IPY project planned for 2009-10 field season in Antarctic
Peninsula The LARsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica , project is
an interdisciplinary program to study as many facets of an ice
shelf ecosystem as possible following the collapse of the Larsen
B Ice Shelf in 2002. Some of the leading polar researchers in
the U.S. Antarctic Program will use their expertise to
understand the conditions that led up to disintegration, looking
not only at the more immediate evidence, but traveling back
thousands of years in the region's climate history to determine
if the event was part of a longer natural cycle or an aberration
of the extreme warming now under way along the Antarctic
Peninsula. Other team members will delve into consequences of
the collapse, such as the effect on a formerly hidden ecosystem
that existed under the shadow of the ice shelf before it
disappeared, and how the absence of the shelf is changing the
local biology and ocean properties. Articles in this series
include: About the Sun