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Greenland is melting faster and faster. Why? Fly over Greenland's glaciers with a NASA scientist who's trying to find the answer in this 360° video from FRONTLINE, NOVA l PBS &amp; Emblematic Group.

Join a NASA scientist as he flies over Greenland’s glaciers to study why the Arctic ice is melting so fast.

Join a NASA scientist as he flies over Greenland’s glaciers to study why the Arctic ice is melting so fast.

Why Is Greenland Melting?

Onscreen: This ice hides a secret.Eric Rignot: When you look at the glacier like that, the vantage point of a helicopter, it looks like it's going to be here forever. How could it possibly go away?Onscreen: These glaciers in Greenland are melting faster and faster.Eric Rignot: If we were to melt all the ice in Greenland into the sea, it would raise sea level by 20 feet. I study the glaciers and what's starting to happen now is a very big change in these polar regions.Onscreen: Eric and a NASA team are trying to find out how and why the glaciers are melting so fast.The scar on this mountainside shows how high the glacier used to reach.Eric Rignot: You see the trim line on the side? The difference in roughness of the deposit from the glacier? That's where the glacier used to be, just a few decades ago.Onscreen: Warm air is one reason the glaciers are melting faster. But the NASA team is investigating another factor—warmer ocean water. Water just a few degrees above freezing is melting the ice from below.Eric Rignot: These glaciers hate warm water. When you put them in warm water, they melt away, they start splitting off.Onscreen: As soon as these icebergs break from the glacier, they raise sea level a small amount. Even though they haven’t melted yet. The NASA team discovered these glaciers are more exposed to warmer water than expected.Eric Rignot: There’s much more ice below the waterline. Usually, three quarters of the ice is below the water level; you don't see that.Onscreen: This means sea-level rise predictions may be too conservative. And cities like Miami or Mumbai could be at higher risk of catastrophic flooding.Eric Rignot: I think about the younger generation. Kids, for instance, will one day realize how much we knew about what's going on right now and come back to us and say, “What have you done about this? And what have you done when you knew all of this was happening?”

Why Is Greenland Melting?

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