Before we knew only the extent of the ice cover. We also knew that the sea ice extent had decreased over the last 20 years, but we knew very little about ice thickness. |
It is important to improve the climate models, so we have higher confidence in the results. A lot of change is going on in the climate and our weather is definitely affected by polar climate. |
We can't compare that with the submarine measurements of the '50s and '60s, but eventually we will have a hard data set to compare with itself. The data we will be collecting will be used to improve climate models. |