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Tracking Changes in Antarctic Ice Sheets
The amount of water locked up in ice sheets is so large that even minor melting can increase the rate of sea level rise around the world, affecting billions of people who live in coastal areas. POLENET (the Polar Earth Observing Network) is a project in which scientists and engineers are working together in the polar regions to understand how the Earth’s surface responds to changing polar ice sheets.
The POLENET project is collecting GPS and seismic data from remote sites on the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. These measurements will help the team model how much ice was lost over the past 10,000 years since the last major ice age. Combining this data with information gathered by satellites will allow POLENET to figure out how the ice sheets are changing in response to recent climate change.
During late 2008, Kelly Carroll will be sending in virtual postcards to Windows to the Universe describing his experience with this research. |
Postcards
It Takes a Lot to Get Here from Kelly Carroll, November 18, 2008
Last modified November 23, 2008 by Lisa Gardiner.
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