WEBVTT FILE 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.