Snow Crystals, Ice Layers, and Microplastics:  Researchers return from successful Antarctic fieldwork

Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology researchers  Prof. Ricarda Winkelmann and Lena Nicola have concluded a successful field season in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, in cooperation with Monash University, Australia (SAEF).

This region in Antarctica is characterised by increasing snowfall rates as well as frequent surface melt events.

“Antarctica plays a crucial role in the Earth system, and regions like Dronning Maud Land are far from static. The simultaneous increase in snowfall and surface melt highlights how strongly even this remote part of the ice sheet is responding to a warming climate,” says Ricarda Winkelmann, director at MPI-GEA, and head of the department Integrative Earth System Science. “On-the-ground fieldwork - together with satellite observations and numerical modeling - is vital for understanding these changes.”

The researchers set up a weather station and moved around 20 tons of snow to study the physical  properties in the upper layers of the ice sheet's surface. They also collected microplastics samples at the snow surface to study the increasing anthropogenic pollution in this very remote place. After fourweeks on the southernmost continent, the researchers accomplished all their research goals on a 100 km long traverse from the ice sheet towards the coast.

Having collected their data, the researchers’ next steps include lab analyses to quantify and attribute the microplastics samples; coding, analysing and plotting the snow pit and core measurements, also with the help of machine learning; and monitoring observations from the automatic weather station over the coming months. 

“We hope that this data will lead to improvements in our modelling of ice-climate interactions and consequently also help our understanding of the impacts of atmospheric extremes in that region,“ says Lena Nicola.

For more information on Antarctic fieldwork at MPI GEA, click here.