East Antarctic International Ice Sheet Traverse
Italian, French and US scientists unite their knowledge and capability to study the interior of the Antarctic plateau between the French-Italian Concordia station (75°S, 123°E), and the US South Pole station (90°S). The scientific objectives of EAIIST are to study the icy terrain of the Antarctic continent in its driest places. These areas are largely unexplored and unknowns and offer unique and extraordinary morphological characteristics: presence of mega-dunes, glazed ice surface, and thermal cracks, structure probable analog to glacial age on deep drilling sites such as Dome C or Vostok. A consortium of scientists from three nations, Italy, France and US is built around the idea to explore and study the geophysical (snow physics, surface mass balance, density, temperature, seismicity, etc.), geochemical (impurities, aerosols, air-snow transfer, water isotopes, etc.) and meteorological dimensions (AWS, atmospheric dynamic, air mass transport, etc.) of these most inhospitable, remote and unknowns regions of the planet by the means of a scientific traverse.