula, the long 
stretch of land pointing towards South America. The study found 
thinning of the largest ice shelf on the peninsula can be explained 
by warm summer winds directly melting the snow on the ice shelf 
surfaces. The patterns of widespread ocean-driven melting and summer 
melting on the Antarctic Peninsula can be attributed to changing wind 
patterns. 

The study was carried out by an international team from the British 
Antarctic Survey, Utrecht University in Utrecht, Netherlands, the 
University of California in San Diego and the non-profit research 
institute Earth and Space Research in Corvallis, Ore. 

FINDING THE ORIGINS OF COSMIC RAYS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory Provides New Insights Into Origin of Cosmic Rays
April 18, 2012
Analysis of data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive detector deployed in deep ice at the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica at the geographic South Pole, recently provided new insight into one of the most enduring mysteries in physics, the production of cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays were discovered 100 years ago, but only now are scientists homing in on how the highest energy cosmic rays are produced.

Cosmic rays are electrically charged particles, such as protons, that strike Earth from all directions with energies up to one hundred million times higher than those created in man-made accelerators.

The intense conditions needed to generate such energetic particles have focused physicists' interest on two potential sources: the massive black holes at the centers of active galaxies and exploding fireballs observed by astronomers called gamma-ray bursts or GRBs.

"Although we have not discovered where cosmic rays come from, we have taken a major step towards ruling out one of the leading predictions," said Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the IceCube principal investigator.

In a paper published in the April 19 issue of the journal Nature, the IceCube collaboration describes a search for neutrinos emitted from 300 gamma ray bursts observed between May 2008 and April 2010 in coincidence with the SWIFT and Fermi satellites.

Surprisingly, the scientists found no neutrinos--a result that contradicts 15 years of predictions and challenges the theory that gamma-ray bursts produce the highest energy cosmic rays.

"The result of this neutrino search is significant because for the first time we have an instrument with sufficient sensitivity to open a new window on cosmic ray production and the interior processes of GRBs," said Greg Sullivan, a physicist at the University of Maryland and IceCube spokesman.

"The unexpected absence of neutrinos from GRBs has forced a re-evaluation of the theory for production of cosmic rays and neutrinos in a GRB fireball and possibly the theory that high-energy cosmic rays are generated in fireballs," he said.

IceCube observes neutrinos by detecting the faint blue light produced in neutrino interactions in ice. Neutrinos are of a ghostly nature; they can easily travel through people, walls, or the planet Earth. To compensate for the antisocial nature of neutrinos and detect their rare interactions, IceCube is built on an enormous scale. One cubic kilometer of glacial ice, enough to fit the great pyramid of Giza 400 times, is instrumented with 5,160 optical sensors embedded up to 2.5 kilometers deep in the ice.

GRBs, the universe's most powerful explosions, are usually first observed by satellites using X-rays and/or gamma rays. GRBs are seen about once per day, and are so bright that they can be seen from half way across the visible Universe. The explosions usually last only a few seconds, and during this brief time they can outshine everything else in the universe.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was built under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction grant, with assistance from partner funding agencies around the world.

NSF continues to support the project with a Maintenance and Operations grant co-funded by the Division of Antarctic Sciences and the Division of Physics. IceCube construction was finished in December 2010. A collaboration of 250 physicists and engineers from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Barbados operate the observatory.

"Building the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the geographic South Pole was a major effort made possible through many collaborating institutions and the U.S. Antarctic Program," said Scott Borg, division director for Antarctic Sciences in NSF's Office of Polar Programs. "The IceCube Collaboration has been busy analyzing data and the finding published in Nature is an early and significant, result. We are pleased with this achievement but we also anticipate many more important discoveries to follow."

NSF, an independent U.S. government agency, manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. scientific research on the southernmost continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean as well as related logistics support.

Improved theoretical understanding and continued data collection from the complete and fully calibrated IceCube detector will help scientists better uncover the mystery of cosmic ray production.

MCMURDO STATION ANTARCTICA GETS HELP FROM THE ARMY

FROM AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE

The crane aboard the USNS Green Wave hoists pieces of a modular causeway system at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The Army's 331st Transportation Company built a pier to unload supplies for the National Science Foundation base. U.S. Army photo by Capt. Christina Shelton  


Mission to McMurdo: Helping Science in Antarctica
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, April 3, 2012 - A recent mission for U.S. Transportation Command proves the service members of the command can get just about anything, anywhere.

