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Researchers at the Courant Institute will head to Antarctica to research sea level changes for five years due to a new $10-million grant.
In early September, the National Science Foundation awarded the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences the grant, which is spread over five years, so that the institute can study the impact of global warming on the Antarctic ice sheet and its potential influence on rising sea levels.
David Holland, the principal researcher for the project and director of the Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science at Courant, explained that the Earth has ice sheets — the largest of which are the Antarctic sheet and the Greenland sheet — that periodically melt and re-freeze. Of these two, the Antarctic ice sheet is of primary concern because it is the largest; it currently covers an area of nearly 14 million square kilometers.
In Antarctica, Courant researchers will travel to the Ross Ice Shelf (the largest in the world) to try to create a model that will predict sea level changes for the next century by drilling through the shelf "to explore what's happening," according to Holland. According to researchers involved, the project, named Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (aka WISSARD), seeks to create a numerical model that would describe the ocean and its evolution in time and space.
"A model is the human understanding of a system," Holland said. "There are models of the planet warming, but models of sea level don't exist yet."
Research for WISSARD is already under way. The first trip to Antarctica is expected to take place in January 2011 and will then continue annually for four years.
Many students feel positive about the study, but some are indifferent to the premise of the trip: global warming.
"Global warming is over-hyped," Steinhardt sophomore Joey Kopriva said. "It's all happening so slowly."
However, Tisch junior Sebastiani Romagnolo values the objectives of the study.
"I definitely support NYU's efforts to approach issues that are difficult to deal with," Romagnolo said. "It's an exciting thing for college students to be a part of."
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