Italian adventurer Alex Bellini has previously spent 10 months rowing across the Pacific , rowed the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and competed in the Alaska Ultra Sport which consists of hiking and backpacking for 800 miles. He’s no stranger to endurance sports and now he’s turning that experience towards drawing attention to climate change by living on a melting iceberg for 12 months.

Starting in spring of 2015, Bellini plans to find a suitable iceberg in the northwest region of Greenland, where he will remain for up to a year as it slowly melts. Provisioned with with 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of dried food, Bellini will shelter in a survival capsule, the Kevlar-reinforced kind used for ocean oil rigs, until it becomes too risky — at which point he will take to the sea in the capsule, floating adrift until he is rescued.

The project will also serve science: the UK-based explorer plans to observe the changes to our planetary climate, firsthand.

According to scientists, ice sheet and glacier cover has drastically decreased in recent years at what appears to be an accelerating rate. According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service:

There is mounting evidence that climate change is triggering a shrinking and thinning of many glaciers world-wide which may eventually put at risk water supplies for hundreds of millions — if not billions — of people. Data gaps exist in some vulnerable parts of the globe undermining the ability to provide precise early warning for countries and populations at risk. If the trend continues and governments fail to agree on deep and decisive emission reductions at the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, it is possible that glaciers may completely disappear from many mountain ranges in the 21st century.