More than 30 of the world's top polar ice experts met in Austin this week to discuss how climate change might lead to future sea-level rise and how that might affect ice sheets in Antarctica.
News 8 Austin Meteorologist Burton Fitzsimmons spoke with Dr. Ginny Catania, a glaciologist.
Q: I want to ask, first of all, what is a glaciologist?
A: Well, I study ice sheets and glaciers and how they respond to climate change.
Q: I see. And we’ve got some experts, actually 30 experts from around the world in town right now, in Austin, talking and kind of putting their minds together about what’s going to happen with climate change and these ice sheets. Tell us about Antarctica.
A: Well, the conference is mostly focused on this part of Antarctica, in the West Antarctica ice sheet. The West Antarctica ice sheet is a smaller ice sheet that appears to be more susceptible to climate change because it’s grounded below sea level, which means that if you lost the ice layer, which is about five meters of ice, you’d actually have open ocean in that area. There’s no land supporting the ice there. It’s all grounded below sea level.
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Global warming
Watch the interview with Ginny Catania.
 
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Q: And we’re talking about thousands of square miles, right? This is a huge area?
A: It’s a huge area. I wish I had a comparison for the size of Texas, but I don’t off-hand.
Q: And so you’re looking at - are you looking at even marine life there or are you just specifically looking at the glacier itself?
A: Well, the conference is focused on bringing together oceanographers and a few scientists and glaciologists, and geologists also, to understand this one part of West Antarctica in general, because it’s experiencing a lot of rapid change right now; more rapid than any other part of Antarctica.
Q: And what is the general trend? Do we see it increasing at an exponential rate? I know you’re studying not only the ice there, but also in Greenland, right?
A: Yeah. In this part of west Antarctica, the elevation is going down very rapidly, in order of like three to four meters a year near the margin of the ice sheet.
Q: And you mentioned that in just a few years or maybe in as much of fifty years, we might have a channel that’s directly through Antarctica, where ships could pass through?
A: Oh, no. This is in the arctic. So the arctic is covered with sea ice and that’s just floating on the ocean and that’s been retreating over time. It’s getting smaller and smaller over time, so there might be a path through the arctic in about 100 years, as the sea ice continues to melt.
Q: What do these signs tell you as a scientist, as a glaciologist?
A: Well, like I said, you know, you put an ice cube on a hot sidewalk and it’s going to melt. So, I think that ice sheets and glaciers are sort of the poster children for global warming. They’re the early warning indicators for how the Earth is going to respond to global warming. And, so, we can look at these as a sign for changes to come. And our problem right now is that we don’t quite yet understand how ice sheets respond; the rates on which they respond. So, we can’t yet tell you, you know, it will – we can’t predict like the rate at which ice sheets will change into the future. We just know that they will change at this point.
Q: And, hopefully, by putting your minds together, ya’ll will see these new ways in a new light and bring this -
A: Yeah. And, it allows us to get together and focus our research, you know, so now we can say, “Well, this is exactly what we need to study and you have this piece of information and I have that piece of information. Let’s put it together, write a proposal so that we can actually get somebody to actually go there.” And, focused, you know, research on a particular area is a good thing.
