Expedition to the cold heart of Greenland – What happens in a world without ice? | DW Documentary

Expedition to the cold heart of Greenland – What happens in a world without ice? | DW Documentary

Greenland’s ice sheet Harbors a secret giving us a look into our future the path to that secret runs through these rivers of melt water which form every summer and disappear every winter They drain into holes called Mula this one is believed to continue hundreds of meters down into the ice and that’s where I’m going sou you can hear the water loud right that’s what’s fun about it the ice is melting sea levels are rising we all know that but no one knows

Just how fast it is happening even though that may be the most urgent question to answer right now I want to go down that hole together with some scientists to learn about our future yes but you’ll quickly become part of the past if you’re not careful what’s up Bambi I keep falling

Over I don’t really have much experience with climbing on ice as a filmmaker I know more about cameras white balance and depth of field as a child I had a place where I could be all by myself a world of my own the bog behind the home where I

Lived I went there every day all year on EXP Expeditions deep into unknown territory then one day they started building tow houses there I was outraged when they started cutting down trees they continued building even though I took the key to their trailer and threw it in the lake to sabotage their

Work my world disappeared and maybe that’s also what’s happening now only now it’s not just my little world that’s Vanishing it’s thick from here to the point the best line is directly to the point okay the point on it thickens and then there’s a lead in front of the glacier but we’re at 8.8 M now this looks like a beautiful little place to Anchor Jason Bo daughter Dale Yensen and

Alan hubard I’ll be joining these three extraordinary professors and explorers on their EXP additions documenting what they find by the way Jason yeah is it safe to walk just yeah just um yeah it is you got a B Kass there the other the next one is here

Wow yeah see this snow Bridge here it’s uh it’s not thick no and um if you stand on that you’re just going to fall in and yeah you can uh see I mean that’s easily 15 M oh no no no no no come back that’s a snow Bridge well what you were standing

On that wasn’t safe you know the these these take lives wow okay most scientists study the ice melt from an office using data from satellites radar and computer models but there’s a lot we cannot determine that way daughter Jason and Alan believe it’s necessary to study the process through direct observation and field

Studies they call it ground Truth for 20 years ago you could go directly onto the ice from here now you have to walk quite far to reach it when you walk on Ice you walk through climate history the dark ice over there that’s ice from the Ice Age which is

More than 11,000 years old on top is lighter colored ice younger than 11,000 years from the interglacial period so you can stand with one leg in the Ice Age and with the other leg in the interglacial period like this I’m standing here at a very dramatic moment in climate

History this is just one instrument of many here we’ve been studying this Glacier for over a decade now so we have a pretty good idea about how this glacia behaves now I think it’s important to come here here and make the measurements and just not sit behind a desk and download your

Data off some satellite the only real way to know what’s going on at the Basi is to access it you got to drill holes you got to put sensors down there you have to go down there and find out A warmer World also means a more humid world with more precipitation how will this affect the ice how does more snow and rain affect the melting process it’s sure to have a huge impact on the future climate but we don’t have much data on It one of the few scientists who study the relationship between increased rain and snowfall is Professor Jason box whoa this is getting really big the way that we can check the fly is this idea of pouring water over it pouring water over it yeah we’re going

To flood the apartment not not too much water but we wanted to check if uh if this repair job has worked just pour it kind of slow and then let’s see if it’s like rain how much comes through from the top or yeah the top did it come through so far so good

Can you get your spray bottle just where where my hand is from the outside okay Jason has been on over 30 Expeditions researching the climate on the ice sheet is it coming through today you know what there’s some that’s coming through damn it okay this is Professor Conrad Stefan

Jason’s Mentor early in his career a Pioneer in climate research Jason was one of the authors of the un’s climate change report that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 we we really don’t know a lot about just how much rain falls how much snow

Is there rain can damage the snow it can accelerate the Melt process and um the so you see right now this is bare ice back here it’s dark it absorbs a lot of sunlight if you have a thick snow cover and we think that climate warming is bringing more snow so

