Image

Farewell to Summer

No, this isn’t  a preview of winter to come. This is a beautiful summer day—in Antarctica, where WHOI glaciologist Sarah Das, MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate student Ali Criscitiello, and colleagues are studying whether climate change is affecting the formation of sea ice in the waters around the continent and speeding the flow of glacial ice to the sea (see video). Scientists dug pits up to 10 feet deep in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to expose layers of ice that are laid down, snowfall by snowfall, year after year, to reconstruct the history of how sea ice has formed off the Antarctic coast. (Photo By Sarah Das, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)