Hot on the heels of French explorer Jean-Louis Etienne, another hardy bunch is setting out to measure arctic ice. But unlike recent Great Beyond star Etienne, who will float serenely above the ice in his airship, this latest team will be going on foot. Pen Hadow and his team will haul a sled-mounded radar 2,000 kilometres from Alaska to the North Pole next year, swimming where necessary (AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC, official website).

“The only way to accurately gauge the current thickness of the polar ice cap is to physically go out there and measure it on the surface to supply crucial data that can’t be recorded by submarine or satellite,” according to Hadow, pictured centre (press release pdf). Scientists from the University of Cambridge, University College London, NASA and the Met Office in the UK will be participating in the project. João Rodrigues, of Cambridge’s Polar Oceans Physics Group, is the survey’s head of science.

Over 10 million radar readings, along with ice-drilling, will allow researchers to analyse both the ice thickness and the overlying snow thickness – measurements that have often been rolled into one. Hadow and co will try to average 18 kilometres a day, meaning the journey will take them a little over 100 days. “I feel like a bit of a donkey to be honest. All I’m really going to be doing is pulling this hugely heavy sledge with this incredibly hi-tech gadgetry which can measure the exact thickness of the icecap,” Hadow told the BBC.

Image: survey team show off their kit / © Martin Hartley