1
00:00:02,035 --> 00:00:05,572
The Antarctic
is this absolutely incredible

2
00:00:05,572 --> 00:00:09,009
place, it's a contradiction, it's
one of the driest places on Earth,

3
00:00:09,376 --> 00:00:12,946
and yet it holds 70% of the world's
freshwater.

4
00:00:13,213 --> 00:00:14,347
Antarctica is big.

5
00:00:14,347 --> 00:00:16,416
It's larger
than the continental United States.

6
00:00:16,750 --> 00:00:18,351
It's so incredibly cold.

7
00:00:18,351 --> 00:00:20,887
It's the coldest place on Earth
at the surface,

8
00:00:21,087 --> 00:00:23,957
at the base of the ice sheet,
it's melting.

9
00:00:24,257 --> 00:00:29,262
We're talking about a big, inaccessible
chunk of ice that is probably

10
00:00:29,262 --> 00:00:32,832
some of the most unexplored territory
on the planet.

11
00:00:39,272 --> 00:00:40,640
Today

12
00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:44,444
we have maps
every single year, complete coverage

13
00:00:44,444 --> 00:00:47,981
of the Antarctic flowing into the ocean,
we're looking at all these changes.

14
00:00:47,981 --> 00:00:52,719
We've got lasers in space
measuring very subtle changes in the shape

15
00:00:52,719 --> 00:00:54,087
and the topography.

16
00:00:54,087 --> 00:00:56,689
I mean, what's it going to look
like in ten years from now?

17
00:00:57,524 --> 00:00:58,691
I mean, our understanding is

18
00:00:58,691 --> 00:01:02,429
going to it's exponential,
it's amazing how much--

19
00:01:02,729 --> 00:01:06,633
How little we knew and how much we know
now and how much there still is to learn.

20
00:01:06,933 --> 00:01:09,936
I totally agree, and I think what's wicked
cool about that is both

21
00:01:09,936 --> 00:01:13,173
the remote sensing component
and the glaciology component.

22
00:01:13,173 --> 00:01:16,910
Those have really accelerated
and transformed inside

23
00:01:16,910 --> 00:01:20,046
units of time that are comparable to,
like the age of us.

24
00:01:20,046 --> 00:01:23,550
That's pretty cool
that we're working in fields where--this

25
00:01:23,550 --> 00:01:29,289
is--we've seen this sort of that
logarithmic just take off.

26
00:01:29,389 --> 00:01:30,156
Totally agree.

27
00:01:30,156 --> 00:01:31,424
I think

28
00:01:31,724 --> 00:01:33,827
some of the history stuff
that's fun to look at.

29
00:01:38,665 --> 00:01:42,535
It wasn't long ago in the 1960s and 70s

30
00:01:42,535 --> 00:01:47,140
that satellites were only able
to catch snapshots of Antarctica.

31
00:01:47,273 --> 00:01:49,042
They were single moments in time.

32
00:01:49,042 --> 00:01:51,978
Few and far between.
--and liftoff!

33
00:01:51,978 --> 00:01:57,417
It wasn't until decades later when Landsat
7 started to reveal detailed features

34
00:01:57,417 --> 00:02:01,321
of Antarctica that signs of change
could start to be seen.

35
00:02:01,688 --> 00:02:05,024
At the ground level, NASA
first stepped foot on the ice

36
00:02:05,024 --> 00:02:09,195
sheet in 1983, when Robert Bindschadler
began studying

37
00:02:09,195 --> 00:02:14,367
the behavior of ice streams
along the coast of the Ross Ice Shelf.

38
00:02:14,367 --> 00:02:14,801
Over the

39
00:02:14,801 --> 00:02:19,973
decades, the combination of efforts
on the ground, air and space helped

40
00:02:19,973 --> 00:02:25,879
NASA develop game-changing ways of mapping
the unexplored places on the continent.

41
00:02:26,446 --> 00:02:29,983
We don't have a high resolution
map of Antarctica to date,

42
00:02:30,083 --> 00:02:32,118
but this will be the first high resolution

43
00:02:32,218 --> 00:02:34,154
map that's available to the science
community.

44
00:02:34,154 --> 00:02:35,788
Twenty-five meters in resolution.

45
00:02:35,788 --> 00:02:39,225
LIMA takes us from the world
of black and white TV.

46
00:02:39,292 --> 00:02:43,997
LIMA is true color, high resolution
representation of Antarctica.

47
00:02:43,997 --> 00:02:46,299
It's a step change.

48
00:02:46,399 --> 00:02:51,404
And then it wasn't until 2011
that we had our very first map

49
00:02:51,404 --> 00:02:55,475
of how the surface of the ice sheet
moves, right?

