Gordon Hamilton. (University of Maine) 
 
 Gordon Hamilton, a prominent climate scientist who studied Earth's melting ice sheets, died Saturday when his snowmobile went into a crevasse in Antarctica, according to the National Science Foundation. He was 50. 
 
 Hamilton was a researcher with the NSF-managed U.S. Antarctic Program studying the stability of the ice shelves near McMurdo Station, a research center on Ross Island, 2,500 miles south of New Zealand. 
 
 He and his team were camped in a heavily-crevassed area known as the McMurdo shear zone, where the Ross and McMurdo ice shelves meet. Three miles wide and more than 125 miles long, this perilous zone bisects the compacted snow road to the station. The ice there is hundreds of feet thick and striated with fractures. Hamilton and his colleagues have worked for several years to map this region with robots and ground-penetrating radar, identifying crevasses to be repaired so that vehicles can haul supplies and equipment from the coast to McMurdo station. 
 
 Hamilton was driving a snow machine when he hit a crevasse and fell 100 feet into the ice. The circumstances of the accident are still unclear, but NSF spokesman Peter West said that some crevasses are covered in snow and are difficult to spot from ground level. Some of Hamilton's colleagues are working to develop robots capable of detecting buried crevasses for that reason. 
 
 Hamilton's body has been recovered and will be returned to his family in Orono, Maine, the NSF said. 
 
 [Plane takes off from the South Pole in rare, risky effort to rescue sick workers] 
 
 Hamilton was born in Scotland and held degrees from the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. Since 2005, he has been an associate professor at the University of Maine's School of Earth and Climate Sciences. In a statement Monday, university President Susan Hunter said that his glaciology research was “second to none.” 
 
 “He leaves a legacy as an outstanding scientist, and a caring mentor and well-known teacher to undergraduate and graduate students,” she said. 
 
 Hamilton spent years surveying the glaciers around Greenland and Antarctica, aiming to understand how they might contribute to sea level rise. This was his latest of several expeditions to Antarctica. 
 
 The NSF said that Hamilton and all members of his team received crevasse and glacial safety training before going into the shear zone. The Antarctic Program also assigned mountaineers who were familiar with the zone to accompany Hamilton's science team and the crevasse remediation team, which was camped 200 yards away. 
 
 The two teams had spent the week identifying and filling in crevasses in the area, and were about to start work on a new crevasse when Hamilton died. 
 
 The U.S. Antarctic Program has opened an accident investigation of Hamilton's death. Hamilton's colleagues are currently preparing to leave the field, West said. 
 
 Deaths in Antarctica are rare, but research at the poles is always risky. Earlier this year, two sick workers at the South Pole had to be evacuated under the cover of complete darkness during the six-month Antarctic night. 
 
 “The U.S. Antarctic Program is a close-knit corps of researchers and support personnel who carry out the nation’s program of research in Antarctica, working at the frontiers of human knowledge, but also at the physical frontiers of human experience,” Kelly Falkner, director of polar programs for the NSF, said in a statement. “The death of one of our colleagues is a tragic reminder of the risks we all face — no matter how hard we work at mitigating those risks — in field research.” 
 
 Hamilton is survived by his wife, Fiona, and their two children, Martin and Calum. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 This Antarctic glacier is the biggest threat for rising sea levels. The race is on to understand it 
 
 Scientists just showed what it truly means when a huge Antarctic glacier is unstable 
 
 The latest disaster risk from climate change — huge glacial floods ||||| News Release 16-135 
 
 U.S. Antarctic Program Investigator Perishes in Snowmobile Accident 
 
 
 
 October 23, 2016 
 
 
 
 This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts. 
 
 A researcher with the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), managed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), suffered a fatal injury on Saturday, October 22, New Zealand time. 
 
 Dr. Gordon Hamilton, University of Maine Climate Change Institute, Orono, Maine, was fatally injured when the snow machine he was riding went into a crevasse. Hamilton's team was camped in a heavily crevassed area known as the Shear Zone (SZ), approximately 25 miles south of McMurdo Station, the largest of the three U.S. research stations in Antarctica. 
 
 The McMurdo SZ is a three-mile wide and more than 125-mile long swath of intensely crevassed ice where the Ross Ice Shelf meets the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The ice is up to 650 feet thick in this area. Dr. Hamilton's body has been recovered and will be returned to his family in Maine. An accident investigation has begun by USAP personnel. 
 
