Willis Resilience Expedition of the deposition rate of Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, across Antarctica. The relatively short half-life of Tritium means it can be used to date snow and ice up to around 150 years old. The data can then be used to better understand the global water cycle, which is intrinsically linked to changes in climate. This will be the first large-scale study of Tritium in Antarctica since Tritium returned to normal levels following the spike caused by thermonuclear tests in the 1960s. The samples will be sent to GNS Science, a New Zealand Crown Research Institute, for analysis. Once
Tritium the ocean floor over 10 to 20 year time-scales. Also evident in the Atlantic Ocean is the tritium profile near Bermuda between the late 1960s and late 1980s. There is a downward propagation of the tritium maximum from the surface (1960s) to 400 meters (1980s), which corresponds to a deepening rate of approximately 18 meters per year. There are also tritium increases at 1,500 meters depth in the late 1970s and 2,500 meters in the middle of the 1980s, both of which correspond to cooling events in the deep water and associated deep water ventilation. From a study in 1991,