That actually has a protective effect on the ice but at the same time there’s more rain so we have to also record how much rain is falling and to make sense about the competition between these two forms of H2O it’s it’s kind of an untold story I

Think it’ll become a hot topic for other scientists during the winter precipitation Falls as snow layer upon Lair settling as a thick cover on top of the ice this actually protects the ice from the heat of the Sun I’m on my first expedition the objective is to see how much snow is falling during winter this place is devoid of Life we will be staying here for 12 days moving towards the coast on skis and sleds along the way we’ll will stop many times a day to drill into the ice accompanying us is Jason’s friend and research colleague Masashi Nano I’ve marked in my book these two

Areas that are risky so there’s one kilometer with crevasses where we go over this Ridge I clearly remember the crevices had shown me they’re not visible now in order to find out how thick the cover of snow is the scientists must drill through the snow until they strike ice is it wide enough We had to dig this little pit because we got more snow here than we were expecting we we didn’t bring enough drill equipment to go that just that extra meter it’s 330 is the total depth yeah they need to do numerous snow drillings a day to obtain a reliable scientific Result do we get agreement between the two course not a good agreement so okay let’s take take one more pretty impressive part of our Collective knowledge about the state of the eye sheet stems from data gathered using a primitive drill a plastic bag and a kitchen

Scale we set up camp here sleeping 100 km out on the ice sheet on top of a mattress of Frozen water 1 km thick this is a very essential for yeah Japanese people to make good Japanese ramen yeah I hope it is good h m good We It shouldn’t be this warm here today it’s like summer conditions in the middle of April think about all this landscape absorbing all this extra heat it’s hard not to feel that something really is happening here it’s like a kind of like a disaster in slow Motion it’s I call it the burden of awareness it’s the opposite of ignorance is bliss when you become aware of what’s happening with climate change uh you you don’t sleep good at Night if you stay here long enough something interesting starts to happen you begin to see the nuances you notice that the ey sheet actually Slants a bit that it isn’t one giant flat Plateau but that it actually Billows up and down you can see that the wind has

Shaped the surface of the ice like waves Frozen in time it looks like a photograph of an ocean an ocean that might soon be back in Motion It’s frozen there’s still gas in here so I’m just warming it up we have to take this route to avoid these really bad crevasses there here here and there Jason and mhi’s measurements will be compared to measurements gathered by a NASA airplane their Hands-On research is meant to amend these laser

Measurements it’s it’s a very small piece of a of the puzzle but um I think that image that’s forming is coherent I’ve been working on that image for two decades now and and um it’s it’s a it’s an image of a changing environment I do everything that I can to inform the

Climate change issue and that’s for the sake of my daughter and all the other kids and nature that surrounds Jason’s GPS unit indicates one of his weather stations should be right here right here Somewhere maybe over here woohoo so this thing is 3 m tall standing on the ice I just now need to dig down meter and a half or so to get the memory card You know what makes me able to dig fast it’s either speed metal or Abba those two somehow Abba you know gives you the power to dig snow not if you really want to measure small changes happening on the ice you must do your observations at the same hour every day all year

Round this measuring station measures the level of snow every 4 hours if it’s working properly it will give Jason highly accurate snowfall data it’s a new technology measures neutrons raining down on the planet from space and the that the snow in between it blocks some of the neutrons expensive information

Here I don’t yet know if this equipment is working it’s really important because the models and the satellite measurements they cannot capture this kind of thin layer of snow to understand how quickly the Greenland ice sheet is melting we we have to do this oh let’s see many files here that’s

Good and the dates are starting when I remember this was 30th of August last year when we started and it stopped measuring on New Year’s it didn’t record continuously but these files are larger it’s as if let’s uh ah it did measure continuously it’s just uh recording the data in

Bursts so yeah I think it’s working that’s great so you’re happy yeah yeah I’m really happy I put so much effort in to this work and uh you know it uh a lot of times it feels like it’s just pure effort and you’re you’re wasting your time but seems to be working

