Kansas University will be home to a national center to study the melting of polar ice caps, a phenomenon some experts say is occurring at “alarming” rates.

Today, university officials will announce that The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets will be funded by a $19 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The award is the largest single federal grant ever received by a university in Kansas.

The center will involve more than 40 scientists from 10 universities and NASA.

“We definitely have a wonderful opportunity for KU to make a significant contribution to the science and technology of studying climate change and to be a world leader in that area,” said Prasad Gogineni, the engineering professor who will be director of the center.

The center, to be announced during a press conference this morning, will be one of only 13 designated Science and Technology Centers nationwide to be funded by NSF. The offices will be housed in KU’s Nichols Hall, where seven staff positions will be created. KU has committed to create an additional four faculty positions for ice-related research, and the project will support 15 graduate research assistants.

The initial grant is for five years. The center’s funding could be renewed after that.

“These centers are awarded on a very competitive basis, and only to the top research institutions in the nation,” Chancellor Robert Hemenway said. “This is confirmation of the research strength of KU.”

In addition to KU, participating institutions include Haskell Indian Nations University, Elizabeth City (N.C.) State University, the University of Maine, Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center will be involved.

International collaborators include the University College of London, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Technical University and the University of Tasmania.

Richard Stansbury, top, jacks up a polar ice cap rover as Torry Akins positions a stack of wood to prop the vehicle up. The team of engineers at Kansas University installed rubber tracks onto the rover, which will be used in studying the thickness of polar ice caps in Greenland. Stansbury and Akins worked on Friday at Nichols Hall.

The concern

Melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have been an issue among scientists for some time, but urgency surrounding the issue has increased in recent years.

A study published in October, which involved radar developed at KU, showed 253 cubic kilometers of ice from a section of western Antarctica are melting each year, a volume equal to about 241,000 Empire State Buildings. Previous estimates based on data from the 1990s were closer to 150 cubic kilometers per year.

Other papers also have indicated melting is faster than previously thought.

“Things are changing at a fantastic rate,” said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, associate professor at Penn State. “It’s just unprecedented in the instrumental record. Today you can go out and see these glaciers are disappearing, and it’s alarming.”

Scientists estimate the ice caps contain enough ice to raise the global sea level by 70 meters if melted. A 1-meter rise would result in $270 billion to $475 billion in property losses and other costs. About 100 million people worldwide live in coastal areas.

“For a few thousand years, we humans have chosen to flock to the coasts and have made ourselves more vulnerable to changes in sea level,” said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist at Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes at NASA. “Our job is to reduce the uncertainty levels to a point where the decision-makers can justify the pain and expense of gearing a policy toward avoiding unwanted, undesirable consequences.

NASA facts: Polar ice (pdf) National Snow and Ice Data Center

“With sea-level rise, we’re talking about a very expensive mitigation process. There are those who say the sooner you start down that path, the less it will cost eventually.”

The science

The scientists assembled by Gogineni — an NSF reviewer referred to it as a “dream team” of polar ice researchers — will work to develop radar and other sensing devices that will measure the thickness of the ice sheet, characteristics of layers and ice flow, and the state of the ice sheets at the bedrock. The sensing will be done from the ground, and aircraft and satellites will build on previous radar developed with KU’s Polar Radar for Ice Sheet Measurements program.

The group also will develop unmanned air vehicles to carry the radar over the ice sheets for the project.

“I think it’s going to be a very big deal,” said Ken Jezek, a professor of Ohio State. “Science moves forward when you have a good science problem and you have innovative technology. With the science the guys at Kansas are developing, there are possibilities for major breakthroughs.”

The project also has an education and outreach component. A coordinator will be hired to help teach K-12 students and their teachers about polar regions.

It’s a topic KU researchers think will have mass appeal.

“When we started, we never dreamed the climate would be like it is now,” said David Braaten, KU associate professor of geography who will be associate director of the center. “Now, everyday people are saying, ‘What the heck is going on here?”