 "I am deeply saddened by the news of the tragic death of Dr. Hamilton. Our thoughts are with the family and entire community as we mourn this loss," said Dr. France Córdova, Director, National Science Foundation. 
 
 Dr. Hamilton's research utilized two robots that contained ground penetrating radar instruments to study the stability of the Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves. 
 
 At the time of the accident, the science team was camped approximately 200 yards from the USAP's South Pole Operations Traverse crevasse remediation team. The two teams, science and Traverse operations, were working together to identify and remediate crevasses which had appeared in the past year. 
 
 The two teams included experienced personnel who had worked in this area over the past several years and all members of both teams had received crevasse and glacial safety training before going into the area. In addition, mountaineers, familiar and experienced with the SZ, were with each of the two teams. Crevasses had been identified and filled earlier in the week and work on a newly identified crevasse was beginning at the time of the accident. 
 
 The NSF manages the USAP, through which it coordinates all U.S. research and the necessary logistical support on the continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean. 
 
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 Awards Searches: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ ||||| Flags from the nations that signed the Antarctic Treaty encircle the Ceremonial South Pole. In 1959 the original treaty among 12 nations included provisions stating that Antarctica would only be used for peaceful purposes and ensuring continued scientific research there. Since then, the list of signatories has grown to 50. Besides flags, the Ceremonial South Pole is marked by a pedestal with a reflective globe on top. In the background stands the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, an American scientific facility. When the Google panoramic images were shot on the polar plateau, the conditions weren’t just windy -- the temperature was negative 60 degrees F. The ice that the station is built on moves annually so the geographic South Pole location is in a different position every year, Starns said. "The ceremonial pole always stays in the same place." VIDEO: Frozen Planet: Journey to the South Pole 
 
 Back in 2010, Google first unveiled Street View images taken from Half Moon Island on the northern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula. Visitors from cruise ships that stopped there helped take the panoramic photos at the time, Starns said. Instead of a human, the Street View icon turned into a little penguin. The Adélie penguins at a remote rookery on Cape Royds aren’t accustomed to humans taking their pictures, but they seem more focused on soaking up the summer sun. From here the waters of McMurdo Sound are visible. Adélie penguins use the sun to navigate from land to the sea, according to scientific data from the Polar Conservation Organization. Unlike the humans in Google’s shots, none of the penguins have blurred faces to protect their identities. “If we get any blurring requests from them, we’ll be sure to tend to them,” Starns joked. ANALYSIS: Paralyzed Athlete Sit-Skis to the South Pole 
 
 A 50-foot-long wooden cabin was built in 1911 at Cape Evans on Ross Island to house several dozen men. British explorer Robert Falcon Scott used this building as a base for his Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole, but he and his team ultimately reached the pole weeks after Amundsen. Scott and the four other men in his party died in the frozen wilderness while attempting to return. A letter found with his body read, "Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman." Although the cabin has remained largely unchanged since Shackleton locked it up in 1917, scientists have to regularly keep it from being swallowed by ice and snow. "You look at the food and the equipment that they brought and imagine how isolating and how lonely it must have been down there," Starns said, adding that he couldn’t imagine spending years eating tea biscuits and gravy. "It’s amazing to me that not only did these men do this, but many of them volunteered for it." NEWS: Two Aussies Reach South Pole Unaided 
 
 Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton survived what seemed like certain death. His first attempt to reach the South Pole in 1901 nearly killed him. In 1908 he returned, getting even closer to the South Pole. Although Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen got there first in 1911, Shackleton was still determined. His ship Endurance would get trapped in the ice, forcing the crew on an epic adventure to safety. New images show the entire interior of Shackleton’s 1908 hut at Cape Royds. “Having this immersive imagery of the supply depot they built really reinforces the sense of just how incredible that journey was,” Starns said. Reading materials remain on the beds, tossed aside as if their owners will be back momentarily. And yet the objects inside hut have stayed in place for more than a century. “His was unique because they had some early photographic equipment on board,” Starns said of Shackleton. “In the hut you can still see some of the photographic chemicals that they used to develop their film.” Photographer Frank Hurley’s images from the Endurance expedition would become famous. HOWSTUFFWORKS: Can You Vacation in Antarctica? 
 
