Antarctic Circumnavigation Swida-RINGS Airborne Campaign
The SWIDA-RINGS is an airborne campaign to map and investigate most of the major outlet glaciers of Antarctica, in order to provide key data for understanding the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet, and to provide new data for understanding errors in remote sensing satellite data and ice sheet modelling errors. The SWIDA-RINGS is a fully endorsed project of the SCAR RINGS Action Group (https://scar.org/science/cross/rings). In the project a complete circumnavigation airborne survey of the entire Antarctic grounding line (except for the Antarctic Peninsula and the major ice shelves) is made possible in one season 2024/25, thanks to the support of the Albedo Foundation for the Cryosphere.
SWIDA-RINGS is carried out under the umbrella of a broad Antarctic circumnavigation initiative ICCE (International Antarctic Coastal Circumnavigation Expedition). Here several RINGS-related science efforts will be done from a Brazilian-chartered ice breaker, including shallow ice coring on major glaciers, coordinated with the airborne survey. ICCE logistics will also provide fuel caches and safety for the airborne campaign, coordinated by Ultima Expeditions. Permits for all ICCE activities, including SWIDA-RINGS, are provided by the Brazilian Antarctic Program.
The SWIDA-RINGS flight campaign is a Swiss-Danish-US cooperation for flying an instrumented Kenn Borek Twin-Otter (C-FDHB) and a support Twin Otter (C-GKBO) all the way around Antarctica, starting and ending at the ALE Union Glacier camp. The airborne component instrument payload include:
- Ice penetrating airborne radar (30 MHz, University of Kansas)
- Snow radar for studying upper layers of ice sheet (2-8 GHz, University of Kansas)
- Gravimeter (strapdown IMU type, provided by DTU)
- Scanning lidar (Riegl, provided by DTU), as well as optical nadir and side-looking camera(s)
- Atmosphere sampling equipment for aerosols (provided by EPFL, Switzerland).
The gravimeter will require frequent ties to gravity reference stations at national bases, using a hand-held gravimeter. Two Danish or US scientists will operate the instrument suite during operations.
The airborne survey will adhere to all formal SCAR RINGS requirements, including open data sharing, and is endorsed by the RINGS steering committee. Planned flight tracks will take into account already flown RINGS transects in East Antarctica 2023/24 (NPI/AWI and Chinare flights), as well as other existing airborne data. Sea ice science extension of flights offshore Amery Ice Shelf (and possibly the Ross Sea) is planned in cooperation with the European Space Agency, ice conditions permitting.
The instrumented Twin-Otter will be followed by a logistics and safety Twin-Otter, both chartered from Kenn Borek, Canada; the science equipment was tested and certified in Calgary May 2024. The Twin-Otter flights will be coordinated with two AS-350 helicopters with representatives of the funders (AS350’s available for ad-hoc science on request).
The SWIDA-RINGS effort, in addition to being endorsed by the SCAR RINGS Action Group, can also be seen as an activity hopefully benefitting from the recently adopted COMNAP “RINGS Collaboration Project”; international cooperation will indeed be a key to the success of the challenging SWIDA- RINGS circumnavigation campaign 2024/25.