Scottish-based scientists are using a custom-built drone to survey an area of the Arctic to study glaciers falling apart.

The Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), a quadcopter, was built by Shane Rodwell, an engineer at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) base near Oban. It uses a mounted laser-range finder and a camera to measure and photograph glaciers.

It is collecting data for experts Dr Nick Hulton, of The University of Edinburgh ,and Professor Doug Benn, of St Andrews University.

The detailed images will help provide a 3D image of glaciers for their investigation into glacier ‘calving’, the term given to large sections of glaciers breaking off and falling into the sea. This is increasing with global warming.

Large crevasses open up in the glaciers as they break, so the terrain is unsafe to survey on foot and the previously accepted, but costly, alternative is a helicopter. Meanwhile satellite imaging produces comparatively low resolution images.

The work, undertaken in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway, is the first time geoscience researchers have used such a device to measure the depth and size of crevasses in the glaciers.

Dr Hulton said: “The biggest increases to ice loss in the world’s major ice sheets are happening not because of increased melting, but because of increased iceberg calving. Glaciologists worldwide are trying to better understand the main mechanisms involved in the calving process and how it might accelerate if the climate continues to warm.

“Warmer ocean temperatures have an effect because they lead to more melting at the edge of the ice and this can destabilise and break-up the ice margins.

“Measuring crevasses is a fiendishly difficult problem as often researchers are unable to get close enough to measure them and, if they do, the shape and size of the crevasses makes mapping them incredibly difficult.

“I know people who have done this with a ball of string while tied on in precarious locations. The crevasses you often particularly want to measure – the big ones – are more or less totally inaccessible.”

The mounted laser-range finder allowed Mr Rodwell to photograph and measure the depth of every crevasse. On each of the 15 – 20-minute missions, the camera took 1,000 images and after 10 missions the team had enough still images to map the glacier in a 3D model.