Robot to explore buried ice lake

[emad]

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday May 22, 2005
The Observer

British scientists have been given the go-ahead for a project aimed at dropping a robot probe into a vast, subterranean lake two miles below the Antarctic ice.

The aim is to study the microbes and other lifeforms found in Lake Ellsworth in West Antarctica and to study sediments on its floor. The latter could provide vital information about climate change.

'We have no idea when the West Antarctic ice sheet last melted completely,' said Professor Martin Siegert, of Bristol University. 'But by studying these sediments we should be able to work out if West Antarctica was completely ice-free in the recent geological past, a few hundred thousand years ago.

'Given the rate at which the planet is heating up, we need to know just how vulnerable the West Antarctic ice sheet is. If it melts completely, sea levels will rise by six metres or more and drown great stretches of coastline round the world.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0%2C6903%2C1489628%2C00.html