50
00:02:55,508 --> 00:02:57,377
Because the ice sheet is ice

51
00:02:57,377 --> 00:03:00,013
that is flowing into the ocean, it's
moving everywhere.

52
00:03:00,013 --> 00:03:03,716
I think what Alex was getting at,
what is our our look

53
00:03:03,716 --> 00:03:06,819
in our mapping and our view of Antarctica
going to look like in ten years?

54
00:03:06,819 --> 00:03:10,123
And I hope we have a better
three-dimensional sense of the ice sheet.

55
00:03:10,123 --> 00:03:12,892
That we have a very
good sense of the bottom.

56
00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,596
We're getting at the resolution
of different things

57
00:03:16,596 --> 00:03:19,933
that come down to base and scale things
that we didn't really have before.

58
00:03:20,266 --> 00:03:25,305
So we're looking at things
at dynamics and systems at a much smaller,

59
00:03:25,305 --> 00:03:28,608
a traversable--is
that a word?--type scale.

60
00:03:28,608 --> 00:03:28,841
Yeah.

61
00:03:28,841 --> 00:03:32,645
So there's REMA, Referenced Elevation
Model of Antarctica.

62
00:03:32,679 --> 00:03:36,482
It's incredibly high resolution,
incredible detail and give us some

63
00:03:36,482 --> 00:03:38,851
of the most precise knowledge
we have of the ice sheet elevation,

64
00:03:39,219 --> 00:03:43,289
and we're able to use the data
for practical things like initializing

65
00:03:43,423 --> 00:03:46,659
a model,
a numerical model of ice sheet flow.

66
00:03:46,659 --> 00:03:50,196
And so having these types of data
sets just lets

67
00:03:50,196 --> 00:03:53,366
cryospheric scientists
get to work that much faster

68
00:03:53,366 --> 00:03:57,870
and generate conclusions from the data
that are just that much more robust.

69
00:04:00,506 --> 00:04:01,874
I've spent a total of about

70
00:04:01,874 --> 00:04:05,578
a little over
two years in Antarctica on the ground.

71
00:04:05,578 --> 00:04:08,715
And some of that was with research
that I've been doing recently with NASA.

72
00:04:08,715 --> 00:04:15,121
And so it goes back to kind of your first
jobs, out of school and whatnot, doing

73
00:04:15,121 --> 00:04:17,090
GIS and remote sensing

74
00:04:17,090 --> 00:04:21,894
for the science support contractor
that's in Antarctica.

75
00:04:21,894 --> 00:04:22,528
The U.S.

76
00:04:22,528 --> 00:04:27,467
National Science Foundation operates
three permanent stations in Antarctica,

77
00:04:27,467 --> 00:04:28,935
which provide the facilities

78
00:04:28,935 --> 00:04:32,972
for scientists like Kelly
to do some pretty remote research.

79
00:04:32,972 --> 00:04:36,876
And then more recently,
I've been working on the 88-South project,

80
00:04:36,876 --> 00:04:39,979
which is going down
just after Thanksgiving and missing

81
00:04:39,979 --> 00:04:44,017
Christmas, coming back kind of in late
January, doing a big science-first

82
00:04:44,017 --> 00:04:47,186
based out in the South Pole Station
in support of ICESat-2.

83
00:04:47,186 --> 00:04:50,990
We come out of the base,
drive a 300 kilometer

84
00:04:50,990 --> 00:04:55,261
stretch along 88-South,
and then go home and 750 kilometers total.

85
00:04:55,261 --> 00:04:58,398
Work and life at the Pole is harsh.

86
00:04:58,398 --> 00:05:03,136
It's cold, very cold and it's very dry.

87
00:05:03,136 --> 00:05:07,106
Antarctica is a desert, after all.
And there's wind,

88
00:05:07,106 --> 00:05:11,044
relentless wind with nothing on
the landscape to break it up.

89
00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:14,514
The other

90
00:05:14,514 --> 00:05:19,886
environmental issue that I see is
this is huge, too, is elevation.

91
00:05:19,886 --> 00:05:21,988
What are you doing, Kelly?

92
00:05:21,988 --> 00:05:26,025
Closing up the GPS.

93
00:05:26,025 --> 00:05:28,528
Trying to breathe.

94
00:05:28,995 --> 00:05:33,266
Trying to breathe? 
What's the problem with your breathing?

95
00:05:33,266 --> 00:05:35,935
We're at 10,000 feet.

96
00:05:35,935 --> 00:05:37,904
Getting higher every day it seems.

97
00:05:37,904 --> 00:05:39,605
You know,
you can get out of the temperature,

98
00:05:39,605 --> 00:05:43,209
you can get out of the wind,
but you're at 10,000 feet, period, and

99
00:05:43,209 --> 00:05:45,545
you can't get out of that.

