Weather forces delays to drilling effort at Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier

A 10-person team aboard the icebreaker Araon hoping to drill deep into Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier has been delayed by rapidly changing weather that has repeatedly forced helicopter flights to turn back. Expedition members have set foot on the glacier’s fractured surface, but attempts to reach the planned drilling site by air were curtailed by poor visibility.

On one flight a helicopter returned with cargo because conditions worsened; on another the pilot abandoned the approach after the glacier and sky blurred into a zone of white. From the air the team observed Thwaites’s western tongue — described as a 30-mile-long jumble of flat-topped icebergs moving out to sea at more than 20 feet a day, with canyons of otherworldly blue between blocks thousands of feet across.

Pilot Dominic O’Rourke said that when clouds swallow the horizon “helicopter pilots sometimes can’t tell which way is up,” and that the crew must “do what we can based on what Antarctica allows us to do.” On a later scouting flight the passengers included Choon-Ki Lee, a principal research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, and two field guides, Jinsuk Kim and Taff Raymond, who used a radar device pulled by a remote-controlled vehicle to assess ice stability.

Key Topics

Science, Thwaites Glacier, Araon, Dominic O'rourke, Choon-ki Lee, Jinsuk Kim