Explorers are looking for an ancient ICE for Antarctica in a climate change study

An explorer and retired glaciologist embarked on a three-month expedition to capture part of Antarctica on Kite Skis in search of 130,000-year-old ice.

The mission of the French Duo is to better understand the impact on global sea levels of any melting of the “White Planet” if global temperatures, Sheieu Tordeur and Heidi Severstre told AFP at the Antarcticarevskaya base.

“This is a pioneering end that includes a lot of adventure, but also really ambitious science,” Severre, the world-renowned goldsmith, told AFP before the couple flew in from South Africa on October 29.

Taking place at the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere summer season, “Under Antarctica” also coincided with the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil 10 and aims to celebrate the world’s efforts.

The challenge is tough: Completely isolated and carrying everything they need, the couple aims to cover about 4,000 kilometers (2,585 miles) in temperatures of 50 Celsius (-58 ° F), Tordeur said.

They will be traveling on kite skis, where the scier reduces the stolen harness into a kite that pulls them down.

“We can travel, if the conditions are right, 150 kilometers or 200 kilometers (a day),” Tordeur told AFP.

The couple had an experimental catch last year, when they traveled 1,500 kilometers on Kite Skis in Greenland for one month in June / July, collecting Ice samples.

Currently you will have to complete the 4,000 km journey in 90 days.

“We will need to get out of Antarctica at the end of January because after that there are no planes and no spaces without things that can help us get out,” said the 33-year-old Tordur who can help us.

– ‘The continent of mutual aid’ –

“Antarctica is the coldest, driest, and widest place on earth. It’s the highest land on Earth,” Tordeur said.

“On most of our trips, we’ll be very high in altitude … up to 3,800 meters. A whole continent too.”

Duo will be far from any human or animal life, with Antarctica’s penguins, whales, birds and seals concentrated on the shore.

“Once you get inside the continent, there’s nothing. It’s just a big thing, a big empty space and there’s no life,” said Tordeur.

Each explorer will drag a sled carrying everything they need, from food to equipment and including two ground-penetrating radars to scan the snow.

Their careful planning includes a spreadsheet of every meal and how much it weighs. Breaks, for example, contain 70g (2.5 ounces) of oats, 30g of muesli and 14g of raisins.

– Wall Antarctica Collapse? –

“We really want to try to find the deepest and oldest ice … between two and three kilometers in depth,” said the lid.

This ice began about 130,000 years ago, when the world’s climate was three degrees warmer than it is today and there was no harvest, he said.

“We will follow these very old ice sheets between east and west Antarctica. And if at some point we do not find ice that is older than 130,000 years ago, it means that some parts of Antarctica have passed away,” said the stomach.

The aim is to better understand how Antarctica will respond to warming temperatures and inform sea level rise models.

West Antarctica “contains enough ice to raise sea levels by five meters, even 37 meters.

“If Antarctica falls in the future when the world is close to three degrees, there will be hundreds of millions of people who will have to be displaced,” he said.

Tordeur and Sevestre hope the goal – and the message – of their UNESCO-backed work will reach world leaders gathered in Brazil until November 21.

“It is not too late to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said the official.

“We know what we need to do to preserve these glaciers: we need to decarbonise, and we need to use less fossil fuels,” he said.

str / fal / jcb / br / yad