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In Extremis

Around the world, glaciers and ice sheets have begun breaking apart and accelerating toward the oceans faster than ever imagined possible. With his Extreme Ice Survey, photographer James Balog is trying to alert the world to this unsettling fact.
running time 9:46

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Glacial Pacemaker

In just one example of many, Alaska's Columbia Glacier, one of the biggest ocean-feeding glaciers in North America, has been hemorrhaging ice so quickly that in the last 30 years it has receded 10 miles up its fjord. Glaciologists are racing to understand why.
running time 7:35

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Doomed Domes?

Scientists agree that in the next 50 to 100 years, mountain glaciers almost everywhere will disappear. Their abrupt collapse raises disturbing questions about the Earth's biggest tracts of ice, the polar ice domes of Greenland and Antarctica, as James Balog sees firsthand in Greenland.
running time 8:11

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Greenland on Defrost

Rising temperatures, driven by fossil-fuel burning, are pushing Greenland towards a major meltdown. The last time the island lost a significant portion of its ice, it happened over thousands of years, glacier expert Jim White suspects. But this time, it could happen much faster, he says.
running time 7:15

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A Slippery Slope

Lately, giant meltwater lakes have been forming atop the Greenland ice sheet in summer, then suddenly vanishing. They're draining to the bed of the ice sheet, lubricating outlet glaciers and potentially speeding them up all the more.
running time 7:52

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Inundation Blues

Over 100 million people live within three feet of sea level—the very amount that experts expect seas to rise by 2100. Cities will spend trillions on coastal defenses, low-lying regions such as Florida and Bangladesh will be devastated, and many island nations will cease to exist. Overall, the consequences will test our ability to adapt like never before.
running time 8:44