So makes me feel kind of emotional after all that all that preparation for this this trip so tears of Joy it’s all right here man Y with all of that information we can learn a lot about uh processes of melt how much damage that can do to the snow and the Ice uh we didn’t know that before the the thing about ice is you have to listen and and it will reveal

Its secrets and the way that we listen is with these recording devices and then it tells us the Story oh there’s some high clouds yeah sheah maybe that’s the weather that we’ve been told about hello is this the Met Office yeah this is the can help you hi umis Denmark uh yeah and uh we are on the Inland ice um request uh weather prognosis they said 10 m/s in the

Morning uh then 18 m per second in the afternoon which means it it’s better for us right now when the wind is only um much lighter to build a wall to take the force of the wind cuz 18 m/s is I think a little bit more than these tents are really made

For that’s why we make the wall so we’ll be okay it’s really tough Um we should we should go down because this layer is so difficult it’s so hard careful they don’t Fall I can’t help but think about what would happen if our tents are ripped apart we’re lying here in the middle of the ice sheet with nothing but our sleeping bags s okay 25 knots in the morning and Gusty the wind will be stronger building to about 40 kn

I have no idea how strong 40 knots is and given our situation I’m not about to ask do you want more coffee yes please looks like we’re going to sit through a heavy storm for 2 days and and so all you can really do is sit inside the tent

After two days the storm suddenly stops as if someone flicked a switch Jason and Masashi can finish their final snow drillings and I noticed that we can see water for the first time the end of Greenland’s I sheet we made it to the Final Destination woo safely yeah we made it safely

Yeah ah it’s my family saying that they miss me it’s my 7-year-old I love you Dada what what are you doing type reply I am waiting for helicopter Jason’s measurements show there’s increased snowfall here we can see that there’s a gradual increase in uh snowfall like 20% more snowfall since

1840 the snow helps protect the ice but at the same time there’s increased rainfall too which destroys the protective layer of snow the rain is winning the competition Jason had talked about so far our scientific calculations on how fast the ice is melting and how quickly sea levels will rise have not

Accounted for this effect of increased snow and Rainfall the the more CO2 emissions reductions now we have it it buys us time delaying the time that hundreds of coastal cities become flooded because the ice sheets are melting irreversibly we’re buying time and saving Lives for The Last 5 Years Jason has been planting a forest in Greenland he wants to offset the CO2 footprint of his research on the ice well a mature tree will have 100 kilos of carbon in it which is about half of the biomass is carbon so in this

Uh hectare there’s going to be 100 tons of carbon yeah is this going to change the world I don’t think so I mean it is pissing in the wind really but it perhaps makes us think a little bit about our personal carbon Footprints and what we

Do you know I think most people are very eager to to to give a hand to do something thing we have to do a lot of small steps in all directions yeah you know this is something that we can do to take yeah I mean we’re not going to draw

Down all of our carbon but this is something that we can do and we all need to start doing something and not just talking about it it seems like it fits well I hope to come again to see if it has grown into a big tree ice and Ice core research have

Taken up Professor daughter Dale Jensen’s entire research life or as Jason puts it daughter she’s very much about science with a capital S big science for the last 20 years daughter has been leading one of the world’s most ambitious scientific projects far out on the ice together with a group of 50 Danish

And international scientists she is drilling about 2,500 M down into the ice to gain an understanding of what happens inside the ice as our world heats up so now you’ll see the you can see the ice car inside and now they’re going to pull out the inner core Barrel um with the

Ice cor inside that’s the close we have more than 80 tons of ice and 20 km of ice calls here it’s like walking through a history book I could tell you a story about every Box daughter is one of the scientists who know the most about what the eyes can tell us about climate history the fact this is actually ice from the Ice Age It’s 11,900 years old each line represents a year the spring of each year spring storms bring dust with them and small

Air bubbles form around these dust flakes they look a bit like champagne bubbles when the snow falls to the ground air is caught between snowflakes as more snow falls layer upon layer of snow is pressed downward kilometer by kilometer the pressure turns snow into ice which encapsulates the air into Tiny

