A successful season for Jan Lenaerts
Jan Lenaerts, the 2014 Inbev-Baillet Latour laureate is really happy with the work he was able to accomplish during the 2014-2015 BELARE expedition and with the support he got from the team.
The BENEMELT project
Jan was in Antarctica do conduct research for the BENEMELT project. BENEMELT aims at investigating how much snow melts on the ice shelves in East Antarctica, to what extent melt may increase in the future, and how this melt would impact ice shelf stability and ultimately global sea levels.
His main duties this season were to:
- Install an automatic weather station on the King Baudouin Ice Shelf to get continuous measurements during a one-year period.
- Drill several firn cores to investigate melt layers and determine snow density.
He plans to return next year!
Jan Lenaerts will come back to Princess Elisabeth Station and camp on the ice shelf for several weeks to measure snow albedo, snow grain size, snow density, and melt layers. He also plans to investigate a large 2 km-wide scar on the ice shelf scientists form the Alfred Wegener Institute discovered in December 2014 while flying a geophysical survey.
Video: © International Polar Foundation / Jos Van Hemelrijck / Jérôme Coupé