(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. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. 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. 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 ice there is hundreds of feet thick and striated with fractures. Hamilton's body has been recovered and will be returned to his family in Orono, Maine, the NSF said. 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. 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. News Release 16-135 
 
 U.S. Antarctic Program Investigator Perishes in Snowmobile Accident 
 
 
 
 October 23, 2016 
 
 
 
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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.)