Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Remote Sensing for Antarctic Research: A review of progress, current applications, and future use cases

Antarctica has been significantly influenced by global climate change. Owing to the spatiotemporal limitations of existing datasets, budgetary constraints, logistical challenges, and adverse temperature and climatic conditions of Antarctica, researchers face great challenges. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have helped to solve this issue because they can collect high-resolution spatiotemporal data and conduct operations in inaccessible locations at a low cost and with ease compared with in situ observation and conventional spaceborne and airborne remote sensing. The development and testing of UAVs for use in polar environments mainly focus on enhancing UAV performance in extreme Antarctic conditions by improving their endurance, wind resistance, and aerial photography stability. The equipped multisensors, flexible data collection and operation window, and high-spatiotemporal resolution all contribute to making UAVs the most powerful platform for cryospheric research. In recent years, a series of UAV-related studies on the cryosphere have been published. However, a thorough review that explicitly details the scientific progress and possibilities of using UAVs in Antarctic polar research is lacking. In this era of rapid global and regional climate change, it is becoming increasingly necessary to employ UAVs to investigate the finer changes in the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) and ice shelves. This work investigates the use of UAVs in the monitoring of the glacial microtopography (including rifts and crevasses, surface subsidence, and melting ponds), ice surface landforms, atmosphere, flora and fauna, sea ice, subglacial environment, and other aspects of Antarctic glaciology investigation, and it speculates on their future use in multidisciplinary research.