A SUPPORT team in Oxfordshire is playing a crucial role in a major international project to predict when the North Pole ice cap will disappear.

Polar explorer Pen Hadow is in Arctic Canada testing specially designed technology which will be used in a major scientific survey of the Arctic ice cap's thickness.

His team is testing equipment in temperatures as low as minus 35-40C and sending the results back to the headquarters in Watlington.

Data, video and photo material is being transmitted back to the base at Chiltern Business Centre and will be used by scientists to assess the rate of melting.

Mr Hadow, 45, has been surrounded by 17 wolves as he and his colleagues tested a radar.

He said: "It was not a comfortable situation. I wondered how long it had been since their last meal when they came within 10 metres of us."

The Vanco Arctic Survey will enable scientists to predict when the North Pole ice cap will cease to be a year-round global feature.

Mr Hadow added: "It is a sad thought that for all the children born on the day we start our journey, there may be no permanent ice cap at the North Pole by the time they become adults.

"If we discover the North Pole ice cap really is melting as fast as some experts fear, this survey will provide a decisive wake-up call for political leaders everywhere to take the urgent steps needed to prepare us all for the global consequences of North Pole ice cap meltdown.

"The only way to accurately gauge the thickness of the polar ice cap is to physically go out there and measure it on the surface.

"Our endeavour is a partnership between explorers and scientists and will be a major contribution to really understanding what is happening to the North Pole ice cap."

Setting out in February, 2008, the survey team - Hadow, polar explorer Ann Daniels, and Arctic photographer Martin Hartley - will make a 120-day, 2000km crossing of the ice cap in temperatures as low as minus 50C.

The team will depart from Point Barrow, Alaska, pulling sledge-boats', and even swimming across stretches of open water, reaching the geographic Pole in June.

Mr Hadow is working with some of the world's leading oceanographers and climatologists at Cambridge University, the US Navy's Naval Postgraduate School.

NASA, the Met Office and University College London are also linked to the project.