The first 3D map of the Antarctic ice

Four years of work, two expeditions and a robot. This is what has needed an international group of researchers to create the first map in high resolution three-dimensional Antarctic Glacial sea.

The project was launched in 2010 aboard the Royal Research Ship.

Once in Antarctica, researchers immersed the robot equipped with sonar. Their mission was to start making this map in an area of 500,000 square meters. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey wanted to combine the data of the robot with surface data obtained by a satellite.

The team was able to measure the thickness of the ice.

Through this project, scientists can obtain more precise data on the consequences of global warming.

"The ice is very important, explains Jeremy Wilkinson, one of the team members. If you are in a spaceship and look at Earth and you look at the polar regions, they are very white. They sunlight is reflected back into space that light. If this layer of ice at the poles did not exist, the absorption of solar radiation would increase and this would heat much the planet. "

Scientists say the ice in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, has declined significantly in recent years. Now with this new data, will try to discover why.

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