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Transcript
February 7, 2003
NARRATOR: This winter is a frosty reminder of bitter seasons past. But it's not so bad compared to what a group of researchers endured on a mission to measure climate change. As Bess Greenbaum reports in this NOVA News Minute, scientists are trying to figure out whether the Antarctic ice cap is melting.
Braving the Antarctic's bitter cold is all in a day's work for researchers scouring the planet for clues about global warming. As shown on PBS's NOVA, one group of scientists scaled the Antarctic's highest icy peak, Vinson Massif.
DAN STONE (Geologist): We want to know whether a glacier or ice sheet is growing or shrinking, and to understand that we have to understand what's going in to the glacier, how much ice is accumulating on an annual basis.
NARRATOR: Knowing how much snow accumulates annually will help them do that. To gauge each year's snowfall they dug a series of pits and counted the snow layers like the rings in a tree.
DAN STONE (Geologist): It looks like we've got at least a few layers that look like annual layers in here.
NARRATOR: Over time the snow turns to ice and becomes part of the thick ice sheet that covers the continent. Scientists worry that melting Antarctic ice could raise sea levels that would engulf coastlines around the world. A study published in the journal Science indicates that at the current rate of melting, a part of the Antarctic ice sheet the size of Texas and Colorado will disappear in 7,000 years and push sea levels up 16 feet. The authors say a sudden thaw "that released even a fraction of that amount of water could have disastrous consequences." While these researchers evaluate what they learned, others will avoid getting cold feet by letting NASA's newly launched satellite, ICE SAT, measure the Antarctic's ice for them.
NASA: And we have ignition and lift-off of NASA's ICE SAT.
NARRATOR: I'm Bess Greenbaum.
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