Into The Maelstrom: Scientists Risk Remote Sub To Track The Chaos At The Foot Of Melting Glaciers

[hatrack]

There are stadium-sized blocks of ice crashing from the soaring face of the Kangerlussuup glacier in western Greenland. Fierce underwater currents of meltwater are shooting out from its base and visibility below the surface is virtually zero thanks to a torrent of suspended mud and sand. It’s little wonder scientists have never explored this maelstrom. Yet today, they are sending in a multimillion-dollar remotely operated submarine, potentially to its death. As the scientists onboard the Celtic Explorer research ship repeatedly say: “It’s a high risk, high reward mission.”

The reward is solving a mystery that could transform the understanding of the most profound long-term impact of the climate crisis: surging sea levels. Glaciers fed by ice caps are increasingly disintegrating, and how fast this will accelerate directly affects a billion people in the world’s great coastal cities.

However, current models do not take account of a big possible factor: the huge mounds of ground rock that some glaciers pile up in front of them, blocking their paths and insulating them from ever hotter oceans. These could function as “speed bumps”, effectively slowing the impact of global heating. But the role this plays is unknown because researchers had never been able to scrutinise the hellish zone where mighty glaciers, rock and ocean meet. Now, they are. “Oh my God, what is that?” says Prof Ginny Catania, the expedition’s chief scientist, from the University of Texas (UT). She is looking at the screens in the tense control room on the ship. The live sonar feed from the submersible has revealed a vast underwater cavern in the glacier.

The engineer Victor Naklicki is piloting the sub, a feat of fierce concentration over the 10-hour dive. Afterwards, he says: “It was pretty crazy down there – we saw the big cave and you could feel the [sub’s] thrusters working very hard to not get sucked right in. We made it 50 metres into it, but it went even deeper – it was an abyss.” The move inside went against all conventional piloting wisdom, he says, as putting a remotely operated sub under anything means it can’t float back to the surface if something goes wrong: “But the prize is collecting data that has never been collected before.” The biggest of the prizes is taking core samples of the sediments piling up right at the glacier’s foot – no one has got closer than 500 metres before. But delicately manipulating the robot arm in zero visibility, while piloting the vehicle, is extraordinarily difficult. “It’s like you’re driving through a blizzard up in Buffalo, New York, while doing origami over in the back seat, as the car is moving around at 60 miles an hour,” Naklicki says.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/06/how-the-maelstrom-under-greenlands-glaciers-could-slow-future-sea-level-rise

[Bayard]

1. Important climate research

The risk will be worth it if they gather useful data.

[Wonder Why]

2. I'm sorry but it's not a multi-million dollar sub. it's just a bunch of metal, plastic,

electronics, and other stuff. Unless the brains of all the scientists, engineers and technicians are stored in it along with the only copy of all the plans and drawings, then another one can be made much cheaper. Most of the costs are probably salaries. It costs zillions to design and build the first of anything but the rest are far cheaper or we wouldn't have any new things that once were one of a kind like MRI machines.