Scientists Drill Into Thwaites to Gauge Sea-Level Risk (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Celia Hatton, and welcome to the Global News Podcast on YouTube, where we go behind the headlines to focus on one story and why it matters. Today, a mission to one of the ends of the Earth, Antarctica, where British and South Korean scientists are teaming up to reach the depths of one of the world's biggest glaciers. Their research is really important. What the scientists learn could be vital in fighting the existential threat of climate change. But it's not easy. It means drilling thousands of meters below the ice surface, while also surviving in super cold conditions. We're joined by the BBC's climate editor, Justin Rolla, to talk more about this. So, Justin, just to start, can you just tell us about this glacier and why it's so important?

[00:00:48] Speaker 2: So Thwaites Glacier, as an Englishman, Thwaites Glacier is a, it's one of the largest and most changeable or fastest changing glaciers in the whole world. It sort of sits in West Antarctica. Now, West Antarctica is really interesting. It's a kind of basin of ice. It sits below sea level. So it sits up to two kilometers below of ice from the bottom of the sea up to the ice, and then another two kilometers above that. So four kilometers of ice. And the fear is obviously that's a lot of water above sea level. The water, the ice above sea level, if it melts out would raise sea levels. So Thwaites on its own, this tongue of ice, if you like, in the center of the glacier, a kind of keystone within that bowl of ice. Thwaites alone is six and a half centimeters of sea level rise worldwide across the whole world. I mean, think of the volume of water you need to raise sea levels by one centimeter, let alone 65. And the glacier alone is the size of Great Britain. It's about the size of the state of Florida. And then it also, as I say, acts like a kind of keystone. It's the kind of cork in the bottle that holds back a network of other glaciers, glaciers being kind of slow moving rivers of ice. So it sort of stops them from flowing out. So were Thwaites to melt out, the other glaciers would flow out as well. And then you're talking about sort of three plus meters of sea level rise. Now, when you remember that virtually all of our towns and cities, not virtually all of them, lots of our towns and cities are in low-lying areas or on the coast. Three meters of sea level rise with a big storm and a high tide. You're talking a hell of a lot of additional water, enough to flood, devastating floods for cities across. I mean, think of New York. New York sits at sea level, you know, three meters. That is a really substantial volume of water. That is why Thwaites is so important.

[00:02:42] Speaker 1: So we're going to talk more about this research that I mentioned in just a moment. But first, we have to focus on the personal element of this story because you are one of the first, the few reporters or even just people to ever visit Thwaites. Can you tell us about that?

[00:02:57] Speaker 2: So the research they're doing at the moment is actually towards the end of an almost decade-long project to look at Thwaites because it's such an important body of ice. And it involved a whole series of teams going out to different parts of the glacier. And I went to the very front of the glacier, the kind of the ice tongue of the glacier where it floats on the seawater. And we were the, I mean, we say one of very few people. I was one of like a handful, maybe 25 people who've ever been to that place at the front of the glacier. I mean, one of the most, literally the most remote places on earth. I mean, West Antarctica is, you know, remote within Antarctica. And then you're right at the end of the glacier. It felt like it's probably the greatest adventure of my life. It was two months in this completely kind of, I say alien, I mean, it feels alien. Antarctica is completely unlike anywhere else on earth. Really amazing experience.

[00:03:49] Speaker 1: Okay. We're going to move on in a moment, but just one, one very quick question. I mean, how many layers were you wearing every day? Were you just bundled up all the time?

[00:03:57] Speaker 2: It's interesting. I mean, you're given a big, you're given a sort of a bag full of the most amazing, you know, cold weather gear, including kind of, you know, long johns and stuff and layer after layer, you get you get these kind of quilted trousers as well as quilted tops. You get the super puffy kind of thousand pound coat or one and a half thousand dollar coat, which is supposed to be down to sort of minus 30, minus 35. Actually, and the air temperature is obviously very cold in Antarctica, kind of minus 20 or something like that. But it's sun, it's daytime all the time, 24 hour sunlight. And when the sun is shining, it's the same sun that shines everywhere else on earth. And it shines out and you can actually get really hot.

[00:04:34] Speaker 1: Well, let's focus again on on this latest project. You mentioned you were there for the start of it. I mean, what are scientists trying to achieve?

[00:04:42] Speaker 2: So the idea is to understand the processes that are changing this glacier that explain why satellite observations show that it's moving faster than ever. It's melting faster than ever. Why is that happening? What does it mean for global sea level rise? Those are the questions they want to ask. They want to get down through the ice to the point that it's called the grounding line. It's the point at which the glacier, which is sitting on the seabed, remember, lifts off. So the warm water that comes in from the sea melting underneath the glacier, it begins to lift off and form an ice shelf. And that obviously that's the point at which the water is crucially interacting with the ice. So they want to understand what the currents are like, what the temperatures are like. They also want to drill down into the sediment, pull cores out, which will show layers of sediment over, it could be hundreds of years. And that might tell us whether the glaciers melted out in the past, how it's moved in the past. Could it refreeze and could it get bigger and draw water out of the sea or is it going to continue to melt? So these are all crucial measurements that will give us an idea about how that glacier will change and therefore the rest of the ice in West Antarctica as we described. Why is that important? Now, that is important because we need to plan for the sea level rise that's coming. Climate change is almost like turning up the thermostat in your house. So you had it at 20, now it's at 22. So the consequences of that will last for a long time. I mean, when I, it was actually quite shocked to me. I remember saying to a scientist, you know, you know, is this going to melt out? And he said, well, of course it is. Yeah. I mean, we've changed the temperature. It will melt out. The question is, how long will it take?

