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Grant awarded to investigate global warming

4 December 2009

ice sheet
As next week's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen underlines, there is a pressing need to improve our understanding of glacier and ice sheet response to climate change. Rising sea-levels pose a threat to many countries, including the UK, and academics from the University of Bristol have just been awarded a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Led by Dr Jemma Wadham from the Department of Geographical Sciences, in collaboration with colleagues from the Faculty of Engineering, the project will develop an autonomous probe, christened "Cryo-Egg", that can be placed at a depth of several kilometres within an ice sheet to study the melting of ice.  Cryo-Egg's on-board systems will relay scientific data to the surface as it monitors this previously-uncharted environment, and this data will help us understand one of the most important processes associated with global warming.

In order to achieve this, the interdisciplinary project brings together specialists in the design of sensors, the composite probe shell, power management and communications systems to produce a design to meet this immense engineering challenge.

Professor Ian Craddock & Dr Geoff Hilton from the Centre for Communications Research will be involved in this pilot study to explore communications to the probe located several kilometres below solid ice.  This study will require the development of suitable models for the propagation environment and the design of antenna structures for both the probe and surface equipment.  Validation of performance will also be undertaken through measurement of prototype systems operating in extreme temperatures.