SCIENCE CREW OF NBP20-02
FOLLOW SARAH SLACK ON NBP 20-02 CRUISE
THOR’s PolarTREC teacher Sarah Slack is BLOGGING about second of THOR’s cruises down to Thwaites Glacier. Use the link above to go directly to the PolarTREC website or click below among the digest of blog posts. You can also sign up for email updates on the PolarTREC site. If you want to see the path of the Nathaniel B. Palmers track, go HERE.
From the 25 January to 25 March, 2020, the R.V.I.B. Nathaniel B. Palmer will visit Thwaites Glacier during expedition NBP20-02. This expedition is the main marine component of the Thwaites Glacier Offshore Research (THOR) project, which aims to reconstruct how Thwaites Glacier has responded to environmental changes in the past. This effort will place satellite-era observations in a decadal to millennial-scale context. During NBP20-02, THOR will collect sediment cores from the vicinity of Thwaites Glacier to investigate changes to ocean conditions and Thwaites Glacier since the early Holocene. The expedition will also map the seafloor using multi-beam swath bathymetry and conduct seismic surveys to better resolve past conditions at the bed of Thwaites Glacier when it extended over the continental shelf. The cores recovered during the cruise will complement sediments collected from beneath the ice shelf using a hot water drilling system for the MELT project (THOR team member James Smith is also part of the MELT project). Both MELT’s sub-ice shelf drilling and THOR’s NBP20-02 expedition will be undertaken in close collaboration with other ITGC projects. - James Marschalek