Polar ice in a warming world
5/28/202615 min
The frozen parts of our planet—from sprawling polar ice sheets and floating sea ice to mountain glaciers and frigid soils—face profound risks from climate change. Already, a warmer world has transformed these landscapes, with consequences that span the globe. Dr. Sarah Das, a Scientist Emeritus at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, joins to discuss her decades-long career studying the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and help us understand how changes to the polar regions affect people now and in the future.
We thank WHOI for providing audio recorded during supraglacial lake research in Greenland. (Credit: Chris Linder, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).
For a deeper dive and additional resources related to this episode, visit: https://climate.mit.edu/podcasts/e8-polar-ice-warming-world.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMadison Goldberg· Host0:00
Sarah Das left for her first trip to Antarctica right after college.
Sarah Das· Guest0:03
[instrumental music] I didn't really know what to do with my life, as I think many people who are finishing college can relate to that feeling, and I had the opportunity to be part of a research team from Caltech that was working in the middle of West Antarctica. We would spend three months in this small, remote tent camp. I had no idea what to expect, but I was game for whatever.
Madison Goldberg· Host0:24
After a stopover in New Zealand, she got on a plane bound for the ice sheet.
Sarah Das· Guest0:28
Everything about it felt unusual, right? I had considered myself fairly well-traveled, but really nothing prepares you for being on a six or eight-hour flight from New Zealand, and you just cross the Southern Ocean. You're looking out these tiny windows. We're on military aircraft, and all of a sudden you see the edge of the sea ice, and you think, "Oh, we're almost there," and then it's just, like, more and more ice, and you just start to feel like you're on an alien planet.
Madison Goldberg· Host0:53
She landed at the main US research station in Antarctica, where the team did some final prep before moving on to their camp.
Sarah Das· Guest1:01
And they open the doors, and you step out, and you're just shocked with the dry and the cold and the intensity of it. You could have convinced me that I had traveled into outer space, into some other world entirely. I was glad I could still breathe. [laughs] I'll never forget that experience of traveling to the Antarctic for the first time.
Madison Goldberg· Host1:19
Welcome to Ask MIT Climate. I'm Madison Goldberg. The frozen parts of our planet from mountain glaciers to floating sea ice to the sprawling polar