News Release 16-135 
 
 U.S. Antarctic Program Investigator Perishes in Snowmobile Accident 
 
 
 
 October 23, 2016 
 
 
 
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 A researcher with the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), suffered a fatal injury on Saturday, October 22, New Zealand time. 
 
 Dr. Gordon Hamilton, University of Maine Climate Change Institute, Orono, Maine, was fatally injured when the snow machine he was riding went into a crevasse. Hamilton's team was camped in a heavily crevassed area known as the Shear Zone (SZ), approximately 25 miles south of McMurdo Station, the largest of the three U.S. research stations in Antarctica. 
 
 The McMurdo SZ is a three-mile wide and more than 125-mile long swath of intensely crevassed ice where the Ross Ice Shelf meets the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The ice is up to 650 feet thick in this area. Dr. Hamilton's body has been recovered and will be returned to his family in Maine. An accident investigation has begun by USAP personnel. 
 
 "I am deeply saddened by the news of the tragic death of Dr. Hamilton. Our thoughts are with the family and entire community as we mourn this loss," said Dr. France Córdova, Director, National Science Foundation. 
 
 Dr. Hamilton's research utilized two robots that contained ground penetrating radar instruments to study the stability of the Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves. 
 
 At the time of the accident, the science team was camped approximately 200 yards from the USAP's South Pole Operations Traverse crevasse remediation team. The two teams, science and Traverse operations, were working together to identify and remediate crevasses which had appeared in the past year. 
 
 The two teams included experienced personnel who had worked in this area over the past several years and all members of both teams had received crevasse and glacial safety training before going into the area. In addition, mountaineers, familiar and experienced with the SZ, were with each of the two teams. Crevasses had been identified and filled earlier in the week and work on a newly identified crevasse was beginning at the time of the accident. 
 
 The NSF manages the USAP, through which it coordinates all U.S. research and the necessary logistical support on the continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean. 
 
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 Peter West, NSF, (703) 292-7530, email: pwest@nsf.gov 
 
 
 
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 Gordon Hamilton. (University of Maine) 
 
 Gordon Hamilton, a prominent climate scientist who studied Earth's melting ice sheets, died Saturday when his snowmobile went into a crevasse in Antarctica, according to the National Science Foundation. He was 50. 
 
 Hamilton was a researcher with the NSF-managed U.S. Antarctic Program studying the stability of the ice shelves near McMurdo Station, a research center on Ross Island, 2,500 miles south of New Zealand. 
 
 He and his team were camped in a heavily-crevassed area known as the McMurdo shear zone, where the Ross and McMurdo ice shelves meet. Three miles wide and more than 125 miles long, this perilous zone bisects the compacted snow road to the station. The ice there is hundreds of feet thick and striated with fractures. Hamilton and his colleagues have worked for several years to map this region with robots and ground-penetrating radar, identifying crevasses to be repaired so that vehicles can haul supplies and equipment from the coast to McMurdo station. 
 
 Hamilton was driving a snow machine when he hit a crevasse and fell 100 feet into the ice. The circumstances of the accident are still unclear, but NSF spokesman Peter West said that some crevasses are covered in snow and are difficult to spot from ground level. Some of Hamilton's colleagues are working to develop robots capable of detecting buried crevasses for that reason. 
 
 Hamilton's body has been recovered and will be returned to his family in Orono, Maine, the NSF said. 
 
 [Plane takes off from the South Pole in rare, risky effort to rescue sick workers] 
 
 Hamilton was born in Scotland and held degrees from the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. Since 2005, he has been an associate professor at the University of Maine's School of Earth and Climate Sciences. In a statement Monday, university President Susan Hunter said that his glaciology research was “second to none.” 
 
 “He leaves a legacy as an outstanding scientist, and a caring mentor and well-known teacher to undergraduate and graduate students,” she said. 
 
 Hamilton spent years surveying the glaciers around Greenland and Antarctica, aiming to understand how they might contribute to sea level rise. This was his latest of several expeditions to Antarctica. 
 
 The NSF said that Hamilton and all members of his team received crevasse and glacial safety training before going into the shear zone. The Antarctic Program also assigned mountaineers who were familiar with the zone to accompany Hamilton's science team and the crevasse remediation team, which was camped 200 yards away. 
 
 The two teams had spent the week identifying and filling in crevasses in the area, and were about to start work on a new crevasse when Hamilton died. 
 
 The U.S. Antarctic Program has opened an accident investigation of Hamilton's death. Hamilton's colleagues are currently preparing to leave the field, West said. 
 
 Deaths in Antarctica are rare, but research at the poles is always risky. Earlier this year, two sick workers at the South Pole had to be evacuated under the cover of complete darkness during the six-month Antarctic night. 
 
 “The U.S. Antarctic Program is a close-knit corps of researchers and support personnel who carry out the nation’s program of research in Antarctica, working at the frontiers of human knowledge, but also at the physical frontiers of human experience,” Kelly Falkner, director of polar programs for the NSF, said in a statement. “The death of one of our colleagues is a tragic reminder of the risks we all face — no matter how hard we work at mitigating those risks — in field research.” 
 
 Hamilton is survived by his wife, Fiona, and their two children, Martin and Calum. 
 
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– America's close-knit team of Antarctic researchers is mourning a colleague who died in one of the continent's most dangerous areas. Climate scientist Gordon Hamilton, a 50-year-old Scotsman, died Saturday when his snowmobile plunged into a crevasse in an area known as the "Shear Zone," 25 miles south of the McMurdo research station, according to the National Science Foundation, which describes the area as a "three-mile wide and more than 125-mile long swath of intensely crevassed ice" where two ice shelves meet. Hamilton and his colleagues spent years trying to map the region, using robots and ground-penetrating radar, the Washington Post reports. Hamilton fell 100 feet into the ice after hitting a crevasse that may have been covered in snow and hard to spot. When he wasn't carrying out research in frozen parts of the world, Hamilton was a research professor at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, specializing in glaciology. His work, which focused on the contribution of ice sheet shifts to sea level rise, "was second to none," university president Susan Hunter said Sunday in a statement, per the New York Times. Hamilton's body was recovered and will be returned to his wife and two children in Maine. Kelly Falkner, director of polar programs for the NSF, called the death a "tragic reminder of the risks we all face" in field research. (A worker at the South Pole needed to be rescued a few months ago.)