The interest in the Blue Ice Areas (BIA) begun in the early 1960’s, when field observations attributed their formation to horizontal katabatic winds removing accumulated snow (Carry & Wilson 1961). A few years later, these curious snow free areas of the Antarctic continent were also found to be meteorite collectors (Yoshida et al 1971). The importance of this discovery was highlighted earlier this year when Trollenaar et al (2022) named Antarctic continent as the most productive region for recovering meteorites, majority of them are located in the BIA.

BIA are also used for research of the paleoclimate record that, thanks to ice flow regime, is stored on their surface. Thus, recovered from BIA climate records can provide information on the evolution of the ice sheet and processes in the Southern Ocean (e.g., Sinisalo and Moore 2010).

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BIA cover approx. 1% of the continent (or c. 120 000km2, Winther et al 2017), their net ablation is attributed mainly to sublimation. Thanks to the properties of the ice, albedo over BIA is much lower to that of snow (0.56 vs 0.8), and thanks to katabatic winds blue ice surface is also much smoother (Bintanja 1999), making it a good location for infrastructures like an airfield. Recently, it was suggested that 2 types of blue ice are present in Antarctica. Those formed by wind-induced processes (as it was known for the last 60years) and those formed by melt (in melt-freeze cycles) occurring at lower elevations. Dronning Maud Land was shown to have both, Jutulsessen being the former while Jutulstraumen the latter (Winther et al 2017). Interestingly, it was also suggested that BIA in Antarctica were formed roughly in 50% by each process.