Pole Position: Weisen Shen Aims to Make Stony Brook an Antarctic Force

From left: Department of Geosciences graduate students Amarjeet Kumar, Andrew Groh and Hanxiao Wu.

A Stony Brook University research team has begun their journey to the South Pole to probe the effects of global changing, the third and final trip supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that's field component is set to expire.

The group departed on November 9 for their first stop, New Zealand's McMurdo Station, an American Antarctic research station on the southern tip of Ross Island, and hopes to reach the South Pole on or around November 20th.

Weisen Shen, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, the project's principal investigator (PI), hopes the trip does not mark the end of an era, but rather opens the door to a new era of Stony Brook research in Antarctica.

"The long-term goal for us is not to do just seasonal projects," said Shen, "but that sometime in the near future Stony Brook can maintain its own geophysical observatory long-term infrastructure."

The current project focuses on the Antarctic ice sheet and the geology beneath the ice near the South Pole. The goal of Shen's team is to gain knowledge to better predict the future behavior of the ice, and with it, the potential effects of global warming and climate change. For the past two years, Shen has led a research team in Antarctica, spending two months at the South Pole. Now, with funding for the project set to expire, Shen's team is preparing to bring the project to a close.

An airplane that the students took having landed in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Photo by Hanxiao Wu.

A bittersweet final chapter, this adventure will take place without Shen.

"I'm the only PI, and I've been there for two full months each of the past two years," he said. "I also have a three-year-old and a six-year-old, so this year I'm going to stay in town for the holiday season. Or else…"

Instead, three graduate students from the Department of Geosciences will take the heavy dig.

Shen's work has also taken him to Africa, where he did similar research in the Turkana Basin in Kenya.

"Stony Brook's footprint is global," said Shen. "This technology is similar. It doesn't matter whether you're in a desert or at the South Pole. We do have to design them slightly differently because of power availability. For example, in the South Pole, you have half-a-year of no sun."

The work in Antarctica is more remote; the team might have to travel hundreds of miles from the Pole to do the field work.

"It's like an ice desert that just keeps going," Shen said. "It's similar to being on a ship because you're just driving and you don't know where you're going unless you're looking at the GPS. Then you stop, put these sensors down, and turn around and follow your tracks all the way back."

Shen said Stony Brook is very strong in terms of studying the Earth's systems in Antarctica, and his hope is that one day Stony Brook can maintain its own geophysical observatory there.

From left: Amarjeet Kumar, Hanxiao Wu and Andrew Groh.

"My goal is to facilitate some long-term infrastructure, but we'll need a lot of resources to do that," he said. "I want to help Stony Brook establish solid ground as a leader in polar science. I hope to have a chance to build that in the next three to five years. We have the connections and we have access to different parts of Antarctica. What we need now is resources to start."

Though Antarctica is 9,000 miles away from Long Island, the research Shen's team is doing is very much relevant to those who live near Stony Brook.

"This ice sheet is 2.5 kilometers thick, sitting on the continent, and we know it is changing fast," he said. "But how fast? The sea level will rise and that will affect us here. Stony Brook Harbor, Port Jefferson Harbor, Northport Harbor….will they still be safe in the next 100 years? We want to monitor that piece of ice sheet because it will affect our local community."

Shen's first opportunity to do Antarctic research came atWashington University in St. Louis, which he chose over another opportunity working as a geophysicist for the oil industry in Houston. "The professor at Washington University said, 'I know you have a good offer from Houston, but if you come work for us, the paycheck will be less, but we can send you to Antarctica.'"

Shen would later use that same example recruiting grad students like Hanxio Wu.

"I told her, 'If you join us, we'll put you in the field in Antarctica,'" said Shen.

Wu and Thomas Reilly, research assistants in the Department of Geosciences, have done research in both Antarctica and in the Turkana Basin.

"At the South Pole, we submit our line to USAP South Pole (the United States Antarctic Program's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station) and they look at satellite imagery and detect if there's any danger and if not, we just drive straight in one direction until the work is done," Reilly said. "In Kenya, we'd drive about two kilometers and we'd have to make sure no one was following us. We'd put a node down as quickly as we possibly can, no markings around it, no anything, and try to take as good a picture as we can so we can find it next month. And then we get back in the car and do it 70 more times. So the two are very different, but both were good experiences."

Andrew Groh, a first-year doctoral candidate, will follow in their footsteps, making his first journey to Antarctica. Groh is working on developing the next generation geophysical instrumentation for polar regions.

Shen said if Stony Brook's goal is to set itself apart from others in Antarctica, the opportunity is there.

"Stony Brook is known for having research stations outside of the United States," said Shen. "We have a research station in Turkana. We have a research station in Madagascar. I think it's just a matter of deciding if we want this to happen to the place that is most sensitive to the global change."

In the end, Shen said the question is not whether climate change is real, but what can we do to adopt the changes and mitigate the risk?

"We know that the problem will not go away," said Shen. "You can make yourself blind and avoid talking about it, but the ice is still melting. The sea will still rise. It's time for our university and our stakeholders to think about what more we can do both for the sake of educating our next generation portal researchers, but also to maintain infrastructure in a place that is critical to the future of Long Island residents."

- Robert Emproto