THE CLIMATE SCIENTIST

In: FP, Heft 209

Abstract

While Arctic sea ice continues to melt, down in the Antarctic, ice is actually accumulating -- and at record levels. Capping off an anomalously high three-year trend, September 2014 saw 7.76 million square miles covered in ice; that's more than 500,000 square miles above the average documented between 1981 and 2010. Glaciologist Ted Scambos and his colleagues are trying to figure out what, exactly, is happening. A senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Scambos has been tramping around the Antarctic since the 1990s. Scambos's next big trip likely will be to a ridge on the East Antarctic Plateau, thought to be the coldest place on Earth. Foreign Policy recently caught up with Scambos to learn what is required to live and work at the bottom of the world. Adapted from the source document.