[00:06:15] Speaker 1: Exactly.

[00:06:16] Speaker 2: So, you know, I mean, he was saying, you know, centuries and it could be two, three centuries for it to melt out. Now that gives humanity time to plan and build defences and maybe move special buildings and that kind of thing. It gives us time to plan, knowing what the change, how long the changes are likely to take, arms us with knowledge that we can use to protect our communities.

[00:06:40] Speaker 1: So when you say two to three centuries, then it becomes a little bit more difficult for us living in this current moment to really worry about it. I mean, they call it the doomsday glacier, don't they?

[00:06:53] Speaker 2: It depends on your mindset, doesn't it really? I mean, don't we have a responsibility to deliver, ideally, a better world to our children than the one that we inherited? There's a duty to future generations. You know, three centuries sounds like a long time, but actually, you know, it isn't that long, you know, looking back, you know, and we've got a responsibility to humanity, the humanity that comes after us to deliver a better world. So I mean, yeah, it is a long time in an individual lifetime, but it isn't a long time in the history of humanity.

[00:07:26] Speaker 1: Any sense yet what those scientists are finding, what their conclusions might be?

[00:07:32] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, because we've done some of the work has come back from the work that, you know, the trip that I was on, it seems there is more warm water attacking the bottom of the glacier. It does appear that it's melting more quickly. So the prognosis is not good in terms of the work that they're doing now. And they've flown, I think it was 40 helicopter flights. They went by boat to the to the nose of the glacier and then flew helicopters to get them onto the trunk. So the main fastest moving bit of the glacier, the most dangerous, it's the most crevasse one. And so they threw, I think, 40 helicopter flights to set up this camp and they're just beginning today, which is why it's news to beginning the drilling operation. They've melted water, they heat it up and they melt their way down a kilometre. I think it's I think it's a metre every every minute, I think it's. Yeah. So it's a long process.

[00:08:21] Speaker 1: And yeah, it's fascinating when you describe the lengths these scientists are going to, the amounts of money that are being spent in order to get this data. I mean, it just shows you how important this data, this data really is and how it could change things and how remote and inaccessible, you know, the places that we're talking about are.

[00:08:39] Speaker 2: I mean, these were, you know, these were places that, you know, 100 years ago you'd think would never change. And yet there's great change. Actually, when I was there, I got quite emotional about the idea. You go and you think this is a pristine, untouched wilderness. It's so huge. I mean, it's huge, unimaginably huge. Like I say, we flew for eight hours from Murdoch to Waste Divide. You fly over ice the entire time and you just think this is massive. You know, the roar of the plane going at, what, four or five hundred miles an hour. So it's huge area of ice. And then you realise, you know, that we are, these fundamental changes are happening to the ice. The ice is moving in ways it never did before. One of the glaciologists said when I went into glaciology, you know, I thought it would be a slow moving science. He said since I've been involved for 30 years, he said it's become this really dynamic, you know, science in a way that it literally shouldn't be. Glaciers are supposed to move really slowly.

[00:09:30] Speaker 1: Yeah. And those researchers must be so dedicated because they're going onto this research trip for months at a time, right?

[00:09:37] Speaker 2: Well, they're doing, you know, they're practising their, you know, their kind of area of interest. I mean, it's a it is an amazing process to go. And I think, I mean, look, it's not about enjoying it, but it is it is a, you know, a really profound experience. And so and they are trained glaciologists whose kind of, you know, career mission, if you like, is to understand this stuff. So this is a great opportunity for them. So this is a really exciting moment for them, I think, is what I'd say. And it's fascinating.

[00:10:03] Speaker 1: Justin, just to finish on a on a on an optimistic note, if we can, I mean, we've been talking about this doom and gloom glacier, but, you know, are there do you see any cause for hope, any solutions to to to glacier melt that we can all take away, everybody watching on YouTube?

[00:10:21] Speaker 2: I remember thinking about that when I was on the glacier and I was thinking about the unbelievable human effort that had led to that research project that I was on happening very similar to this one. All the people who'd been involved in the preparatory science, preparing all the equipment, you know, building and making the planes that flew us out there. And you think of this huge chain of humanity working together to the objective of understanding these processes on our Earth better and finding ways then to tackle the changes that we're seeing. And I think the fact that we can get together as a human community and undertake these amazing research efforts should give should give us hope that we are capable of solving some of these really big challenges that we face.

[00:10:58] Speaker 1: Thank you, Justin. The BBC's climate editor, Justin Rolat. Well, if you liked this episode, do please subscribe to us here on YouTube. And if you'd like us to cover any other stories, please leave a comment below. You can hear more international news on the BBC's Global News podcast. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Bye bye.