Bubbles thereby preserving air from the time when the snow fell thousands of years ago when you look at the snow from the last 5,000 years you see when humans began influencing the climate we can see more iron and more mercury in the ice there are many ways we can measure the

Impact of human activity there’s a big difference between the ice here which is almost without crevices and the fractured ice over there the ice over here is moving more slowly than the ice back there the ice is in constant motion gliding flowing and stretching downhill towards the

Coastline only now do I begin to realize that you can see where it flows the fastest by looking at the surface there are currents flowing through Greenland’s Frozen sea similar to the one found in the world’s oceans ice flows when the ice reaches the Coast it breaks off into the Sea [Applause] there’s much we don’t yet know about these streams of ice but we do know they are responsible for half of the world’s loss of ice Half what you’re seeing here is the quickest ice flow on the planet this Glacier once traveled at 7 km per year that’s no longer the case now the speed is about 12 km a year that’s about 40 m a day if you stand out there you can actually see the ice

Flowing it’s Unique probably the only place in the world where you can see this it’s like a Luna landscape because the ice has withdrawn and the speed of the Ice Flow has increased and what do we have there life no no when the ice recedes life

Appears s feet PL my here the first life to appear in this desolate and Barren Place only recently freed from the ice every Ice Flow behaves differently that much daughter knows this one had initially doubled its speed only to slow down again we don’t know why take this surprised us because

Temperatures on Greenland are rising steadily that’s why it’s so difficult to understand ice flows current models predict sea levels will rise 60 cm in Copenhagen Denmark but they include a margin of error of 60 cm this means the city sea levels could change anywhere from 0 to 1.2 M that

Amount of variation poses a serious Problem half of the melting in Greenland takes place on the coast the other half through ice streams but Antarctica the largest ice Mass on Earth is so cold that nothing melts on the surface the loss in ice Mass on Antarctica is therefore caused only by Ice flows everything we learn on Greenland

Can be applied to Antarctica 40% % of the world population lives by an ocean and 230 million people live at less than 1 meter above sea level we have no idea how high dams will need to be to protect these populations what our shorelines will need to look like or where people should

Live scientists believe it’s the water underneath the ice that affects the speed with which the ice is moving on my next Expedition I’ll join Professor Alan hubard as he explores this very phenomenon sh home that was um the food up there it look like plenty and I have

Some also some extra you think that’s plenty yeah have you been looked in it yeah I checked it you think there’s plenty I know there okay if you think that’s cool then that’s fine cuz I was going to get a load more so scientists study the ice in different ways but

Those who examine it by climbing down into it can be counted on one hand Allan is one of them for the past 15 years he has spent more than 3 months a year on the ice and when I ask daughter about him she says you can hardly call him a calm and quiet

Guy he’s known for doing extreme things like working in the Mulan he’s fascinated by water and ice and he discovers things we’ve missed I’m expecting this m to be very big water inside or outside we’ll see we’ll see that’s why we’re going I don’t know the answers to

These things yeah it’s like it’s all a complete surprise yeah you know this is Claus konar a former pilot of the Royal Danish Air Force and chief instructor for survival training on the Greenland ice sheet clous is responsible for our safety on this Expedition how worried should I

Be don’t be scared just approach it all with respect you’ll see we take this very seriously we have our equipment and we check it again and again I might pester you sometimes but everything has to be right when we go down you’ll be more on your own than in training

There’s no one to come and get you if something goes wrong down there in the Moola you’re on your Own are we too old for this we’ll find out we will find out that’s for Sure you know that tingling feeling you get in your belly when you’re about to do something exciting that’s what I’m feeling right Now looks Dead Ahead now about one na just The there are several big Moola in this area this one is the biggest if we land do we want to land on the other side of It we have 5 days to reach the bottom of that hole the plan is we make the big tent up here the sleeping tents down here and the toilet over there we’ll climb a little deeper every day you don’t climb down into the unknown in one day

And L actually think we need to be free about this one we’ll tie it up here then continue on the other side here on the Greenland ice sheet we’re about 50k on the Inland ice I’ve been to this region of the ice sheet before and done some surveys of