 The South Pole Telescope building shown here contains an enormous scientific instrument that took more than 30 engineers and scientists to construct. “The South Pole Station is actually at a really high altitude,” Starns said. Located 1.7 miles above sea level, the telescope is used by a team of scientists seeking to answer crucial questions such as “How old is the universe?” Since the South Pole has such clear atmosphere, it’s an ideal location for observing the thermal radiation that fills our universe. Starns hopes that Street View users who interact with the new images from Antarctica will be excited to learn more about the continent. He also wants them to have a greater appreciation for the explorers of 100 years ago and modern researchers, he said. Particularly the challenges inherent in a place NASA scientists used to prepare the landers for conditions on Mars. ANALYSIS: 100 Years Ago Today: Scott Reaches South Pole 
 
 This week Google debuted a new set of panoramic images from the South Pole. Taken in partnership with on-site researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Polar Geospatial Center, these interactive views shed light on remote locations such as Ernest Shackleton’s early shelter and the Adélie penguin rookery. The images were captured using off-the-shelf equipment that included a digital SLR camera with a fisheye lens, said Alex Starns, a Google technical program manager for Street View whose work covers operations in Asia Pacific and Antarctica. Brad Harried, a researcher with the Polar Geospatial Center, took the latest photos. “Brad would often carry extra batteries in his pocket and use a chemical hand warmer to keep them from freezing,” Starns said. “It’s a little challenging to operate the camera wearing thick winter clothes and mittens.” Explore the frigid Antarctic landscape in this slide show of high-resolution images. 
 
 Different thicknesses of sea ice in Antarctica's Bellingshausen Sea. Open water is dark black; older sea ice has a covering of bright white snow, and thick ice is grey. 
 
 Antarctica's ice paradox has yet another puzzling layer. Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports. 
 
 The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica's expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region's sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent's sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica's ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating. 
 
 Play Video Why Do We Go to Antarctica? Antarctica is a cold, harsh place with vast changing landscapes and uncovered mysteries underneath the ice. DCI 
 
 Measuring sea ice thickness is a crucial step in understanding what's driving the growth of sea ice, said study co-author Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Climate scientists need to know if the sea ice expansion also includes underwater thickening. [Album: Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice] 
 
 "If we don't know how much ice is there is, we can't validate the models we use to understand the global climate," Maksym told Live Science. "It looks like there are significant areas of thick ice that are probably not accounted for." 
 
 The findings were published today (Nov. 24) in the journal Nature Geoscience. 
 
 Like icebergs, much of Antarctica's floating sea ice is underwater, hidden from satellites that track seasonal sea ice. And it's difficult to take direct measurements from ships or drilling, because the thickest ice is also the hardest to reach, Maksym said. 
 
 The researchers were stuck aboard an icebreaker in 20-foot-thick (6 meters) pack ice for more than a week after taking advantage of a lead, or open water, that accessed thick ice, he said. "Obviously that carried some risk, and we were stuck until the wind changed direction again," he said. 
 
 Pinging the ice 
 
 Over the last four years, the international group of researchers has mapped the bottom of sea ice with an underwater robot, or autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), during two research cruises offshore Antarctica. The AUV can swim to a depth of about 100 feet (30 m) and has upward-looking sonar to survey the bottom of the sea ice. 
 
 "With the AUV, you can get under ice that is either difficult to access or difficult to drill, and in each region, we found some really thick ice, thicker than had been measured anywhere else," Maksym said.
– America's close-knit team of Antarctic researchers is mourning a colleague who died in one of the continent's most dangerous areas. Climate scientist Gordon Hamilton, a 50-year-old Scotsman, died Saturday when his snowmobile plunged into a crevasse in an area known as the "Shear Zone," 25 miles south of the McMurdo research station, according to the National Science Foundation, which describes the area as a "three-mile wide and more than 125-mile long swath of intensely crevassed ice" where two ice shelves meet. Hamilton and his colleagues spent years trying to map the region, using robots and ground-penetrating radar, the Washington Post reports. Hamilton fell 100 feet into the ice after hitting a crevasse that may have been covered in snow and hard to spot. When he wasn't carrying out research in frozen parts of the world, Hamilton was a research professor at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, specializing in glaciology. His work, which focused on the contribution of ice sheet shifts to sea level rise, "was second to none," university president Susan Hunter said Sunday in a statement, per the New York Times. Hamilton's body was recovered and will be returned to his wife and two children in Maine. Kelly Falkner, director of polar programs for the NSF, called the death a "tragic reminder of the risks we all face" in field research. (A worker at the South Pole needed to be rescued a few months ago.)