100
00:05:48,414 --> 00:05:49,916
The crazy thing is is, is

101
00:05:49,916 --> 00:05:52,952
I can look at a satellite image
of the Antarctic

102
00:05:52,952 --> 00:05:56,723
and even with a fairly small postage
stamp, I can tell you where it is.

103
00:05:56,723 --> 00:05:59,692
And I have never been to the Antarctic.

104
00:05:59,692 --> 00:06:03,930
I feel like the fanboy that just can't
afford the ticket to the concert.

105
00:06:04,697 --> 00:06:05,965
Is it strange knowing

106
00:06:05,965 --> 00:06:09,435
so much sort of geography about a place
having not been there?

107
00:06:09,435 --> 00:06:13,406
How many other people just stare
at imagery of places

108
00:06:13,406 --> 00:06:17,043
they've never been and understand it in

109
00:06:17,043 --> 00:06:18,711
deep ways that maybe people

110
00:06:18,711 --> 00:06:21,481
that have set foot on the continent
never even thought about it?

111
00:06:22,482 --> 00:06:26,619
It actually takes quite a while to build
trust between those communities

112
00:06:26,619 --> 00:06:30,390
because they do, they have these different
kind of world views of how things are.

113
00:06:30,390 --> 00:06:32,692
When you talk to somebody on the ground,
especially in the past

114
00:06:32,692 --> 00:06:36,829
when remote sensing was was just starting
to become more prominent, is there's

115
00:06:36,829 --> 00:06:41,667
an inherent skepticism that that you can't
you can't see what I'm seeing

116
00:06:41,667 --> 00:06:45,204
because it's so detailed
and it's so nuanced.

117
00:06:45,204 --> 00:06:49,375
And the people that are looking
from the satellites down

118
00:06:49,375 --> 00:06:54,380
often feel that the world is so big
and so massive and moving in

119
00:06:54,380 --> 00:06:57,049
so many different ways
that how could you possibly understand it

120
00:06:57,049 --> 00:07:00,853
from putting your feet on the ground
and looking at a single spot?

121
00:07:00,853 --> 00:07:03,289
One of Alex's current projects
is comparing

122
00:07:03,289 --> 00:07:07,059
the Antarctica of today
with the Antarctica of the past.

123
00:07:07,059 --> 00:07:09,862
The problem is, NASA's
satellite imagery only

124
00:07:09,862 --> 00:07:12,965
takes us so far back.
 To go back further,

125
00:07:12,999 --> 00:07:16,536
Alex needed another agency's satellites.

126
00:07:16,536 --> 00:07:19,906
The first satellites
were not for scientific applications,

127
00:07:19,906 --> 00:07:21,707
they were for military applications.

128
00:07:21,707 --> 00:07:25,745
There was a series of satellites,
still some of the most expensive ones

129
00:07:25,745 --> 00:07:27,213
that we know about.

130
00:07:27,213 --> 00:07:30,283
Its name: Hexagon!

131
00:07:30,283 --> 00:07:34,821
And they were these short-lived
satellites.

132
00:07:34,821 --> 00:07:38,057
You know, this was during the Cold War
and they were really designed

133
00:07:38,057 --> 00:07:42,195
to keep tabs on the Russians
and where the missile silos were.

134
00:07:42,195 --> 00:07:44,230
But they were collecting imagery
other places.

135
00:07:44,230 --> 00:07:46,299
They were using analog cameras.

136
00:07:46,299 --> 00:07:48,000
So that means they had film.

137
00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:52,805
And they'd have these these gold canisters
full of film, like miles of film,

138
00:07:52,805 --> 00:07:56,943
and they would de-orbit these canisters
when they would get over to the US.

139
00:07:56,943 --> 00:08:00,446
These canisters
would re-enter through the atmosphere

140
00:08:00,446 --> 00:08:04,650
and they would deploy a parachute,
and then a plane would actually go

141
00:08:04,650 --> 00:08:07,820
and grab these canisters mid air

142
00:08:07,820 --> 00:08:10,189
and then bring them down, develop the film

143
00:08:10,189 --> 00:08:14,193
and then analyze them
for all the different targets.

144
00:08:14,560 --> 00:08:17,330
We've had a big project
where we've tried to scan

145
00:08:17,330 --> 00:08:20,633
a lot of that imagery through the USGS

146
00:08:20,633 --> 00:08:24,003
so that we can analyze that imagery
to see what the Antarctic look like

147
00:08:24,003 --> 00:08:28,241
back in the seventies
and and how it's changed up until now.

148
00:08:32,445 --> 00:08:34,313
I get
asked a lot like, how did you get into this?

