STILLWATER — An Oklahoma State University professor and two students will spend six weeks this spring braving Antarctic snow and wind to study sea level changes over the past 10,000 years. Geology professor Alex Simms will choose two graduate students to help collect beach deposits that will be dated to shed light into how ice sheets respond to sea level and climate change. The project is funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. "We will be trying to determine how much ice was on Antarctica during the last ice age by determining how much the continent has rebounded from the melting of the ice,” he said. Simms and two former students traveled in 2007 to the Antarctic coast to test rocks using a dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence. The technique was developed by OSU physics professor Regina DeWitt, who will help complete the research when Simms returns to campus. For the upcoming trip, set to begin March 8, Simms and his team will fly to southern Chile, then board the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a 300-foot icebreaker for the three-day trip to western Antarctica. They’ll spend most nights on the ship but also will camp on shore among penguins that "smell really, really bad,” Simms said. They’ll probably also see killer whales and elephant seals as they do their work. But the biggest danger may be winds up to 80 mph and temperatures that could fall to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Simms said his work will show how the continent rebounds from ice melting and could hold clues to the impact of global warming. Stephen McKeever, OSU’s vice president for research and technology transfer, praised Simms’ project. "As climate change and other environmental issues remain at the forefront of public discussion, research in this area will be critical to understanding human impact on our natural world,” he said.