The command stepped to the fore by building a pier in the southernmost harbor in the world: McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. This enabled the National Science Foundation to re-supply workers at McMurdo Station, the largest community on the frozen continent.

Normally, the re-supply ship docks at an ice pier built out into the sound. The ice bridge usually can take the weight of trucks, containers, heavy equipment and supplies. But this year, that was not the case.
"We were notified in November that the ice pier that is used accept cargo at McMurdo was unusable this year," said Air Force Col. Howard "Mac" McArthur, the West Branch chief at U.S. Transportation Command. To accept the heavy use, the ice pier has to be about 20 feet thick. This year, it was 9 feet. The National Science Foundation, which runs the Antarctic research effort, had a problem.
Whatever they were going to do had to happen quickly. About 150 personnel spend the winter at McMurdo Station, and there is only one annual supply ship for the entire year. It arrives just before winter sets in, and carries food, scientific instruments, general supplies and everything else needed to run the station and supply other research stations. Another ship – this year, the Maersk Perry – brings in about 6 million gallons of fuel.

"Through collaboration between Transcom, Pacific Command's Joint Task Force Support Forces to Antarctica and the National Science Foundation, it was determined that the Army's modular causeway system would work," said Army Lt. Col. Rich Whittingslow, Pacific Command branch chief at Transcom.
In early December, Army Capt. Christina Shelton, commander of the 331st Transportation Company based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., got a phone call telling her to prepare her unit for movement to Antarctica. "I thought they were joking," she said.
The mission was to transport the system to Port Hueneme, Calif., load it aboard the USNS Green Wave and send it to Antarctica. Soldiers then would fly to McMurdo to be in place when the ship arrived, and build the pier so that the supplies aboard the Green Wave could be off-loaded.
Once that was done, they would have to disassemble the pier, load it back on the ship and go home. But nothing like it had been done before.

"We were very excited, because we train year-round for any type of global contingency operations, whether it is warfighting, humanitarian operations and anything of that nature," Shelton said.
But it usually is just training, and this "was a real-world mission," she said. "It was a chance to put our expertise to work."

Soldiers loaded the gear onto 52 commercial trucks for the trip to Port Hueneme. They loaded aboard the Green Wave, and the ship set sail Jan. 16.

Shelton knew there would be challenges, not the least of which was temperature. When the soldiers arrived Feb. 10, the temperature was a relatively balmy 28 degrees. "It quickly got colder, and much windier," the captain said. Temperatures dropped well below zero, and with the wind chill it was like working in 60-below-zero temperatures.

The National Science Foundation issued the soldiers the full set of gear to work in these conditions. "We had cold weather parkas, bunny boots, extreme cold-weather gloves, balaclavas, special wool socks – everything we needed to build the pier," Shelton said.

The Green Wave arrived at McMurdo Station on Feb. 13. Joining the soldiers were 50 sailors from the Navy Cargo Handling Battalion in Norfolk, Va.

Shelton separated the soldiers into two shifts – one day and one night. But since the sun was shining 24 hours a day, it took some effort to get used to the "night" shift, she said.
The first two items off the Green Wave were two working tugs, used to push and pull the pieces of the causeway in place. They next built the floating portions of the causeway aboard the ship and then lowered them into the water, where they fastened them together. These so-called "strings" were 80 feet long by 8 feet wide. "You put three strings together to make one section," Shelton said. They made the pier six sections wide and two deep.

The whole process took two and a half days. "We would have been done sooner, but it was the first time we had built these aboard ship and the first time we worked with sailors manning the on-board cranes," Shelton said. "We got better as we went along."
It took eight days to unload the ship.

Finally, the soldiers took 36 hours to take the pier apart and reload it aboard the Green Wave. The 331st soldiers were on the ground in Antarctica from Feb. 10-29. They flew to Christchurch, New Zealand, from Antarctica, and arrived back in Virginia in March.
The National Science Foundation is working to rebuild the ice pier for next year, but it may not be ready. If that's the case, they may need the steel pier again.
"With what we know now, we can do it even better next year," Shelton said.