Palmer’s downgrading would leave American researchers without reliable marine access to certain parts of Antarctica already contributing significantly to elevation of sea level and where scientists are concerned about the collapse of the glacial cap.
In a statement to NBC News, the NSF said it planned to consolidate its resources and focus on maintaining the three research stations that operated in Antarctica, including McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer Stations.
“USAP [U.S. Antarctic Program] Maintains an active and influential American presence on the Antarctic continent while allowing cutting-edge scientific research in astronomy, biology and glaciology, among other areas, “said a spokesperson for the NSF.” To concentrate support on stations and associated logistics, NSF intends to finish the drop in research vestige Nathaniel B. Palmer. “”
The NSF first proposed to end the lease this spring after the Trump administration proposed a 55% Budget reduced the agency, but scientists said they were dismayed that the agency had started the ship’s downgrading process before the congress ended a budget.
“THE [House and Senate] Budgets do not really call drastic cuts on the Antarctic program, “said the oceanographer Carlos Moffat, an associate professor at the University of Delaware, referring to advanced budgets in the credit committees of the two chambers.
The NSF said that it was trying to identify other ships to collect part of the Palmer workload and that the ship will be returned to its owner, the Marine Transport Company based in Louisiana, Edison Choust Offshore.
In 2024, the NSF put an end to the charter of another Antarctic vessel, the RV Laurence M. Gould, which was not a icebreaker but was reinforced to manage a certain sea ice. This leaves the agency less options to strengthen polar research in oceanography and to support the Palmer station, a base all year on the Antarctic Peninsula which depended on these two ships in the past.
The NSF said on Friday that it had “alternative ways” to support and replenish the Palmer station, including commercial options.
The 308 -foot palmer, which sailed for the first time in 1992 and was appointed according to a 19th century seal captain who explored certain parts of the Antarctic, has a crew of around 22 people. It can accommodate around 45 scientists.
No other American research ship can perform all the tasks that this polar icebreaker is designed to accomplish. The ship is the key research tool to understand the ecology of Antarctica, the carbon cycle in the southern ocean and the speed at which the ice shelves withdraw, melt and cause an increase in sea level.
While satellites provide useful data on how ice caps develop or shrink, said Wellner, research on these changes is mainly motivated by surface measures.
Without these data, American scientists would be ignorant of what is happening in key ice keys to the southern ocean which could determine the amount of future estimated floods for American coastal cities. For example, researchers said that no other American ship is equipped to safely visit the infamous Thwai Glacier, also known as the “apocalyptic glacier”, which is considered to be the bite of the linch to understand the elevation of the sea level.
Researchers often describe Thwaites as the West Liège bottle of the Antarctic Ice Beer, because it acts as a rampart that prevents the leaf from collapsing in the Amundsen Sea. This could cause more than 10 feet of rising at sea for hundreds of thousands of years.
In 2100, its potential collapse could increase the sea level much higher than the approximately 1 to 3 feet that scientists have already planned in the most recent intergovernmental panel on the report on climate change, which would reshape the American coast.
A collapse could also trigger changes in the circulation of the oceans and at what speed the ocean occupies carbon, an active research area. Some studies have suggested that global temperatures could have crossed a collapse threshold, but more research is necessary.
The modifications of its current mass and its stability are driven by hot water which eats away at its base, which is located hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface and is better accessible by robotic instruments.
“In order to understand the change of mass, we must be on the fringes of the ice – where the ice and the ocean meet,” said Wellner. “And this is obtained by going to this ship.”
Scientists generally make research trips on the palmer every two years, said Wellner, using which data can be collected in the field over a month or two to bring research in the laboratory.
Because the data collected on ships is so precious, scientists have been pushing for more than a decade to add an icebreaker to the American scientific fleet and reduce the backwards of researchers who seek to do work on the Palmer.
