Martin Peninsula, West Antarctica as seen by a US Navy mapping flight in January 1966. This coastal ice rise is a target of the RAICA project, recently funded by NSF and the Korean Polar Research Institute. The first season of RAICA fieldwork collected two 150 m deep ice cores from a nearby location, Canisteo Peninsula, via a research cruise in January-February 2024 aboard the Korean icebreaker RV ARAON. 

Image via Polar Geospatial Center (another great UMN resource!).

We are the University of Minnesota Neff Ice and Climate Exploration (Minnesota NICE) Lab, led by Dr. Peter Neff in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate. Our research uses a combination of ice cores (frequently collecting new cores), ground-based chemical and geophysical observations, remotely-sensed datasets, and climate reanalysis data to expand our sparse spatial and temporal understanding of climate, particularly at "ice rises" along the rapidly-changing coastline of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet but also in glaciated mountain ranges in North America. 

This is a new website (as of April 2024). For Peter's older website and info, see here.

The RAICA team moving cargo via helicopter from the Canisteo Peninsula, Antarctica ice drilling site to the South Korean icebreaker RV ARAON 20 km away. Photo Vikram Goel.