The speed at which polar ice sheets are melting is one of the hottest topics around, but how best to work it out? Going into Antarctica and Greenland overland is difficult and expensive. Radar surveys from aircraft or satellites are easier, but the data from the edges of the ice sheets can be hard to analyse as the increased water content of the ice there means it absorbs more of the radar signal than ordinary ice. Fractured ice also distorts the signal.
Now researchers from the University of Kansas in Lawrence have built a prototype pilotless aircraft that will carry…
