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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): ...... how climate change may be affecting life in Alaska as we know it and the captivating images we see there, from ice to Marine life.
NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien went there to see for himself.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): Alaska may seem like a place where things don’t change very quickly, the natural beauty is set in stone and is as predictable as the caribou beside the road.
But make no mistake, things are changing here quickly, and not for the better. Alaska is at the frontier of climate change. Scientists are scrambling to try and understand it.
KARL KREUTZ, University of Maine: We know that the Arctic is warming more rapidly than most other places on Earth.
MILES O’BRIEN: To catch up with University of Maine paleoclimatologist Karl Kreutz and his team, we hopped on a plane rigged with skis that landed right on the Ruth Glacier in the heart of the Denali National Park.
KARL KREUTZ: Most glaciers in Alaska are retreating. We’d like to be able to predict with better accuracy of what will happen, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario there where glaciers will not continue to lose mass in this area. The question is how fast.
MILES O’BRIEN: But the answer is unknowable if they don’t know how much ice is here right now.
SETH CAMPBELL, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: To goal of this specific study is to come up with ice depth measurement across the glacier.
MILES O’BRIEN: Kreutz’s colleague Seth Campbell is a research geophysicist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He and University of Maine undergrad Abby Bradford spent long, strenuous days on skis towing a ground-penetrating radar up, down and across the glacier.
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