Q&A: Pen Hadow, explorer

A three-strong team of explorers will set out early next year to spend several months trekking across the Arctic ice, gathering data they hope will enable scientists to more accurately predict how many years are left before there is no longer a permanent ice cap at the North Pole.

Current estimates put the lifespan of the Arctic's sea ice somewhere between five and 100 years. The aim of the Vanco Arctic Ice Survey is to narrow this down by using an ice-penetrating radar to take millions of measurements of the thickness of the ice cap - providing more accurate data for scientists to work with.

The team is led by veteran Polar explorer, Pen Hadow. silicon.com's Natasha Lomas caught up with Hadow recently to discuss his hopes for the survey, how technology has changed the life of an explorer and the dangers of swimming with bears in the Arctic.

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silicon.com: The Vanco Arctic Survey was due to set off this year but the start date has been put back to February 2009. What are you hoping to achieve with the extra preparation time?
Hadow: We'll be able to attract more scientific research organisations. We'll be able to offer a wider range of data sets from the raw data that we gather. There's phenomenal volume - essentially between 10 and 20 million [ice] cross profiles.

Over the next few months we will be able to develop some additional bespoke software to strip out different facets from this raw material. For example we believe we may be able to discern the age of each ice pan or ice flow that we cross - because, like growth rings on a tree, there are growth rings in the under-shelf of the ice each time it starts to freeze when a winter comes, so you can see how many winters the pan of ice has survived.

Putting an age on the ice cap offers a different dimension or a different body of information about the status of the ice cap. This extra time will enable us to do things like that which we wouldn't have been able to do before so it enhances the value of the raw data that we have.

Why is this survey important?
The scientific community clearly feel it's important because it is the only way of delivering the missing data set. They have estimates of the thickness of the ice provided by satellites and submarines but they don't have any actual measurements of the thickness of the ice as opposed to the snow. And it is the measurement of the thickness of the ice that will determine how long the ice cap is likely to survive. So scientists are excited by the possibility that this survey team can actually produce this accurate measurement.

The focus of the survey is on a region whose change in response to global warming is greater than anywhere else on earth and is accelerating and therefore offers us the most powerful indicator of what is likely to happen - or is happening and what will continue to happen - if we don't change our carbon emissions or get a better control of them.

Do you believe climate change is being caused by human activity? How worried should we be?
I don't think there's a debate to be had. If you can find someone - some meaningful body of people - who are saying it is not humans who are generating it I'd be amazed. I think the argument has to all intents and purposes collapsed. I believe even President Bush's chief scientific adviser is 90 per cent convinced that it's humans.

I'm not a scientist but I've read more than most people about how climate and global warming has come about and yes I think that it is caused predominately by human activity.

I think 'worried' is probably not quite the right word. But it is happening. If we don't do something about it then it is fairly clear that in a generation - in my children's lifetime - life is going to get that much more stressful than it is now, because I believe there's going to be large movements of people across national borders in response to relatively quickly changing rainfall patterns and therefore water supply.

So I'm not standing here in a panic because it's not going to achieve anything. I'm just doing my bit.

What tech will the survey team be taking with them onto the ice?
This falls into several categories. At the epicentre of the survey is of course what is generally known as a ground-penetrating radar but in this case it's an ice-penetrating radar. Which are normally about 130 kilos and have a 200W powerplant driving it and they're operated from aircraft.

We've reduced it down to four kilos with a 16W powerplant. And it's the size of a briefcase - and it can be towed behind the sledge taking measurements about every 10cms. We are covering the ground and it is quietly getting on with its work. You don't have to stop for every sample. That was part of the thinking behind it - how could we cover the ground without having to be endlessly stopping to do the measurements.

That's the most important bit of technology from the survey's point of view. From the public engagement side we've developed, with Vanco's help, a data transmission system via the Iridium satellite array which surpasses all previous capacities in terms of technology. So what we are doing is we're able to get relatively high volumes of data out down a fuse-wire thin data tube - 2.6kbps. And what that means really is we can not only get the survey data out, we can also send webcam footage back - which has never been done from the Polar regions, Antarctica or the Arctic ocean north of 80 degrees north - and we can also do live interviews with television and we can also do videoconferencing.

What excites you most about the survey?
This is real exploration and that's something I don't feel I've had an opportunity to do before. It's amazing that in the 21st century we still don't know how thick one of the biggest planet-defining surface features is. And that three regular folk with some sort of specialist technical experience are actually in the best position to do that is really exciting for us. We are the only people that can do it. Or are prepared to do it. You couldn't pay a Nasa scientist enough money to walk across the sea ice for three or four months and to swim at night in an immersion suit to some unknown point that may or may not offer thin ice or better ice or whatever.

People often say what's left to explore? Well we know the ice cap exists and we know roughly how big it is and how fast it's shrinking but without knowing its thickness we can't know how long it will last. So that's our contribution to the exploration scene.

Interview continues on page 2 - click here to read on...