Natural colour – February 23, 2022. (Click picture for large view.)
Enhanced pure colour – February 23, 2022.
An icebreaker minimize by way of persistent sea ice within the Weddell Sea throughout an expedition that finally positioned Shackleton’s misplaced ship.
An worldwide expedition has positioned the misplaced ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton greater than 100 years after it was crushed by ice and sank. The discovery of Endurance on the ground of the Weddell Sea occurred on March 5, 2022—late within the austral summer time, after a lot of the ocean ice round Antarctica had melted away.
Even throughout this annual low level for sea ice, the Weddell Sea retains at the least some ice. One motive is that the Weddell reaches farther south than different elements of the Southern Ocean. This retains the water colder and ice rising for an extended interval in winter.
But the principle motive pertains to how the ice circulates with the winds and currents. Elsewhere round Antarctica, ice tends to float north into hotter water and soften; within the Weddell Sea, it’s normally caught up in a clockwise gyre. “This helps the ice to stay around and become multi-year ice,” stated Walt Meier, a sea ice researcher on the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
First-year ice, and sure some thicker multi-year ice and icebergs, are seen on this picture acquired on February 23, 2022, with the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on Landsat 9. Notice the road meandering by way of the ice on the Weddell Sea. This is the trail minimize by the South African polar analysis and logistics vessel S.A. Agulhas II throughout the expedition crew’s seek for Endurance. (Note that the road has been enhanced to assist it stand out.)
March 5, 2022
The large view above reveals sea ice extent (pink line) and the situation of the icebreaker when Endurance was found on March 5 at a depth of three,008 meters (9,869 ft). One week earlier, sea ice round Antarctica reached the lowest extent ever noticed for the reason that begin of the satellite tv for pc file in 1979. In the Weddell Sea, there was extra ice than standard on the east aspect (towards the prime meridian) in 2022 and fewer ice than standard alongside the peninsula.
To entry the search space, the Agulhas II (pictured under) needed to journey deep into pack ice. While multi-year ice within the Arctic can attain four meters (13 ft) thick, multi-year ice round Antarctica is mostly round 2 meters (7 ft). That’s an inexpensive thickness for giant icebreakers to deal with, however much less so for wood ships like Endurance. “Because of the presence of ice through the summer and the generally thicker multi-year ice,” Meier stated, “the Weddell is never a friendly place for a ship that is not ice-strengthened.”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey with additional processing by Norman Kuring, bathymetry and topography data from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), and sea ice extent from Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water (GCOM-W1) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Photo courtesy of James Blake/Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The Endurance22 expedition was organized and funded by The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.
