Royal Holloway researcher heads to Antarctica

Dr France is joining a researcher from the British Antarctic Survey and a French chemist, as part of a £300,000 research trip to study climate change patterns in the wake of possible sea levels rising due to global warming.

He said: "Dome C is one of the most inaccessible bases in the world, it's is very high up on the Antarctic Plateau, so I will be living over 3,000 metres above sea level with temperatures around -30 degrees Celsius. It will be tough work, but without doubt a fantastic opportunity.

"It will be strange being so far away for the whole Christmas season, but I will no doubt bore people with the story of 'how I was in Antarctica for Christmas' for many many years."

Dr France will sail from Hobart, in Tasmania to a French base called Durmont D'Urville on the ice continent, and catch a flight to Dome C.

There he will spend six hours each day working outside in sub-zero temperatures, but as it is currently the Antarctic summer he will have to adjust to 24 hours of constant daylight.

He will be joined by Marcus Frey from the British Antarctic Survey, and Joel Savarino, who is a specialist in isotope chemistry from the Laboratory of Glaciology and Geophysical Environment in France.

They will use light penetration techniques to determine the effect of climate change over the past 10,000 years, by determining the amount of nitrogen and oxygen in the ice at different depths.

He said: "This research is vital to helping us understand the variability of the atmosphere in the past and in predicting climate change. There is nitrate trapped in deep ice-cores, such as Dome C, and it could potentially provide us with insights into the atmosphere of the last tens of thousands of years.

"Understanding how our atmosphere can rapidly change is vital for making accurate climate change predictions for the future."

Dr France visited Alaska in April to understand how sea ice interacts with the atmosphere.