Joseph Cook camps for months on the ice sheets of Greenland. It’s not very comfortable, but it’s the only way to accurately map the impact of climate change. Cook, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sheffield, studies how microscopic algae are causing glaciers to retreat. The theory: that a dark melting strip along the country’s west coast is being darkened further by a little-known ecosystem of biological growth. “Greenland has about seven metres of sea level locked away in it and it’s a giant reflector of solar radiation,” says Cook, 30. “If we lose it then we amplify climate warming and release a lot of water into the sea.”
Cook – who in 2016 was made a Rolex Award Young Laureate, which included funding for his next trip – wants to find out how much of an effect these growths are having on the speed of retreat. After spending two years mapping the ice sheets by flying drones over it in a grid pattern, he now knows what species of algae are growing and is modelling the impacts of different pigmentations, cell sizes and growth conditions – before finding out if these predictions are what happens in reality.
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To do that, Cook needs to bridge the gap between the small areas he’s studying on the ground and the 500-metre-scale satellite maps from the sky. So he added cameras and sensors to the drones to take images in specific light wavelengths. “That will give us a way to map life on ice,” he says.
Once the mechanisms that cause the retreat are understood, Cooke says, the mapping methods can be rolled out elsewhere. “We can apply it to more sensitive and complex glaciers and ice streams that have more complicating factors.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
