JUDY WOODRUFF: We continue now with our series
from Antarctica.
The ice-covered continent is being transformed
in part by climate change.
Antarctica's ice, which contains the vast
majority of freshwater on Earth, is melting
at an accelerating rate.
William Brangham and producers Mike Fritz
and Emily Carpeaux traveled there and have
this report on how coastal communities all
over the world could be impacted.
It's part of our occasional series of reports,
Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate
Change.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For as far as the eye can
see, Antarctica is covered by thick sheets
of ice.
In some places, that ice is several miles
deep.
This massive continent, as big as the U.S.
and Mexico combined, has, for millions of
years, been home to some of the most breathtaking
landscapes of ice on the planet.
What you can see behind me here is a very
good cross-section of a glacier in Antarctica.
And what you can see, with all those different
layers that is hundreds and thousands of years
of snowfall and precipitation stacking up,
one on top of the other, and slowly exerting
pressure downward on those layers of snow.
And that's basically how a glacier is formed.
But Antarctica's ice is now increasingly being
threatened, and most researchers believe it's
because of climate change.
According to one recent study, the continent's
ice is slipping away six times faster than
it was 40 years ago.
JOSEPH MACGREGOR, Glaciologist, NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center: And Antarctica is now
losing 252 gigatons of ice per year.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Glaciologist Joe MacGregor
is part of the team at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center that's studying Antarctica's
ice.
Using radar and lasers, they measure the thickness
of the ice, how it's moving, and whether it's
growing or shrinking.
This animation they built shows a sped-up
version of how the ice flows on the continent.
Help me understand what that means, 252 gigatons.
JOSEPH MACGREGOR: A gigaton is a billion metric
tons of ice.
And when you do the math, you wind up with
the Antarctic ice sheet is out of balance
by more than three-and-a-half swimming pools
per second.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Every second, three Olympic-sized
swimming pools worth of ice is disappearing
from Antarctica?
JOSEPH MACGREGOR: Yes, when considered on
average over the year.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Just to put that in perspective,
in the amount of time it takes to watch this
story, Antarctica will shed more water than
New York City uses every day.
The warming that is causing this ice loss
varies in different parts of the continent.
Here on the peninsula, the long branch of
land coming on the northwest corner of the
continent, warming has been especially pronounced.
At the Vernadsky research station, which is
run by the Ukrainian government, meteorologists
like Oleksandr Poluden have been keeping some
of the longest-term temperature records on
the continent.
While it's warmed and cooled at different
times, Poluden says the overall trend here
on the peninsula is clear.
OLEKSANDR POLUDEN, Meteorologist (through
translator): You will notice that the temperature
doesn't tend to increase all the time, as
there are certain fluctuations from year to
year.
However, it becomes evident that, over about
70 years, the average year-round temperature
has increased by 3.5 degrees.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER, Professor of Geosciences
and International Affairs, Princeton University:
It's becoming clearer that parts of Antarctica
appear to be unstable and are losing ice much
faster than we expected.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Michael Oppenheimer is a
climate scientist and professor of geoscience
at Princeton University.
He says this ice loss will only accelerate
sea level rise, which happens for two reasons.
One, a warming atmosphere warms the oceans,
and warmer water expands and rises.
Secondly, warming also melts ice and glaciers
all over the world, sending new water into
the ocean.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: So, ultimately, if we
lose all the ice that's vulnerable to a warming
of only a few degrees, we're talking about
a very, very, very big sea level rise.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The most recent U.N. report
predicts a foot of sea level rise this century
if we continue burning oil and gas and coal
at our current pace.
But a growing number of researchers believe
that, because of the emissions we have already
put up into the atmosphere, that prediction
understates the threat.
ALEXANDRA ISERN, National Science Foundation:
the continent's warming from below and also,
you know, from above.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Alexandra Isern oversees
all Antarctic science for the National Science
Foundation, who, for the record, is a "NewsHour"
underwriter.
She says that, in West Antarctica, two huge
glaciers, Pine Island and Thwaites, are considered
at serious risk of collapse.
ALEXANDRA ISERN: There's some researchers
that study Pine Islands and the Thwaites Glacier
that feel that it's become sufficiently destabilized
that it won't -- that we won't be able to
recover.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Michael Oppenheimer says,
if just one of those glaciers winds up in
the ocean, sea levels will rise five times
higher than the U.N. predicted.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: The current estimates
are, if Thwaites Glacier were to totally disintegrate
into the ocean, that, ultimately, sea level
would rise by something like five feet.
