IODP Expedition 318: Wilkes Land Week Report THREE Our mission:
exploring the climate history of Antarctica. This week we
feature a portrait of Saiko Sugisaki. She is a young and
talented paleomagnetist working for JAMSTEC in Japan. IODP
Expedition 318: Wilkes Land Glacial History The Wilkes Land
Glacial history expedition starts in Wellington, New Zealand on
4 Jan 2010 and returns to Hobart, Tasmania on 9 March. While off
the coast of Antarctica, we will be taking cores from the
seafloor to investigate when and why the ice sheet started
growing on Antarctica and how the ice sheet has grown and melted
during the last 35 million years. We will focus on learning
about the interaction of climate, ice sheet growth, and ocean
currents. The sediment cores we bring into the labs on the ship
will cover periods in Earth’s history that were extremely warm –
think palm trees and crocodiles at the poles – instead of polar
bears and penguins! At one of the expedition sites, we also hope
to obtain a super-high resolution r