AI to help track icebergs

PARIS — British scientists said on Thursday that an AI tool to catalog and track icebergs as they break apart into smaller chunks could fill a "major blind spot" in predicting climate change.

Icebergs release enormous volumes of freshwater when they melt in open waters, affecting global climate patterns and altering ocean currents and ecosystems.

But scientists have long struggled to keep track of these floating behemoths once they break into thousands of smaller chunks, their fate and impact on the climate largely lost to the seas.

To fill in the gap, the British Antarctic Survey has developed an AI system that automatically identifies and names individual icebergs at birth and tracks their sometimes decades-long journey to a watery grave.

Using satellite images, the tool captures the distinct shape of icebergs as they break off — or calve — from glaciers and ice sheets on land.

As they disintegrate over time, the machine solves a giant puzzle problem, linking the smaller "child" fragments back to the "parent" and creating detailed family trees never before possible at this scale.

It represents a huge improvement over existing methods, where scientists pore over satellite images to visually identify and track only the largest icebergs one by one.

Vital information

The AI system, which was tested using satellite observations over Greenland, provides "vital new information" for scientists and improves predictions about the future climate, said the British Antarctic Survey.

"What's exciting is that this finally gives us the observations we've been missing," Ben Evans, a machine learning expert at the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement.

"We've gone from tracking a few famous icebergs to building full family trees. For the first time, we can see where each fragment came from, where it goes and why that matters for the climate."

AI could also be adapted to aid the safe passage for navigators through treacherous polar regions littered with icebergs.

Iceberg calving is a natural process. But scientists say the rate at which they are being lost from Antarctica is increasing, probably because of human-induced climate change.

Agencies Via Xinhua