(dramatic music)
During the last ice age, 16,000 years ago,
ice sheets like this covered much of
the northern hemisphere.
So much water was trapped in the ice,
that sea levels were almost 122 meters,
360 feet, lower than they are today.
(water gushing)
Today, we're facing the opposite problem.
The Greenland ice sheet, the last remnant of that ice age,
is melting at a rapid pace as the Arctic heats up.
(intense orchestral music)
Greenland's ice sheet lost 55 billion tons of water
over just five days in July and August of 2019,
enough to cover the state of Florida in almost
five inches of water.
(dramatic horn music)
(water-fall)
( equipment)
Scientists are packing equipment and getting dropped off
at research camps across the ice caps, to track the melt.
(power auger whirring)
30 years ago, this research site, S10 Camp,
was chosen because it was just above the equilibrium line.
That's where the snowfall and the snow melt are the same,
year in and year out, making the ice very stable.
From here, scientists can measure the long-term climate
and monitor the movement of the Greenland ice sheet.
It was originally put in as a kind of control
where nothing happens.
Nothing really should be happening.
Nothing should be happening here
but the ice sheet is melting,
and faster than models predicted for this century.
Airborne dust and soot from the industrial world
darken patches of ice, absorbing more of the sun's
radiation, and accelerating melting.
(water gushing)
It's an amazing theory out there that the water gets
to the base of the ice sheet, and kind of pressurizes and
hydraulically lifts the ice sheet up, up to a meter at any
one time when that water shunts down the hole.
So, it does have a really big impact.
And the rate of lowering of this
particular part of the ice sheet
is beyond what models predict really.
By the end of summer,
scientists estimate about 400 billion metric tons of ice
will have melted or capped off Greenland's giant ice sheet.
(dramatic chime music)
(plane whirring)
Scientists worldwide are studying sea rise and the ice loss
on this vast icecap.
Greenland is 14 times the size of England.
Most of it is covered by an ice sheet.
Its average is two kilometers thick.
But in just the last 10 years,
there's been a lot of change.
And in the center, almost four kilometers deep.
Six, five, four
three, two, one, drop.
Six feet away.
A jet propulsion lab program called
'Ocean Melting Greenland' is designed to improve
sea level rise estimates by mapping topography
of the sea floor,
and measuring salinity and temperature along
the continental shelf of Greenland.
It's really a breathtaking landscape.
When you look out the window,
you really get a sense of just how huge these glaciers are.
These gigantic rivers of ice that are
draining the ice out of Greenland into the ocean.
J.P.L's team lead, Josh Willis, drops high-tech
probes designed to measure the action of
warm, salty Atlantic water.
Then, resurface and transmit data to the plane.
All to determine how the ocean is contributing
to the melting ice walls.
(radio chatter)
Greenland's definitely melting
and this year has been incredibly warm.
As we've flown over the ice sheet this year
we've seen evidence of melt pools
not just in the coast but far inland.
Even at high very elevations so
it's been a really warm year and I think it could be
a record year of ice loss for Greenland.
(Eerie music)
Here's our scientific gear
we have the time lapse camera
so that we can actually see
when it's capping icebergs.
The real frontier today is understanding the ocean
glacier interactions.
And even though Greenland's a far away place
the changes here are felt around the world.
In 2005 we put cameras at the Jakobshavn glacier
and now we have camera's at more than 10 glaciers.
Every time you learn something new,
the actual speed measurements,
the Jakobshavn Glacier's moving really fast.
It's discharging 40 billion tons per year.
(plane flying overhead)
40 Billion tons of ice,
that's equivalent to over 90 Million 747's,
fully loaded, with fuel.
That whole ice shelf is going to go.
The time lapse camera is set to take
a single picture every 30 minutes.
It shows the movement of the glacier over
the entire summer.
The front of the glacier is rapidly disappearing.
One reason is the heavy flow of fresh melt water
down to the sea.
Another is warmer ocean currents
reaching the face of the glacier.
My concern is that if ocean temperatures
continue to rise and there's more of these
warm currents in contact with all of these
outlet glaciers to the ice sheet,
we're just going to see more and more ice
coming out at a faster rate,
leading to global sea level rise.
Where these glaciers extend out into the ocean
Warmer ocean temperatures are melting them
up to 100 times faster under the surface than above.
Temperature rise and melting in the interior
causes the ice sheet to lose more ice
then it gains each year.
In turn, the equilibrium line is retreating further inland
while the glaciers are sliding further
toward the coast and into the warming oceans.
The question is, How fast?
The ice sheets bending more than it's gaining
that's why it's important.
We want this ice sheet to be an Equilibrium, Sadly it's not.
(Ice crashing into water)
GPS sensor's can precisely track the melt
and the movement of the ice sheet.
GPS is telling us how fast the ice is
moving here pretty much on the button of 51 meters a year.
51 meters a year, that's how fast the glaciers
are moving and sliding into the oceans.
(Radio Chatter)
3 , 2 , 1 , drop.
Every time a ton of ice comes off of Greenland
sea level goes up a tiny little bit and it's coming
off Greenland at billions of tons per year.
(Somber piano music)
If this lot were to melt and flow straight into
the ocean I'd suspect the rest of humanity would
know about it pretty quick.
(forlorn piano music)
When we see surface melting over the whole ice sheet.
I think that's really going to indicate something.
That's going to tell a message
that's like the climate is really changing.
This ice is natures thermometer
and it just reacts to the environment that it's in.
I think that's going to be kind of a wake up call
for people to see that wow for the first time
we're melting in what used to be called the dry snow zone.
Whoa!
(ice crashing into the ocean)
Eventually if it all melts
the oceans will rise another 7 meters.
That's 24 feet around the world, threatening coastal cities.
(high energetic guitar music)
It would be disastrous for many cities around the world.
From New York to London.
Shanghai to Sydney.
Sea level rise will affect all of us.
(somber electronic music)
Worse, it's already destabilizing weather patterns
in all parts of the world.
Coasts and inland.
(water crashing into shore)
So arctic warming doesn't mean that the whole world
just gets warmer it actually means
because of the slow down of the jet stream
that we have more extremes in the weather
and it's destabilizing the climate.
(roaring thunder and rainfall)
In Greenland, surface melt,
the warmer ocean waters washing in front of the glaciers
and shrinking sea ice are all happening at a fantastic rate.
Satellite data shows that some of the glaciers have
retreated as much as 10 miles per year in the
last decade and doubled their rate of melt.
A further 2 to 3 degree rise in global temperature
this century might be just enough to tip
the great ice sheet into an irreversible melt down.
(somber orchestral music)