NASA Media Briefing to Preview Major Antarctic Research Campaig
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WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11:30 a.m. EDT
on Thursday, Oct. 8, to preview the agency's largest airborne
research effort ever to study Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and
sea ice.
The flights are part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year
airborne campaign to each of Earth's polar regions that will extend
and expand NASA's multi-year record of space-based observations of
ice conditions. Advancing scientific understanding of the behavior of
polar ice is needed to improve predictions of future sea-level rise
brought on by global warming.
The Antarctic flights are set to begin Oct. 15 from Punta Arenas,
Chile, and will map regions of the Antarctic Peninsula and West
Antarctica that are changing most rapidly. NASA's DC-8 flying
laboratory will carry a suite of instruments to measure the surface
of the ice, probe beneath the surface to the bedrock below, and
measure sea ice in the Weddell and Amundsen seas.
The teleconference participants are:
- Seelye Martin, Operation Ice Bridge chief scientist at the
University of Washington in Seattle
- William Krabill, physical scientist at NASA's Wallops Flight
Facility in Virginia
- Thorsten Markus, cryospheric sciences branch head at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
- Robin Bell, geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of
Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y.
To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Sonja
Alexander at sonja.r.alexander@nasa.gov for dial-in instructions.
Supporting material for the teleconference will be available online on
Oct. 8 at 11 a.m. at:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA's Web site
at:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
