Transcripts For BBCNEWS Our World 20240712

But first, the scientists need to get there. Its so difficult to operate here all of the planes are grounded. They say we wont fly anywhere. One only does anything in antarctica with the cooperation of the weather. Antarctica is a place of extremes. It is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest continent on earth. Capped by an ice sheet of up to five kilometres thick, this continent contains 90 of the worlds ice. I begin myjourney in new zealand. I dont need your passport, thats all good. They say travelling to antarctica is like travelling to another planet. So, here goes. The us air force provides the planes. The safety briefing may be familiar, but nothing else about this flight is. Im travelling with professor david vaughan, the director of science at the British Antarctic survey. After flying due south for five hours, i get my first glimpse of antarctica, snow and ice stretching as far as the eye can see. Finally, our destination. We are heading to mcmurdo. Which is pretty much straight off over there. It is the last fingerhold of civilisation, the most southerly town on earth, and the largest centre for Scientific Research on the continent. And out across the sea ice, the first peaks of the mighty tra nsa ntarctic mountains. Keep it staying in place. It is here in mcmurdo that our expedition to the thwaites glacier begins. So, thwaites glacier is vulnerable and there is nothing stopping a collapse once it really takes hold. Thwaites glacier is the size of britain and already accounts for 4 of global sea level rise. The fear is if the melt rate increases, much of the west Antarctic Ice sheet could go, too. That could raise world sea levels by more than three metres. Why is the glacier changing, why is it being eaten away . Its being eaten away because there are winds on the oceans surface that are actually driving currents away from this ice sheet. When that happens, this water comes in underneath like this. This deep ocean water is really warm. And that eats away at the glacier . This normally doesnt happen. These winds have been increasing and so more of this water has been coming up onto the Continental Shelf and interacting with this glacier. The Scientists Say Global Warming has changed the wind patterns and sea currents, bringing warm ocean water to the front of the glacier. We have loaded the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, we have set the temperature going up, and. Doctor Britney Schmidt is in charge of a nasa robot submarine called icefin. The plan is to lower it almost half a mile through the ice to map conditions in the seawater below. So, britney, give me a tour of icefin . So, up at the front we have sensors that are going to make measurements of the oceanography, telling us what the temperature is, and the salinity of the water and how much oxygen is there. In addition to that we have a forward looking sonar here that allows us to map the three dimensional cavities, so it allows us to see the shape of the ice and its texture. No ones really been under thwaites, and what icefins going to do is get up and close to the physics, get really close to the ice, really close to the sea floor and allows to see what is happening in a real way. How much of a challenge do you think this is going to be . Well, its always an impressive challenge to do anything here in antarctica and much more so when you are you know 1,200 miles from mcmurdo. When you think about drilling through 600 metres of ice, drilled by the best people in the world just to make an observation, its quite a challenge. And then to operate a moving platform through is pretty special, actually. Icefin may have a big task ahead, but not the one as big that faced the men who stayed in this hut. So this is a truly unique historical site literally frozen in time. It is the base camp of captain scotts ill fated 1911 attempt to reach the south pole. Whispering look at this this is amazing. Thats incredible. Ill tell you what strikes you first. Its its the smell, it really smells of. Kind of smoked fish. So there are all sorts of objects. The tin cans and the food they ate on the expedition. So weve got, tinned salmon . That looks like a can of sardines. Here we have cocoa, a huge drink for them, that was the drink of the polar explorers, they make cocoa. And dry, hard biscuits ships biscuits, baking powder. This is seal blubber. What they would do is kill the seals on the ice, bring them back here, eat the meat and use the blubber to burn their stoves to keep them warm. Which is why it smells like smoked fish in here, because it is covered, you can see it is just covered with soot from the blubber fire. Its actually really ghostly because you get a sense of the people being here. Scott himself leaving from here with that great ambition to get to the pole and then of course dying on the way back. And like captain scott before us, our plans are frustrated by the antarctic weather. I am beginning to understand why doing science here is so difficult. Then i hear a crisis meeting has been called. The delays have got so bad theyre going to have to scale back some of the science. I want to find out whats going on. I managed to track down david vaughan. Well, i think theres a lot of ambitions at stake here. People have been working on these projects for several years already. So, when the bad news comes, i dont think it is quite yet but, the delays are continuing. Things are going to change and that is going to mean a lot for some people. Can i come to the meeting . I would rather you did not on this one, justin. Let me . Im not allowed in . No. So youre not expecting a difficult meeting, but . No, no, i think but we just to people let people get that news and process it and think about what theyre going theyre actually going to when they actually get finally get in the field. Thank you very much. Good luck. Thank you. When the meetings over, i learned the weather is hampering efforts to supply spare parts to the plane we need to get to thwaites glacier. Theres parts coming down from new zealand to get those plans functional again. So we have to sit and wait. How many days behind schedule are we now . Uh, i dont really even i dont know, actually. Why count . I think we can still imagine that we can still do 100 of the tasks but. You can still imagine