This is a day of mourning for the science community as Gordon Hamilton, climate scientists, passed away on a snowmobile accident.
Hamilton, who was 50 years old, was known for studying ice sheets. He was a part of the U.S. Antarctic Program that studies thet ice shelves stability in the McMurdo Station, a research center on Ross Island that's located 2,500 miles south of New Zealand.
He and his colleagues were mapping the McMurdo shear zone, the place where Ross and McMurdo ice shelves meet when the accident happened. The snow machine his riding hit a crevasse and fell 100 ft. into the ice, Chicago Tribune reported.
Peter West, NSF spokesperson, explained that the there are things that needs to be known about the accident. He explained that there are parts of the crevasses that were covered in snow.
This make it difficult to found on the ground. West said that Hamilton has colleagues were developing robots to detect this crevasses, it is just sad that he didn't get to use this device.
Kelly K. Falkner of the National Science Foundation said that the death of their colleague is a reminder of the risks of field research. She stressed that no matter how they mitigate field research the risk is still there, New York Times reported.
Susan J. Hunter from the University of Maine explained that Hamilton's glaciological research around the world is second to none. She explained that his research focus on the impact of our warming climate on the sea levels.
"The ice sheets contribute to the rapid sea level rise. It is important to study understand how ice sheets behave to know how much sea level is going to rise in the upcoming century," Hamilton said in a 2013 interview.
"I can't think of another job I would rather be doing," he stressed in the video.
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