![]() Using drones to measure these shrinking ice sheets and glaciers not only saves money but also produces more detailed images of how these massive structures are changing. This means the world’s ice sheets and glaciers need to be repeatedly measured to show how they are changing over time. “A chunk the size of a five-story building can fall off.”Īs temperatures continue to climb due to human-driven climate change, researchers are assessing the melting ice and the effects it will have, not only on sea-level rise but also on the nearby communities. “You don’t want to be anywhere close to them in a manned vehicle,” said Hanumant Singh, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern. In Greenland, for example, a team from Northeastern University has deployed a kayak-sized unmanned surface vessel to navigate around icebergs, equipped with a camera to capture images of the structure above the water and a sonar sensor to measure the submerged ice.Īlong with the ocean robot, the team also flew unmanned aircraft to map the shape of the icebergs, which can be dangerously unpredictable. Over the past decade, researchers have turned to drone technology to monitor melting ice in remote corners of the world. Measuring these large pieces of moving ice to determine how quickly they are shrinking, however, has long been a challenge. Icebergs breaking off from the Greenland ice sheet are rapidly melting because of climate change-part of a massive wave of ice loss that could trigger nearly a foot of global sea level rise. ![]() Photo courtesy of Northeastern University. A team at Northeastern University is Using this jetyak, an ocean drone, to take high-resolution 3D photos of icebergs in Greenland to monitor their size.
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