Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. As Allan Coukell reports, scientists in that remote region are studying how the ice breaks up to learn clues about climate. The ice is getting quite wet and quite soft, which means we are very close to breaking through the bottom. Standing on the frozen Ross Sea, a few kilometres off the coast of Western Antarctica, sea ice researchers are using an auger to extract a column of ice. We've just broken through.
Sea ice is an important part of the global climate system.
It keeps the air cool by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space and the yearly cycle of freezing and thawing also helps to drive ocean currents. And while the scientists will be taking this ice core back to the lab for further study, the two metres of ice we're standing on will soon be gone. The sea ice doesn't melt like normal ice. When the sea ice starts to freeze, it captures pockets of salt water, so you've essentially got little bits of freshwater ice with lots of concentrated salt. What you'll see is you'll be standing on metre-thick ice.