This 4-year project (2016–2020) investigates how the coastal area of the Antarctic ice sheet has changed in the last several millennia.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is not a deadly cold, silent place. Its coastal region where the ice meets ocean can rapidly change in decades or in centuries, but such features in Dronning Maud Land (DML) remain largely unknown.
This project collaborates with India's Antarctic programme to investigate floating ice shelves and adjacent grounded ice in central DML using logistics support from India's Maitri Station. Norway's Troll Station is far away from the study area so the collaboration with India gives the unique opportunity for Norway to study central DML.
We will conduct field campaigns in 2016–17 and 2017–18 during the Antarctic summer (November–January) to measure bed topography under the ice, ice-flow fields, and temporal changes of ice thicknesses of the ice shelves and ice rises that are locally grounded and surrounded by ice shelves. Our Indian collaborators will collect ice cores from the ice rises, and we will also analyze satellite data.
Combining these studies, we will examine mass balance, dynamics, and climate of the central DML.
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Kenichi Matsuoka
Katrin Lindbäck
Postdoktor, antarktisk glasiologi
Geir Moholdt
Forsker, fjernmåling av kryosfæren
Funding and cooperation
MADICE is an Indo-Norwegian research project co-funded by the Research Council of Norway and Ministry of Earth Sciences, India. Leading institutions in respective countries are the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research in India (NCPOR).
Collaborative institution within Norway is The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). International partners are British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).