The mands around here and they’re pretty deep in this region yeah uh hopefully but we’re not going inside today right we’re just checking and well we’re going to have a look see what we’re in for I have a wrecky around every summer snow and ice melt along the

Rim of the ice sheet the meltwater forms sapphire blue lakes and rivers the water flows downwards finding small cracks and crevices you only need a little bit of water before it will create a bigger hole a Mula the water digs deeper and Wider the water entering the ice becomes part of the inner structure of the glacier the water flows from the surface into the ice and then towards the Sea it acts as a lubricant causing the ice to move at ever greater speeds imagine ice cubes on a wet table the more water the better they slide researchers have assumed melt water only escapes the ice in late summer leaving the bottom of the ice drained of water in the

Winter without without meltwater the ice slides towards the ocean more slowly and keeps more of its mass a lot of the theory of how the ice sheet moves have been developed from small glaciers in the Scandinavia the Alps and really there comes a point where those theories no longer hold when

You have big ice sheets and very thick ice recent measurements indicate melt water remains under the ice even in Winter either the channel remains empty because all the Melt water drains away or there is a smooth surface a frozen water table if this is the case then there may

Be liquid water both under as well as in the ice and water will run off in winter too our predictions of how quickly sea levels will rise would then be too optimistic you got to be a bit careful there never go closer than this when you

Go see the crack coming down here just in front of you guys you have to check it before you go across this could be snow also okay you don’t know how far the crack goes in okay it’s it’s actually the most dangerous time of year

To be up here in Spring there’s heaps of snow that usually cover everything well but in Autumn you have a little dusting of snow and it hides things but it’s not strong enough to hold your weight it’s actually quite a hard time to be up Here it okay yeah you come here you can come and have a look if you like but no farther than where I am stay behind this point all in for here yeah today’s plan is to study only the upper meters of the hole we need to get a

Sense of how safe it is before we start our descent we really have very little idea of the role of this and the role of these mul and there are thousands and thousands of these across the whole I sheet we have a little bit of geophysics data radar and

The like that we can send beams down to figure out what’s going down here we have lots of theories about it but oddly enough very few observations of it and uh there’s a good reason why there’s no observations of it cuz they’re quite strange and intimidating places to go

There’s inside every glaciologist or most field glaciologists a bit of an adventurer and this is what it’s about for me that’s the beauty of ice and Glaciers and studying [Applause] Them any what would be nice a nice screw is that cool cool give you a long one yeah okay y good out so you uh how deep are you now Alan um I don’t know I mean I’m I’m fairly sure it continues um much further it’s pretty intimidating it’s

Very beautiful I mean there is a lot of icicles and ice scul in here it is something out of a LSD trip that’s for sure are you going to come down and have a look okay it’s huge it’s really big it’s quite [Laughter] intimidating we’ll do it in small steps

We won’t go that far today we have no idea how deep the hole is all we know is that we each have four 200 M long ropes CLA I’ll go down here yes okay it’s scary it is makes it fun yes boundaries are there to be

Crossed try to turn to the right and look down a try to enjoy it I know it’s not easy I need to calm down first we’ll take it in small steps These the icicles are dripping because it’s so warm today okay Alan says there’s a plateau about 60 M Down take I can’t see it right now don’t look up a lot of stuff’s falling down it’s huge if you drop something and listen you can tell it’s still a long way down I still can’t see the bottom it’s far deeper than expected you having fun live I think so I can’t talk

No this is as far as we dare to go Today it’s huge must be 15 20 M across this moan so we’re going to lower ourselves and then have an explore see where it goes I think it’s quite intimidating I think you found it a little bit exciting didn’t you last I did yeah you know it’s good to be in

Steep places with good views it you know gets the heart going a Bit what a little pleas it’s not cold I mean the wind’s cold when your hands are wet but it’s not cold it’s pretty crazy for early October it’s a strangely silent morning we all need that extra cup of coffee Claus and Allan have decided I shouldn’t join them the reason is simple

It’s not cold enough and the ice is too dangerous I would have loved to have filmed their descent but to be honest I’m also a little relieved the P things then here the primary thing is ice that falls down on you there are huge icicles down there

