News Articles with Category: Polar Regions

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Could Be Canada’s Future In The Arctic

October 2, 2014 – via Huffington Post Canada New equipment designed to keep a close watch on our northern borders will become increasingly important, especially with “aggressive and “expansionist” neighbours such as Russia.

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The Hunt for Franklin

September 2, 2014 – via International Submarine Engineering Data collected by the AUV during the expedition will be scientifically valuable to the oceanographic community.
 They’re getting double return on their investment. They’re getting a really solid data set for science as well as trying to identify where Franklin’s boats are.

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Defence scientists in Arctic conduct sonar and robotic experiments

August 28, 2014 – via Defence Research and Development Canada Scientists from Defence Research and Development Canada have been in the Arctic conducting various experiments. They are assessing and the impact that low water temperatures have on the performance of various types of imaging sonars

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Coast Guard deploys Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Arctic science mission

August 28, 2014 – via US Coast Guard ”

For this year’s exercise, the Coast Guard and University of Cambridge deployed a Gavia Scientific AUV equipped with side scan sonar and obstacle avoidance radar. This allowed the device to map underneath ice ridges and provide underwater imagery which will help researchers to better understand the topography of ice floes.

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On the hunt for Franklin’s ships

August 27, 2014 – via Kraken Sonar Systems These ships are 150 years old and were built with wooden hulls, with a bit of metal plating; plus, they were trapped in the ice and likely crushed, so we are looking for small pieces, not anything that is going to resemble an actual ship,”

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SURVEY TECHNOLOGIES TO BE DEPLOYED BY PARKS CANADA’S UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY TEAM IN THE COURSE OF THE 2014 VICTORIA STRAIT EXPEDITION

August 25, 2014 – via Franklin Expedition Some of the leading technologies to be employed will include the CSA’s RADARSAT-2 satellite imagery, high resolution multi-beam and side-scan sonar, Parks Canada’s remotely operated underwater vehicle and autonomous underwater vehicle, and DRDC’s state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicle, Arctic Explorer, which was developed in collaboration with private-sector partners.

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PM SAILS THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE WITH THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION SEARCH TEA

August 25, 2014 – via Franklin Expedition Harper Government Leads an Expanded Team of Partners to Discover the Fate of Sir John Franklin’s Lost Arctic Expedition

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‘We’re going to find’ Franklin expedition, Stephen Harper vows

August 25, 2014 – via Franklin Expedition Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined the Parks Canada search in Eclipse Sound, Nunavut, for the two ships of Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition. Harper says it’s a mystery that has to be solved.

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Coast Guard Research and Development Center deploys Unmanned Surface Vehicle during Arctic exercise

August 23, 2014 – via US Coast Guard We deployed the Wave Glider to record data and monitor the movement of ice which would be useful information for responders during an oil spill in the ice, but the USV can be outfitted with cameras or other types of sensor payloads depending on its task

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A glide-path to knowledge

August 9, 2014 – via UW/APL A determined effort to understand the Arctic is going on, in the sea and on the ice

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2014 Victoria Strait Expedition

August 3, 2014 – via Canadian Geographic This year’s search is about much more than underwater archaeology. The Victoria Strait Expedition will contribute to northern science and communities.

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Scientist to measure sea ice using underwater vehicle

July 16, 2014 – via University of Canterbury What we are aiming to do with the underwater vehicle is to make measurements with finer resolution over greater distances to allow us to measure ice properties in a much more robust way.

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Underwater Search Efforts during 2014 Franklin Expedition

June 30, 2014 – via Kraken Sonar Systems Auvs to be involved in the Franklin Search

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Above, Under, and Through the Ice: Demonstrating Technologies for Oil Spill Response in the Arctic

October 25, 2013 – via NOAA ORR The Jaguar uses acoustic technology to map the differences in sea ice thickness or “draft” as it travels along its programmed path under the ice. A suite of oceanographic sensors are also installed that measure water temperature, conductivity, pressure, and salinity along the way.

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NOC Prepares Autosub for Ambitious Antarctic Mission

September 11, 2013 – via National Oceanography Centre Using state-of-the-art technologies, science teams will measure changes to the flow and thickness of glaciers and investigate the role that the ocean plays in transporting warm water beneath ice shelves.

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Coast Guard, Partners Complete Arctic Oil Recovery Exercise

September 11, 2013 – via U S Coast Guard Members of the Coast Guard Research and Development successfully completed a simulated spilled oil response and recovery exercise aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Healy on the Arctic ice field

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Franklin search waiting for new high-tech tools

September 6, 2013 – via Parks Canada Searchers are hoping to add to their research arsenal with a $300,000 autonomous underwater vehicle and a $175,000 remotely operated vehicle as they continue their quest in the cold waters off Nunavut this summer, looking for any clue that might reveal what happened to HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

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Coast Guard to Test Oil Spill Technologies in Arctic

August 13, 2013 – via US Coast Guard RDC Tests will build on work that has been performed by BSEE to evaluate several candidate sensors to establish a sensor suite capable of detecting and quantifying the thickness of oil from below the ice.

