Studies Antarctica under the melting ice.

Investigates the unknown Antarctica

Anna Wåhlin, Professor of Oceanography, has received a Distinguished Professor grant from the Swedish Research Council. This means that she will receive 50 million krona over 10 years for research in the Antarctic.

Among other things, she will be conducting measurements beneath two glaciers that have never previously been studied.

Currently, Anna Wåhlin is in quaran-

tine in the U.S. In a few days, she will be setting off for Chile for an additional two weeks of quarantine before hopefully getting on board the ship, on January 2, that will bring her and her research team to the Antarctic. – The rules are very strict, they do not want any infections at the research station in the Antarctic. So I have to admit, I’m going a little stir-crazy.

The project that Anna Wåhlin is working on involves exploring the water below the Thwaites and Getz floating glaciers, something that has never previously been done. To do this, the researchers will be using submersibles, AUVs, equipped with a variety of sensors which can be deployed on autonomous missions with no contact with the mother ship. – These are fairly new research tools

and we do not yet know precisely what kind of information we will get from them. But we will, for example, be using an advanced sonar that can be mounted upside down on an AUV and thus measure where the ice is located. As the area has never before been investigated, we will measure very basic things, such as the thickness of the ice and the depth of the ocean, the structure of the seabed, salinity and flow rate, as well as whether there is life beneath the ice. We will combine different sensors and see what type of information we can obtain from them.

One important aspect of the project is investigating the deglaciation of the glaciers. For example, the researchers will study how much deglaciation is being caused by the ocean currents and temperature stratification in the sea. We will also being studying the processes that transport warm water up onto the continental shelf, and how much heat is lost to the atmosphere in the sea around the glaciers.

Receiving a Distinguished Professor grant means that Anna Wåhlin can pursue her research in completely new ways than she did before. – The aim of the grant is to provide the researcher with long-term funding so that they can construct an entirely new research environment. For example, it is about being able to employ people in the project, something that is difficult if you only have funding for a maximum of four years. The plan is to employ a technician, which my project truly needs.

One important aspect of the project is investigating the deglaciation of the glaciers.

ANNA WÅHLIN

Why is it important to do research in the Antarctic?

– The Antarctic is a huge and often forgotten part of the Earth System, but it is incredibly important for our understanding of how this planet that we inhabit works. Around 90 percent of all the ice on the planet is located in the Antarctic, it corresponds to an enormous cooling reserve that contributes to mitigating fluctuations in the climate. Also, more than half of all the fresh water on the planet is bound up in the ice of the Antarctic, and if it were to rapidly melt, it would impact the entire hydrological cycle, including the sea levels.

Anna Wåhlin’s Antarctic trip will last a total of 3.5 months, two months of which will be spent at sea. – Now I’m only hoping that everything will go according to plan, a lot of unforeseen things can happen in a project like this.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Shutterstock

Facts

Anna Wåhlin is one of three researchers who have received grants of 50 million krona over 10 years from the Swedish Research Council’s Distinguished Professor grants. She is receiving her grant for the project “Utveckling av metoder för att studera Antarktis flytande glaciärer med modern infrastruktur.” (Development of methods for studying the floating glaciers of the Antarctic using modern infrastructure.) She has also received 4.7 million krona from the Research Council for the project “Fluidmekanik vid en västantarktisk glaciärfront: Ny teknik möjliggör forskning av ett unikt system.” (Fluid Mechanics at a Glacier Front in the Western Antarctic: New Technology Enables Research of a Unique System.)