'Incredible data': Manitoba researcher part of Antarctic ice shelf studies

A University of Manitoba scientist got a view of Antarctica not everyone has seen in an effort to study how rising sea levels are impacting the continent's ice shelves.

Glaciologist Karen Alley, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, is part of an international research team examining a massive ice shelf in west Antarctica, capturing new 3D images to examine the changes.

"We're interested in understanding how the Antarctic ice sheet is changing," Alley said. "The world sea levels are rising, they will continue to rise in the future, and we're trying to understand how quickly that sea-level rise is going to happen and how much sea-level rise we're going to get, and a big part of that is understanding these floating ice shelves."

The team, led by Anna Wåhlin from the University of Gothenburg, sent an automated underwater vehicle named Ran underneath the ice shelf to capture images in 2022. A multi-beam imager was used to bounce sound waves off the ice and create 3D images.

Ran, an automated under water vehicle, prepares to travel underwater to map an Antarctic ice shelf. (Anna Wåhlin/University of Gothenburg)

The work was recently published in Science Advances.

"Ran worked for many years and brought back incredible data that's really changed the way we understand a lot of the polar systems," Alley said.

She said the data showed the melt processes are changing Antarctica's ice shelves.

"What this tells us is that the models we use to predict how much ice shelves are going to melt in the future aren't doing a good job capturing how complex this is," Alley said. "Hopefully, now that we understand better just how much variability there is in the melt, we can do a better job incorporating that into our models and do a better job predicting future sea level rise."

This year, Ran was sent down underwater for additional research and got some new data to show how things have changed. However, it didn't return to their ship on the final mission.

"Ran is somewhere underneath Dotson Ice Shelf," Alley said. "That's where he'll remain in the future. Maybe there was some equipment malfunction, maybe a curious seal swam around it and confused its navigation, we won't ever know."

Alley said they are hoping to replace Ran in the future and return to Antarctica for more research.

-With files from CTV's Katherine Dow.