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Mini-subs could roam under Antarctica’s ice shelves

July 9, 2013 – via Fairfax New Zealand’s involvement in several international projects using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) was discussed at the first joint Antarctica New Zealand and Australian Antarctic Division conference in Hobart.

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Trouble beneath the ice

December 1, 2012 – via The Economist Energy technology: As oil exploration moves into the Arctic, new methods are being developed to detect and handle spills

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First 3D map of East Antarctica

October 12, 2012 – via Australian Antarctic Division Sea ice thickness is a key indicator of climate change, and this 3D map will help scientist better understand its fluctuations.

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Endurance: ‘Still time’ for Shackleton centenary search

September 25, 2012 – via BBC News A hybrid ROV and AUV such as Nereus – built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the US – might be suitable for such an endeavour. In AUV mode, it can survey large areas of the sea floor to search for targets of interest. It can then be brought back on the ship allowing it to be transformed into an ROV which can then be used on a tether to transmit real-time video and receive commands

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‘Small chance’ that Franklin ships have already been found, scientist says

September 24, 2012 – via Vancouver Sun “It’s possible, because there actually is some AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) data that I haven’t looked at yet, and there is some multi-beam sonar data,” said Harris, who led the Canadian government’s renewed hunt for the ships.

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Glacier Expedition A Success For NUWC Newport And NASA

September 21, 2012 – via NUWC Newport NUWC Newport was asked to support a team from New York University (NYU) at the Helheim Glacier on the east coast of Greenland to perform mapping and gather oceanography data to better understand the behavior of the glacier. The trip was also designed to evaluate NUWC Newport’s AUV’s measurement techniques.

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Shell injunction forces Greenpeace to get creative

June 10, 2012 – via Los Angeles Times The ship has been equipped with a pair of small research submarines, provided by the La Jolla-based Waitt Institute, that will be deployed not for harassment but to begin methodical mapping via high-definition video the virtually unknown terrain of the Chukchi Sea, one of the most remote oceans on Earth.

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In our yellow Explorer AUV

May 1, 2012 – via TheScope Working out of CFS Alert in Nunavut, the most northern permanently inhabited location on Earth, the team worked through the difficult logistics of assembling, launching and recovering the Explorer in this harsh environment.

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Hydroid AUV discovers underwater helicopter wreckage off Norwegian island

December 13, 2011 – via Boston Globe Hydroid Inc. said that one of its AUVs has discovered the wreckage of a 2003 helicopter crash in icy waters near Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands in the Arctic Ocean.

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Hi-tech drone will go where humans can’t

November 4, 2011 – via China Daily The last three involved a robot. 

”I really wish that we continue to obtain high quality scientific data in the next expeditions, and hope that underwater robot can be developed into a standard tool in the polar expedition

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Researchers update robot to explore depths of Arctic Ocean

October 19, 2011 – via University of Maryland A group of graduate students are working to bring robotic technologies that once probed the far reaches of outer space to a whole new frontier of exploration: the depths of the Arctic Ocean.

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Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Answers Arctic Challenges

October 12, 2011 – via JPT Online New frontiers in exploration are creating a need for new technology to meet the challenges of subsea data collection.

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On a long leash

September 30, 2011 – via Antarctic Sun WHOI engineers to develop polar ROV capable of exploring far below ice shelves

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UVic launches Arctic search for sunken wreckage of Franklin expedition

July 7, 2011 – via Saanich News On Aug. 9, a three-person engineering and operating team from UVic’s Ocean Technology Lab, along with their autonomous underwater vehicle, the Bluefin-12 will join a crew from Parks Canada to search the waters off Nunavut’s King William Island.

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Robot explores where no human dares: The final rest of the Franklin expedition

July 5, 2011 – via The National Post In August, when the Arctic ice is thinnest, a small icebreaker filled with Parks Canada archaeologists will make its third attempt to find the Erebus and Terror, the long-lost vessels of the Franklin expedition, a doomed 1845 voyage to find the Northwest Passage. While underwater searches in 2008 and 2010 relied largely on sonar, this year researchers will be bringing along an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to “dramatically increase the size of the search area.”

