Just thinking about the climate at the South Pole makes one shiver, and the thought of collecting data once a week in blizzards and temperatures of 35 degrees below freezing would be daunting to the most enthusiastic scientist. However, a key feature of this project is that it can provide the data in a continuous and timely manner, for example every few minutes, rather than the weekly measurements allowed by previous collection methods.
The information collected by this equipment is being analysed by environmental biologists in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. They have been studying the movement of carbon through the ecosystem, and in particular the relationship between levels of carbon and the presence of plankton, for the past 12 years. The new data is enabling new and more detailed modelling and visualisation of the ecosystem to take place.
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