Summary
We discuss an upcoming international airborne survey targeting two of the East Antarctica Ice Sheet's (EAIS) enigmatic subglacial basins. Using a multi-instrumented long range aircraft we will address key issues in the origin and fate of Earth's largest ice sheet. We have proposed a collaborative program between the US, UK and Australia over two austral summers, beginning in the 2008-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), to survey the portion of the EAIS underlain by the Wilkes and Aurora Subglacial Basins and dominated by the Byrd and Totten Glacier systems. These basins have become a focus for SCAR/IPY Antarctic Climate Evolution (ACE) and International Partnerships in Ice Coring Science (IPICS) research. IPICS has a goal to find ice older than 1 million years; therefore thick ice in Aurora Basin requires closer study. ACE is sponsoring a program of ocean drilling offshore of the Wilkes Basin supported by comprehensive modeling of EAIS evolution. We will use flow-line and gridded observations over these basins to acquire ice thickness, date internal layers in support of ice sheet modeling, track flow regime change using internal layers along flow lines from the ice divides to the grounding zone environment. and study crustal geology and subglacial hydrological systems.