How surface level observations in Antarctica will deepen our understanding of the world’s future coastlines
While many Australians will spend their summers on the beach sweating beneath a blazing sun, a team of scientists will be in East Antarctica examining how ice melts and refreezes, a small but critical process that will ultimately help scientists understand the fate of the world’s coastlines, including your favourite beach.
SAEF Chief Investigator Dr Felicity McCormack from Monash University will lead a small team on a three-week expedition to Dronning Maud Land, made possible by the 2025 White Desert Foundation Science Grant. The team, which also includes Lena Nicola and Professor Ricarda Winkelmann from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, and field guide Steven Giordano, hope to gather new insights to answer one of the biggest questions in global climate science: how much will melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet raise sea levels, and over what time period will this happen?
“We’re starting to see more melting on the surface of the Antarctic Ice Sheet as the atmosphere warms, especially in the region we’re heading to this season. But, we still don’t know some of the basics, like how much snow melts, how much refreezes, and whether this melt-refreeze cycle changes the brightness of the snow,” said Dr McCormack.
“That matters because darker snow absorbs more sunlight and can melt faster. Our project is all about measuring these processes directly, so we can build them into the computer models of the ice sheet that predict Antarctica’s future.”
The project will collect measurements that reveal how meltwater is produced and refreezes at the surface of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The fieldwork will involve collecting measurements of the snow and ice conditions within snowpits dug out along a transect near Wolf’s Fang Runway. The team hope to excavate and analyse the conditions within snowpits across a range of surface conditions including blue ice, wind-exposed and flat areas. These in-situ observations will be complemented by data collected from an automated weather station that the team will install for the duration of their time down south.
“Right now, most of Antarctica’s ice loss is driven by a warming ocean water melting the ice from below. But in the coming decades, the atmosphere is expected to play a much bigger role in melting,” said Dr McCormack.
“To make reliable sea level projections, we need to understand interactions between the ice sheet and atmosphere, and get those details right in our models. That’s what this project aims to do.”
By filling in this key knowledge gap, this research will enable ice sheet models to more accurately represent these processes so that they can better project Antarctic ice loss and its contributions to global sea level rise. This information is crucial to coastal planning for communities worldwide.
Doctoral researcher Lena Nicola said she was immensely grateful for the opportunity to join an expedition to Antarctica, as it was a long-held dream.
“On the ice, I will have the chance to experience and study aspects that I have been researching via my computer for several years. I am looking forward to getting a feel for the dimensions and vastness of Antarctica, while knowing about the harsh and challenging conditions we might encounter as well. This is why I also approach this trip with great humility and quite some respect; but above all, I am very excited and couldn’t stop smiling for weeks once we knew we could head down!”
The team will travel with SAEF partner White Desert, flying from Cape Town to Wolf’s Fang Runway in January and returning in late February. Follow the expedition via SAEF’s Instagram and LinkedIn.
