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Everything Must Go

March 2, 2015

Chen Cai, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis organizes one of the 16 seismic stations that a team led partly by WHOI geophysicist Ralph Stephen set up on Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf in November 2014. The stations are measuring the “pulse” of the ice shelf caused by ocean swell and infra-gravity waves waves slamming into its 500-mile-wide face. The response of the iceshelf to these forces will help the team assess its stability, a critical factor in understanding how much ice could flow from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Southern Ocean as the region warms.(Photo by Ralph Stephen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)