Underwater Robot Measures Relatively Thick Antarctica Ice Sheets

A team of researchers belongs to United Kingdom, Australia and United States joined together in order to design the first high resolution, 3D maps of Antarctic sea ice. They produced these maps with the help of an underwater robot.

The underwater robot gave an insight about the temperature of Antarctic ice sheets. It measure the thickness of ice in the regions of Antarctic which are considered difficult regions to reach. Previously, researchers used satellite data for this particular purpose. However, the snow present on the top layer of Antarctic Ocean act as a big barrier in the entire process. Later on, researchers drilled the sea ice for visual observation.

Fortunately, this new robot revealed that the ice sheets of Antarctic Ocean are much thicker than the assumptions of scientists. It signifies that the thickness of Antarctic sea Ice is not decreased to a great extent since last few years. The global warming and greenhouses gases has not damaged the thickness of Antarctic Ice sheets. Nevertheless, the robot failed to inform about the amount of ice that converted into water every year.

Earlier, researchers were quite worried about the melting of ice sheets in Antarctic Ocean. Therefore, this reports turned out to be a very good news for the researchers.

Moreover, the robot pr0vided precise data which helped experts in the evaluation of Ice sheets. The researchers of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts named this robot as Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). It is generally known as SeaBed.

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.