Drones, underwater robots and autonomous mini-submarines will be mobilized to explore one of the most inaccessible places on the planet. An international team of researchers boarded the British polar ship RSS David Attenborough on Thursday for a five-week scientific mission off the coast of Greenland.
“Marine robots can get as close as possible to the ice, where humans cannot go because it would be dangerous for them,” Kelly Hogan, marine geophysicist and leader of the expedition, told AFP. This £20 million (€23.6 million) project, led by the British Antarctic Survey, is funded by the British government.
Thanks to these technologies, scientists will be able to get as close as possible to glaciers, in areas where the unpredictable detachments of immense blocks of ice make any human presence too dangerous. The drones will carry out high-resolution aerial surveys, while the robots will dive several hundred meters deep to measure the melting of the ice in contact with the ocean.
The goal is to better understand why the Greenland ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate. Researchers are particularly seeking to determine how ocean waters erode ice, a phenomenon that is still poorly understood but crucial for improving climate models.
According to scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, this melting could disrupt major currents in the North Atlantic, notably the subpolar gyre and, in the longer term, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports heat from the tropics to Europe. A weakening of these currents could lead to harsher winters in Northern Europe, modify marine ecosystems and lastingly affect fishing. The first changes could occur as early as the 2040s, even if their scale still remains uncertain.