149
00:08:34,313 --> 00:08:37,617
and I think it was because my family,
what we did for family

150
00:08:37,617 --> 00:08:40,920
vacations, was load in
the car, go up north and go skiing.

151
00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:44,824
And so what I remember as a kid is snow
and frustrates me

152
00:08:44,824 --> 00:08:49,061
when I see short winters and whatnot or,
you know, not a lot of snow.

153
00:08:49,061 --> 00:08:50,263
It bums me out.

154
00:08:50,263 --> 00:08:53,699
So I think that's how it started.

155
00:08:53,699 --> 00:08:56,235
I did two years of engineering
and then I kind of got restless.

156
00:08:56,235 --> 00:09:00,907
And so I went and traveled South America
with my wife to be and found myself

157
00:09:00,907 --> 00:09:03,209
sitting in front of the Moreno Glacier
at one point

158
00:09:03,209 --> 00:09:07,146
wondering if this was something that
anybody had ever thought about studying,

159
00:09:07,146 --> 00:09:10,182
and also starting to realize
that these things would probably change a

160
00:09:10,182 --> 00:09:11,617
lot in the future.

161
00:09:12,184 --> 00:09:13,619
And I remember I was just in awe.

162
00:09:13,619 --> 00:09:14,987
I mean, I was just

163
00:09:14,987 --> 00:09:20,426
it was, you know, these these ten story
buildings of ice crashing off into a lake.

164
00:09:20,426 --> 00:09:24,630
And I had never seen anything like that
with that much power

165
00:09:24,630 --> 00:09:27,733
that I can witness in real time.

166
00:09:27,733 --> 00:09:29,468
I just sat there and watched it

167
00:09:29,468 --> 00:09:33,906
until my wife dragged me away
because she was ready to go.

168
00:09:33,906 --> 00:09:35,675
That was a kind of occurring
at the same time

169
00:09:35,675 --> 00:09:40,546
that I wanted to contribute
to something big societally.

170
00:09:41,380 --> 00:09:45,551
There's an amazing photo
taken by Apollo on its last mission.

171
00:09:45,551 --> 00:09:46,452
Everyone's seen it.

172
00:09:46,452 --> 00:09:51,157
It's the base of Earth as a disk
in the center of the frame is Africa.

173
00:09:51,724 --> 00:09:55,728
And what you failed to really realize
is if you look down at the bottom of that,

174
00:09:55,728 --> 00:09:57,930
the bulk of Antarctica
is in that photo too.

175
00:09:57,930 --> 00:10:00,866
And it's kind of the first time you get

176
00:10:00,866 --> 00:10:04,270
a really big, remote sensing, full look

177
00:10:04,270 --> 00:10:06,572
at the continent.

178
00:10:06,572 --> 00:10:10,309
We need to do this again,

179
00:10:10,309 --> 00:10:14,213
get people back on the Moon to respark

180
00:10:14,213 --> 00:10:18,084
that interest in in sciences
and engineering.

181
00:10:18,084 --> 00:10:21,787
When I talk to my colleagues
that are a bit older than I am,

182
00:10:21,787 --> 00:10:24,757
a lot of them say that the Mercury, Gemini

183
00:10:24,790 --> 00:10:28,794
Apollo , that type of activity
got them into engineering.

184
00:10:28,794 --> 00:10:30,529
We need that again.

185
00:10:30,529 --> 00:10:35,568
So I think this is fundamentally important
to kind of keep NASA and that exploration

186
00:10:35,568 --> 00:10:41,507
and that engineering, getting kids--and
adults--interested in science.

187
00:10:41,507 --> 00:10:45,378
I get frustrated that we're likely already
crossed certain tipping points,

188
00:10:45,411 --> 00:10:49,148
and I get apathetic
that we're not taking more action and that

189
00:10:49,148 --> 00:10:50,983
I'm not having enough of an impact.

190
00:10:50,983 --> 00:10:55,855
And that really frustrates
me and kind of makes me feel down.

191
00:10:55,855 --> 00:11:00,393
But then I thought,
you know where I started on this journey,

192
00:11:00,393 --> 00:11:06,232
which was staring at a glacier
in South America in 2007 or 8,

193
00:11:06,232 --> 00:11:10,603
where I am now and kind of the influence
that I'm able to have,

194
00:11:10,603 --> 00:11:13,673
to do my small part in this big picture.

195
00:11:13,673 --> 00:11:16,609
It's kind of one of the like,
don't give up stories, right?

196
00:11:16,642 --> 00:11:22,214
Like where we are making progress,
we are getting through.

197
00:11:22,214 --> 00:11:25,651
Our voices are starting to resonate
and we just can't give up

198
00:11:25,651 --> 00:11:29,822
because there's still a chance
to kind of turn this thing around.