Elaine Mawbey is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the THOR project based at British Antarctic Survey. Her research is focused on reconstructing past ocean conditions using trace metal proxies in foraminifera found in marine sediments.
Becky is a PhD student at the University of Southampton and British Antarctic Survey who is currently working on Late Quaternary marine sediments from the deep Amundsen Sea. Her work within THOR will focus on reconstructing environmental conditions near Thwaites Glacier using stable isotopes from foraminifera.
THOR research onboard the N.B. Palmer icebreaker through March 2020
The Thwaites Glacier Offshore Research (THOR) team set sail from Punta Arenas, Chile, on January 26, 2020 and is conducting research in the Amundsen Sea off the coast of Thwaites Glacier. During their 60-day cruise on the US icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, the team is collecting sediment samples on the ocean floor beneath them, water samples, ocean temperature measurements, and mapping the seafloor to better understand changes to the area over recent and geologic time. Sediment samples from the ocean floor hold a record of glacial and ocean change over time.
visited Thwaites Glacier with scientists from the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration during the 2019-2020 field season. He reports on recent research on the glacier and some of the discoveries.
Press Release:
For Immediate Release Tuesday 28 January 2020 6am GMT
Teams from the US and UK have successfully completed scientific fieldwork in one of the most remote and hostile areas of West Antarctica – coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the continent. This research will help scientists determine whether Thwaites Glacier may collapse in the next few decades and affect future global sea-level rise.
Seven undergraduate engineering students at the University of Colorado Boulder spent a year working as part of the Thwaites-Amundsen Regional Survey and Network (TARSAN) project team for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC). The TARSAN project team is studying how atmospheric and oceanic processes are influencing the behavior of Thwaites Glacier and nearby Dotson Ice Shelf. They built and designed instruments and sensors that were deployed by a research on Thwaites Glacier in December 2019 and January 2020.
On January 25, a research cruise set off from Chile on the US Antarctic Program’s Nathaniel B. Palmer, a US icebreaker bound for the Amundsen Sea, remaining in the area until late March 2020. The expedition supports the THOR and TARSAN projects, by surveying and collecting sediment cores from the seabed and tagging seals to acquire ocean current and temperature data.
US PolarTREC teacher blogs about upcoming research cruise with THOR project, January 2020
Join teacher Sarah Slack as she writes about her experience as an NSF PolarTREC teacher on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel. The Palmer departs Punta Arenas, Chile, on January 26, 2020, bound for the Amundsen Sea waters off the coast of the Thwaites Glacier. Researchers from the Thwaites Offshore Research (THOR) project of the ITGC will spend two months collecting data about sediments on the ocean floor, water temperature and measurement data from underwater robots and from swimming seals, the topography of the seafloor, among other subjects.
Researchers have produced the first physics-based quantifiable evidence that thinning ice shelves all around Antarctica result in an instantaneous response sending more ice flowing from the land into the ocean. Their findings have been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Live Science reports on recent research at Thwaites Glacier. The glacier could be "a keystone to triggering ice loss from neighboring portions of West Antarctica," said Paul Cutler, program director of glaciology, ice core science and geomorphology at the National Science Foundation. "The question is, how much sea level rise, and how fast?"
