New map of Antarctica presented at AGU meeting

BBC : New imagery of Antarctica is being presented at today’s American Geophysical Union fall meeting . Called BEDMAP 2 , the project incorporates more than 27 million data points collected from decades of surveys conducted by plane, satellite, ship, and dogsled. More than 99% of the continent’s rock base lies beneath an icy cover, but with the relatively recent addition of airborne radar, scientists can now map the troughs, valleys, and mountains that make up Antarctica’s subglacial surface. As they review and sift through the data, they have been seeing significant changes at the continent’s margins. Increasing volumes of ice melt are raising global sea levels. The new information is crucial in the quest to understand how Antarctica is responding to global warming, reports Jonathan Amos for the BBC.