In areas around some of our biggest cities,
New York, Boston, Miami, where you have got
a lot of development, homes, buildings, infrastructure,
like roads, very close to sea level, how do
you defend those?
How would Bangladesh protect itself?
It's got many hundred of miles of coastline.
It's all right at sea level.
You can't build a wall to protect that whole
coast.
There's actually nothing that can be done.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's millions of people
that are going to have to move.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: Right.
There are 150 million people that live in
Bangladesh, and probably a few million of
them would have to move back.
Where are they going to go in such a densely
populated country?
And there's already strife when people try
to move into India.
People get killed trying to do that now.
What's going to happen when you have a few
million people that all of a sudden try to
move?
It's not a pretty picture.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Part of the reason Antarctica's
glaciers are threatened is that they have
been losing some crucial protection.
Many glaciers form what are known as ice shelves,
huge platforms of ice, some as wide as Texas
and hundreds of stories tall, that grow out
over the ocean and help hold their much larger
glaciers up on land.
They hold it back and not let it slide into
the sea.
ROBIN BELL, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory:
Imagine a piece of ice the size of Texas.
Pretty thick.
It's going to slow the ice as it tries to
flow into the ocean.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Robin Bell of Columbia University's
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has been
studying Antarctica's ice for over 20 years.
ROBIN BELL: Ice shelves are very important.
They are essentially acting as bouncers in
the bar, leaning up against the door and keeping
the ice from flowing into the ocean.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But as the atmosphere keeps
warming, major ice shelves in Antarctica have
also been collapsing.
In 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf, the size
of Rhode Island, completely disintegrated.
These are satellite images of it breaking
into hundreds of pieces.
As predicted, the glaciers that Larsen B anchored
up on land began accelerating towards the
ocean.
And then, two years ago, the even bigger Larsen
C Shelf -- this is it from the air -- developed
that miles-long crack in it.
This shelf, which sits in front of the Thwaites
Glacier, is also crumbling.
And part of the Brunt Ice Shelf is expected
to break off any day now, releasing an iceberg
that'll be twice the size of Manhattan.
There's still some debate over whether human-induced
warming is the only thing causing these changes.
Antarctica has lost ice many times before,
and that also caused the seas to rise.
Researchers are now trying to determine how
much warmth it takes to cause truly catastrophic
sea level rise.
That massive glazer that you see behind me
connects all the way up above those peaks
to the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
And all of that ice and snow contains a remarkable
history of Earth's past climate.
ALEXANDRA ISERN: It's like a tape recorder,
a 10,000-foot tape recorder in places.
And so scientists have drilled ice cores through
the layers as far down as they can get, and
then they analyze those layers.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Glaciologist Robert Mulvaney
-- that's him in the black cap -- works for
the British Antarctic Survey.
He and a small team have been drilling over
2,000 feet down into the ice sheet, and pulling
out these ice cores.
ROBERT MULVANEY, Glaciologist, British Antarctic
Survey: What we have been trying to do is
recover a climate record over the last glacial
cycle, so the last 120,000 to 140,000 years,
to try to understand how our climate might
change over the next hundred years or so,
as we -- as the climate responds to increased
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The evidence from these
cores and many others indicate that when the
Earth's climate was just a little bit warmer
than it is today, the world's oceans were
over twenty feet higher.
ROBERT MULVANEY: So, 120,000 years ago, when
the climate was probably two degrees warmer
than today, the sea level was maybe six to
nine meters higher than today.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Given the uncertainties
over how serious sea level rise will be, and
over what time span it'll occur, Michael Oppenheimer
argues that there's still time to act and
to prepare.
MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: It doesn't mean we should
all throw up our hands and run.
Let's start thinking straight, let's start
thinking fast about how we're going to help
people, how we're going to help settlements,
how we're going to help countries deal with
the outcome, because a lot of it is not going
to be pretty.
It's going to be expensive, and it's going
to be disruptive, if we don't get our act
together now.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This year, teams from several
different nations are studying the Thwaites
Glacier, trying to determine whether it's
past the point of no return, and, if so, how
soon its ice could end up in the ocean.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham
in Antarctica.
