Former Google CEO Will Fund Boat Drones to Explore Rough Antarctic Waters

Drone boats will soon brave the treacherous waters around Antarctica, fighting forty-foot swells and hurricane-force winds to unlock one of climate science's biggest mysteries.

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica devours about 40 percent of all carbon dioxide absorbed by the world's oceans, despite being the second smallest ocean on Earth. Yet scientists have surprisingly little understanding of why this icy expanse is such a powerful carbon sink.

"The Southern Ocean is really far away, so we just haven't done a lot of science there," says Galen McKinley, a Columbia University professor leading the research. "It is a very big ocean, and it is this dramatic and scary place to go."

Eric Schmidt's foundation is investing $45 million over five years to deploy four unmanned surface vessels that will collect data year-round, even during the brutal Antarctic winter. The drones will venture where commercial ships dare not go, using machine learning to optimize their routes for maximum data collection.

This public-private partnership comes as the Trump administration proposes slashing NOAA's budget by 30 percent and cutting National Science Foundation funding by 57 percent, making private funding increasingly crucial for ambitious climate research.