Belgian researchers will spend Christmas in Antarctica to understand climate change

On 1 December, a team of glaciologists and climate researchers from ULB , UCLouvain and the University of Colorado will head for the Antarctic. On the agenda is the second field campaign for the Mass2Ant project being coordinated by UCLouvain , which also includes partners from the IRM (the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium) and Delft University of Technology. The scientific mission will last around six weeks and its objective is to gain a better understanding of the climate changes observed in recent decades in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere, along with the long-term relevance of these changes. The Antarctic and the Southern Ocean play a dominant role in the dynamics of the climate system. If the ice sheet covering the continent of Antarctica melted completely, it would cause a rise in sea levels of nearly 60 metres. This means that any change in the ice mass stored there has a major impact globally. In going to Antarctica, the researchers' specific aim is to gain a better understanding of one of the components of the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet: the snow falls and their accumulation on the surface.