Sridhar Anandakrishnan is away for the winter holiday, somewhere where summer is in full swing -- an ice sheet at the end of the Earth.

The Penn State professor of geosciences is leading the University team that's part of a project on the Pine Island Glacier, an extension of the Antarctic ice sheet. The goal of the National Science Foundation-funded initiative is to get a better understanding of how the glacier, the ocean and the ice shelf are interacting, and what that could mean if water temperatures rise.