Background

• Glaciers and ice sheets are the main contributors to the rising sea level in the warming world
•  Ice loss from nearly every glacier on Earth is speeding up
• Significant ice loss takes place at marine-terminating glacier margins through melting and calving
•  These processes are poorly understood and are therefore improperly included in ice sheet models
• Poor understanding of the complexity and interaction of the processes shaping the marine glacier margins is largely related to the dangers of field data collection.
• Geological, glaciological as well as oceanographic data are critical for better understanding of the dynamics of marine-terminating glacier margins, and for quantifying their contribution to sea level rise.
• Acquisition of multibeam data at calving glacier margins in uncharted shallow waters and in difficult ice conditions with traditional methods, such as crewed surface vessels, is time-consuming, costly and risky.

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