A group of scientists and doctoral students from UC Davis recently traveled to Antarctica where they became the first group to collect turbulence measurements from beneath an ice shelf. With this data, scientists will be able to better understand how quickly ice shelves are melting and to make predictions of how these rates will change under future climate scenarios.
Meet leading polar specialist Dr. Kate Winter, winner of a prestigious science fellowship, who’s journeyed to the ends of the earth to study the changing face of Antarctica. With her assistant James, she’s used an ice-penetrating radar and remotely sensed imagery to map and measure changes in Antarctica’s ice streams, paying particular attention to potentially life-giving sediments moving towards the coast.
Her work made headlines in 2018 when she discovered canyons and mountain ranges buried near the South Pole. This episode of Climate Travelers follows Kate and James as they traverse the extreme environment, aiming to unearth new knowledge about Antarctica’s role in future climate change.
The frozen continent of Antarctica contains the vast majority of all freshwater on Earth. Now that ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in part because of climate change. What does this transformation mean for coastal communities across the globe? William Brangham reports from Antarctica on the troubling trend of ice loss and how glaciers can serve as a climate record from the past.
