On planet Earth there are still many mysteries that we do not know, especially those that hide in the deep sea where It is very difficult for us humans to reach due to the high pressures that exist. That is why science is committed to send robots to explore this area, although the last one we sent stopped sending signals for months, something that would undoubtedly indicate the worst. But the reality has been very different.
The exploration. The mission led for the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership Its objective was to study the ice shelves of Denman and Shackleton of which we really knew little. To do this, they used a float Argo standard that modify their buoyancy to sink, take measurements and rise to the surface again.
But in this case there was a big problem: under the ice platform there is no surface, only a ceiling of ice hundreds of meters thick that prevented this robot from rising again, remaining adrift, dragged by the waves. sea currents.
We expected the worst. This robot stopped emitting signals about what it was doing in the depths, and was already considered ‘dead’ by the researchers. But now it has resurfaced after eight months of being in this situation. And the good news is that even if it didn’t emit signals, the robot continued working and created 200 profiles, going up and down every five days, collecting data that no human had ever seen.
Sailing blindly. The question is obligatory: how do we know where the robot was if it did not have GPS under the ice? To do this, the researchers used an ingenious reverse engineering technique described in the study: every time the robot tried to go up to the surface to transmit, collided with the surface and recorded the pressure at the moment of impact. Something that can be related to the depth at which it was found.
When recovering data after its reappearance in open waters, scientists compared those impact points with satellite maps indicating the thickness of the ice in the area. In this way, it was like solving a 3D maze: if the robot crashed 300 meters deep, it had to be at a point where the ice is 300 meters thick. Thus they reconstructed their erratic trajectory of almost 300 kilometers.
What we know. Until now we had the idea that East Antarctica was always a ‘stable’ and cold area because, unlike the West, it thaws very slowly. But now we have data that makes us doubt this a lot.
In the case of the Shackleton platform we know that it is a cold fortress with a cavity under the ice that is filled with very cold water that protects it from melting from below. If we talk about Denman Glacier We can now relate it to a danger zone, as an intrusion of ‘warm’ water was found flowing towards the base of the glacier.
Why it is important. Denman Glacier It’s not just any harmless thing.but it has enough ice to raise global sea level by 1.5 meters. In this way, if the water is warm it will be able to cause this glacier to end up melting and this will undoubtedly be a big problem for the coasts of our planet.
Now all that remains is to monitor this area, which can now be categorized as dangerous due to the risks that the planet may finally have if this is something that ends up being confirmed.
Images | henrique setim AOML
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