We’ll try to avoid I’m not nervous about the ropes but all the things that you can’t control how deep are you going right now it looks like 180 M and that’s deep as far as I know nobody has ever gone that deep into 180 m is a lot

Yeah I’m not going down no will you film it for me sure here’s the camera I don’t know if there is a scale for this but if there is a scale from 1 to five what’s this going to be it’s close to a five if not a five

That’s why we won’t take you along it’s too dangerous I need the toilet I do yeah I can feel myself if I start doing this it’s going to get really messy I’m getting to know Allan’s quirks this morning he’s stalling I’m not worried about me I’m worried about those people dependent on

Me I’ve had a good life I’ve reached 50 I’ve got three lovely kids I’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of Adventure this being part of it for sure and sometimes I think you know why grow old why cuz I can’t wait to have Grandkids The eagle has landed I’m on the floor no it’s Solid after 175 M clous reaches the bottom but the many pieces of ice tell them it’s not safe to be here safe the how W not wet Greenland’s Inland ice is usually not flat it’s cracked bent and broken there’s only one explanation for such a perfectly horizontal

Surface they have found a frozen water table this is a monst oh wow oh hell that’s the longest descent I’ve ever done it’s just hard work getting down here God knows how we’re going to get out oh it’s incredible it’s the most beautiful space there are sculpted

Mushrooms there are like organ pipes it is just like Nature’s Own Cathedral Temple or Shrine it’s so massive and it’s incredible it wasn’t here 2 months ago and what we’ve landed on here is the water table of the ice sheet I wasn’t expecting it to be solid did you hear that

Sh didn’t like the sound of that you can hear rumbling but I guess we’re going to it’s just nut you get out of here again I guess the quicker we are the better yeah this looks very UNF in that side the plan was to drill through the

Frozen frozen water table to see if there is liquid water below it but due to the warm temperature it’s simply too dangerous to be down here and it will take Alan and clous 2 hours to get back to the top we have to come back when it’s colder and the ice is

Safer only then will it be possible for Allan to carry out his measurements and test his hypothesis that there is liquid water down there what I find is is really interesting that the water table is so high our Theory says if it’s working properly it should drain all that water away but it’s

Not our predictions of global sea level rise could be quite a bit off that’s a complete disaster for the coastal regions of the Planet I receive a short text telling me to call immediately it’s from Jason who is in Greenland to work at one of the oldest research stations in Greenland called Swiss camp he is there with his friend and Mentor Professor Conrad Stefan the temperature still works the wind is not that accurate but I can

Download to data easily but I don’t know why I need to call hey L HRI hey J I’m on my way home cuz uh I was ordered home by my my employer uh to go home to be with family so here I’m in the airport I was at Swiss camp and we we

Lost Connie at this point I should probably explain who Professor Stefan is Conrad Stefan or Connie as Jason calls him was the person who got Jason into studying Greenland’s glaciers and I sheet he’s been a researcher for over 40 years collecting data before anyone else even thought about how the climate affects the

Ice at first I can’t wrap my head around what has happened that Connie is dead we were working next to the camp and he said when we left saw him I’m going to go and check the data he just pulled a memory card from weather station hours go

By we start to wonder where he is go and look for him didn’t find him in his tent uh we go into emergency mode spend the next hours and hours like turning the camp upside down we called the the search and rescue the Royal Danish Air Force they fly in uh they’re taking

Infrared and uh high resolution pictures of the camp they were they were circling the camp looking for footsteps by the next morning we had put enough pieces of logic together to to focus on one place and we sent the The Ice caver down and sure enough he finds that there’s a

Busted open floor of the crass that is got water underneath and there’s clear evidence that something destroyed this ice layer and then it’s just water the thing is that in cold fresh water you’re not going to float we didn’t know his location until it was far too late I think of his

Kids so many people love loved him and he’s gone Now he was he was like a father to me he was so important to so many people and he was a Visionary for climate he in Greenland he started these measurements before Greenland was in the headlines the Uli sat rescue workers show their respect for Conrad Stefan he meant a lot to them

