Scientists spend a white Christmas in Antarctica The idea of a
white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but spare a
thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to
take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the
most inhospitable regions on Earth to support ESA's ice mission
CryoSat. German scientists from the Technical University of
Dresden and the Alfred Wegener Institute are spending up to four
months venturing out onto the vast frozen reaches of what is
known as the 'blue ice' region near the Russian Novo airbase in
Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica. The aim is to take very
accurate measurements of the surface topography, both from the
air and on the ground to contribute to the validation programme
for CryoSat-2. With diminishing ice cover fast becoming a
reality, ESA's CryoSat-2 mission has been designed to measure
the exact rate of change in the thickness of both ice floating
in the oceans and ice sheets on land. To measure the thickness
of relatively thin sea ice as