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New Technology to be Deployed in the Search for Franklin’s Lost Vessels

June 30, 2011 – via Parks Canada Government of Canada continues Franklin search expedition in Canada’s Arctic

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UVIC Assists in Search for Franklin’s Ships

June 30, 2011 – via University of Victoria Researchers from UVic’s Ocean Technology Lab will be using their autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to assist the Parks Canada team in its search. Using UVic’s specially designed Bluefin-12 AUV, the Parks Canada team will be able to dramatically increase the size of the search area. The three UVic researchers and their AUV anticipate joining the search in August 2011.


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Hunt resumes for wreckage of Franklin expedition

June 30, 2011 – via Toronto Star What makes the scientists and archeologists so hopeful this year is the employment of an unmanned underwater vehicle, courtesy of the University of Victoria, that is capable of searching the frigid ocean floors. The surface search will cover about 200-square-kilometres while the underwater search will cover another 100-square-kilometres, said Ryan Harris, a Parks Canada underwater archeologist involved in the hunt.

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Arctic search for Franklin’s lost ships continues

June 30, 2011 – via CBC News Canadians are heading back to the Northwest Passage this summer to continue searching for the wrecks of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships from 1845.

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How is the Arctic Ocean changing

June 14, 2011 – via Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres At long-term stations oceanographers and biologists will investigate how oceanic currents as well as the animal and plant world are changing between Spitsbergen and Greenland. Beginning in August, physical, biological and chemical changes in the central Arctic will be recorded.

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Research robots roam the Ross Sea

May 6, 2011 – via USA Today Antarctica’s Ross Sea is no place for swimming. Covered in ice in its southern half, the frozen bay’s summer temperatures hover just enough above freezing to spark a yearly retreat of melting sea ice. So, what to do if you are a doughty team of oceanographic explorers trying to gather more information about conditions in its waters? Send in the robots.

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ISE Explorer AUV Arctic Video

April 26, 2011 – via ISE International Submarine Engineering Video: Arctic operations of Explorer AUV

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Swimming Penguins Guide Autonomous Underwater Robots

April 5, 2011 – via Wired.com Autonomous robots that follow the routes of swimming penguins are collecting information that could help scientists understand why the birds’ populations are dropping rapidly.

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Meet the Remote-Controlled Sea Robots That Can Explore Antarctica

March 23, 2011 – via Fastcompany The same company behind the popular Roomba robocleaner is producing an underwater robot that can stay below the surface for months.

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Raytheon helps U.S. subs stay in touch

March 23, 2011 – via Reuters Raytheon is the latest player trying to tackle the persistent challenge of communicating with submarines while they are traveling deep under the sea to avoid detection.

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ISE RECEIVES AUV OPERATIONS SUPPORT CONTRACT FROM CANADIAN DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE

March 4, 2011 – via ISE This will be ISE’s 12th deployment to the Canadian arctic and its fifth season of actual under-ice AUV operations.

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Bloom with a View: Robot Subs Help Researchers Study Mysterious Antarctic Sea Life

February 25, 2011 – via Scientific American After decades of riding icebreakers in Antarctica’s icy waters hoping to better understand the fragile ecosystem on and around this frigid continent scientists have begun delegating data collection to satellite-guided robotic subs. The hope is that these sea gliders, which can dive hundreds of meters and stay in the water for months at a time, will help to unlock the secrets of phytoplankton blooms that nourish the organisms in Antarctica’s Ross Sea for a few months each year before mysteriously disappearing.

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Southampton University pilots spyplane design course

February 24, 2011 – via BBC The design team here created the Autosub, a long-range, autonomous underwater vehicle. It has already made more than 300 successful survey trips to the ocean floor, and beneath the ice of Antarctica.

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Ice Class AUV Development

February 11, 2011 – via C&C; Technolgies C & C Technologies, Inc. of Lafayette, Louisiana is spearheading a technical research program to advance the state of the art regarding under ice Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) survey operations.

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Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic lake

February 4, 2011 – via Reuters Lake Vostok to be breached soon

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Arctic mapping data camp dropped by Ottawa

January 31, 2011 – via CBC News Thin ice conditions too ‘risky’ to proceed with scientific camp plan

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REMUS AND GLIDERS — Penguin Feeding Habitat Investigations in Antarctica

January 28, 2011 – via Studying Belgica at the Bottom of the World AUVs and Gliders used to monitor Anarctic penguin habits

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Smith team glides into polar research

January 19, 2011 – via Virginia Institute of Marine Science

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Antarctic Adventure: The Lows — and Highs — of Robot-assisted Science

December 22, 2010 – via One Autonomous gliders have emerged as an important measuring tool for oceanographers in Antarctica. They can access deep-water canyons (high in nutrients brought by the upwelling of warm, deep waters in the Antarctica Circumpolar Current) and other places where research vessels and divers can’t go.