Too Come I liked what you were saying the other day too about the difference between risk and Hazard and I actually had to I was actually Googling what the difference is between risk and hazard and so Hazard is something that has the potential for harm and then the risk is the probability that something

Actually would happen I really know that you guys take those risks seriously and I don’t can’t imagine myself ever saying you can’t go back there because yeah must get the data we are taking kind of a higher level of safety now that the accident yeah has happened it’s it’s a reminder

Yeah that we um that those hazards Exist The thing is I feel somehow even stronger than ever that I have to go back that’s to continue these measurements that we started I think that my life isn’t too important to not take that risk and I I know that like Connie people will say that this was a place

Where you know I’m dedicating my life and and uh that’s what Connie did we are back at the big Mula and it is much colder this time this time Allan has brought along a friend Franchesco Sao I’ll kick it a geology Professor the question is whether we will still find a

Frozen water table this time around and if we can stay long enough to drill through it to see if there is liquid water underneath we’re in exactly the same spot same GPS position looks very different but the devil is in the detail the devil is always in the measurements

The field measurements and every time we look at these systems they’re always so much more complex and and far more interesting scientifically oh nice Lovely this time the Moola winds its way down like a spiral staircase with various Chambers off to the side just need my camera to be ready H this is different really different completely different sort of hydrology and formation morphology is it solid cesco yeah just be careful where there

Is the layer of transparent ice I’m not sure okay it’s quite crazy yeah quite beautiful we come around the corner and we’ve got another Ang GL Hill it’s a tunnel yeah we about 60 M deep yeah yeah yeah I think we probably release pressure in b what yeah we have water

It’s really warm as well it’s really warm water it’s from the summer melt I mean really you wouldn’t want to Bath in it but it’s not cold it’s nowhere near the ambient temperature of the air temperature around it he he dark down there yeah we have a wireless and a wired

System for temperature water pressure and methane sensors and hopefully they’re working looks pretty unstable up there but do you think this might be the water table yeah it could be I think wa okay here it’s fine yeah this roof above us is is incredibly precarious so it’s not a matter of if

It’s just a matter of when we be have to be quick Right that water should have drained away at the end of the summer but it didn’t it contains energy over winter it releases that energy into the ice around it and allowing this interior region to continue to accelerate not just in the summer but also in the

Winter there’s no going back on it it’s very very difficult to cool that basal environment down again in fact nothing other than an ice age is going to cool it down you coming back come on R I like this he’s running you get a measurement we found melt water inside

The ice which is new and important information it might be that the ice contains huge amounts of liquid water that far more ice has melted than even our best models have predicted in the lifespan of our children temperatures and sea levels will rise faster and faster until the world might well become

Unrecognizable what once seemed like a doomsday scenario from a science fiction story is becoming reality we must listen to the scientists those who say we have no time to Waste nature is trying to tell us Something

A voyage of discovery, across huge expanses of ice. This film follows three of the world’s leading glaciologists on their pioneering scientific expeditions to Greenland’s massive ice sheet, a place that could harbor secrets about the future of life on Earth.

“Into the Ice” is a documentary about science, nature and a spirit of adventure. It’s about scientists who’ve dedicated their lives to exploring the secrets of our future that lie concealed within the ice.

The documentary accompanies three of the world’s leading glaciologists on their pioneering expeditions to Greenland’s ice sheet: the serene, legendary Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, the sensitive, politically engaged Jason Box and the daring, fearless Alun Hubbard. They share the idea that climate research can’t rely on satellite data and computer models alone. If they want to arrive at conclusive results, scientists also need to be right where the changes are taking place. All three are focused on the collection of new, decisive data that could help us answer some of the crucial questions of our era: How fast is the ice melting? How quickly are sea levels rising?

Director Lars Ostenfeld is an experienced nature documentary filmmaker. In “Into the Ice”, he follows leading scientists to one of the wildest and most extreme landscapes in the world, to find out more about the ice sheet’s unpredictable processes.

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