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Antarctic Adventure: Deepwater Gliders Help Reveal Ocean’s Hidden Zones

December 20, 2010 – via Onearth It seemed like a perfect day for launching RU25, a shiny, yellow, missile-shaped autonomous underwater glider, into the Southern Ocean. So a team of Rutgers University researchers checked out two Zodiacs from Palmer Station, and set off to deploy RU25 into the undersurface world.

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Research in Antarctica to come to life at Sierra Nevada College

December 8, 2010 – via Lake Tahoe news Along with turbulence, Forrest investigated different temperatures and the mixing processes around the Erebus Glacial Tongue by using an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV.

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Bird watching

November 19, 2010 – via The Antarctic Sun Autonomous robot to follow penguins as they hunt for food

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Cal Poly professor preserving penguins with grant

November 8, 2010 – via San Luis Obispo Tribune The project is one of three ocean-related studies Moline has recently received grant funding to participate in with other scientists. Moline’s work will involve choosing and equipping remote underwater vehicles with technology that collects scientific data for analysis.

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WFS Technologies develops radio for AUVs in Arctic seas

November 5, 2010 – via The Engineer West-Lothian-based WFS Technologies has developed a radio-frequency system that allows autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to send distress signals through seawater and ice.

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Robo-Sub Explores Beneath Antarctic Ice

October 26, 2010 – via TechNewsDaily The world beneath Antarctica’s ice presents dangerous challenges to the scientists looking to study it.

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Underwater robot studying ice-covered Antarctic Ocean

October 23, 2010 – via CTV.ca An underwater robot owned by the University of British Columbia is probing the ice-covered waters off Antarctica as part of a project designed to give scientists a rare glimpse into the forbidding depths at the South Pole.

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Antarctic Robot Goes Where Others Don’t Dare

October 19, 2010 – via Discovery News Just how bad is the melting ice situation in Antarctica? A high-tech robot built by the University of British Columbia now navigating the frigid ocean around the continent should be able to tell us.

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UBC underwater robot to explore ice-covered ocean and Antarctic ice shelf

October 12, 2010 – via University of British Columbia Researchers at the University of British Columbia are deploying an underwater robot to survey ice-covered ocean in Antarctica from October 17 through November 12.

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Underwater gliders ply Chukchi waters for the first time

September 3, 2010 – via University of Alaska Fairbanks A pair of autonomous underwater gliders recently tested in the waters of southeast Alaska just finished cruising the Chukchi Sea for the past month.



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For Unmanned Craft at the Poles, Ice Is Only One Challenge

August 30, 2010 – via Ares Blog Aviation Week Weather, especially fog, can affect operations in the Arctic, even for unmanned underwater vehicles, said James Ferguson of Canada’s International Submarine Engineering Ltd.

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Under-Ice Mission for Bluefin-21 AUV Turns Up Valuable Data for Climate Research

August 5, 2010 – via Bluefin Robotics A Bluefin-21 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) owned by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) was sent out on an under-ice mission and retrieved valuable data that could shed light on climate change.

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Highlight of the Polarstern expedition: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle of the Alfred Wegener Institute dives under the Arctic ice for the first time

July 26, 2010 – via Alfred Wegener Institute The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association for the first time sent its Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) on an under-ice mission at about 79° North.

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Exploring ice shelves

July 5, 2010 – via Environmentalresearchweb.org But perhaps the most noteworthy point of all, looking ahead, is the AUV. Buried in the Methods section of the paper is this, describing an incident part-way through the field campaign: “… the AUV lost track of the rugged ice-shelf basal topography, ascended into a crevasse, collided with the ice and executed avoidance manoeuvres that prompted it to abort its program and take a direct route to the recovery waypoint. After minor repairs, …”. Putting it another way, the world is now a little bit smaller, but not less dramatic, than it used to be.

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Robot Sub Dives Deep for Clues to a Fast-Melting Antarctic Glacier

June 21, 2010 – via Discover Magazine Underneath the glacier, the explorer’s acoustic instruments found a huge ridge that rises about 1,300 feet up from the rest of the seabed upon which the glacier rests. But the relatively warm ocean water has been cutting away the glacier’s underside. According to co-author Pierre Dutrieux, that ridge can help explain why ice loss accelerated so recently.

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Ridge clue to Antarctic ice loss

June 20, 2010 – via BBC News The discovery of an underwater ridge in West Antarctica could help explain why there has been an acceleration in the ice flowing from a glacier in the area. Researchers suggest that the base of Pine Island Glacier once sat on the ridge, but recently became detached from the feature. The team made the discovery during surveys that used a unmanned submarine to examine waters under the glacier.

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