Transcript

My name is Waleed Abdalati. I study ice from space, in particular the Greenland ice sheet and its contributions to sea level by using satellites to observe gains and losses in the mass of the ice. I have been deeply involved with NASA satellites, especially the ICESat satellites, which help us measure and investigate how Earth's ice sheets and glaciers are changing and what those changes mean for our planet and our communities. And as part of that work, I've had the good fortune of going to Greenland, among other ice covered places in the world. But I've spent most of my boots on the ground.

Time in Greenland.

Greenland is a beautiful place. The coast is rocky and rugged, and it's where the glaciers meet the water and the sounds of iceberg calving are simultaneously beautiful and deafening. The feel of the cold air on your face while the other covered parts of your body are warm, are just really difficult to describe. I was lucky that before heading from the coastal village on to the ice, I was able to hike along the coast to one of the world's fastest glaciers, the Jakobshavn ice stream, which moves at about seven kilometers a year, but sometimes as much as twice the speed.

So, standing on the shore of Greenland, on one of those hikes and just looking at this immense river of ice, you can see enormous cracks and crevasses throughout the ice as the face of the ice front rises above the water to a height that's really the equivalent to the length of a football field about 100 yards. But what's especially remarkable is that it's about nine times as deep into the water as it is above the water. The enormity of it all is difficult to imagine. It makes you feel very small.

So we're looking at the face of this huge flowing ice river being about a thousand yards in height and depth combined, flowing down from the main ice of the ice sheet above. And one thing that has really stuck with me, particularly from those hikes, has been the sound of the ice moving,

settling and cracking as it flows. But most impressive has been the sound of an iceberg calving. It's enormously loud. It starts low and soft and you know something is going to happen, and there's an explosion of noise as the ice breaks off. The sound of the separation, and then a tremendous splash as it falls into the surrounding seas. There's nothing like it in the world. And I've had the privilege of experiencing this, particularly the first time I went into the ice before I even got onto the ice, before I got to do my work.

We had a few days in a village on the coast, and I took the hike through the low lying moss on the coast of Greenland and the very rocky shores, and just took it all in. But eventually I went onto the ice to do the work I came to do. I've done most of my on-ice work on the ice sheet itself, and it begins by climbing into a helicopter. You get in the helicopter, the blades are spinning, tilts just a little bit in order to fly forward, and you know you're going someplace adventurous. And as we would fly over the ice to our field destination, the team and I would take in its beauty and eventually we'd land. And the first time we landed, I didn't know what to expect as the helicopter lowered itself onto the ice. I didn't know what to think. Would it be soft and would we sink, or would it be firm and would do we sit on top? How deep did the landing skis beneath the helicopter go? 

Well, I quickly got my question answered as we settled on to the firm ice snow surface. It held up the helicopter just fine. It was much harder packed than I imagined it would be from the strong winds and within what seemed like a minute, we threw our gear onto the snow and the helicopter blades roared into motion again, and it took off, and we listened to the sound of the helicopter gradually give way to the sound of the steady stream of wind that frequently occurs on the ice sheet. As the helicopter got further and further away. And eventually it was gone. There was a strange sound of silence and loneliness at this point, knowing that we were farther from civilization than nearly everyone else in the world. And the steady sound of the wind blowing across the snow. You get used to the sound of the wind, and then you notice other sounds like when we call out to each other, it seems softer and a little more muffled than we're used to. Because cold air doesn't transmit the sound waves in the same way as warm air, and the snow that spreads out beneath our feet absorbs those sounds.

The sounds are very different on the ice. They're duller, just not quite as sharp. But given that there's no real background noise except the wind, they can still be clear. But there's one sound that sticks with me as much as anything. That's the sound of walking on snow surfaces. The snow is hard and wind packed, so it supports your weight well. The crunch under your feet is very distinct as the crust breaks. It's a significant cracking sound that's quickly silenced by the snow underneath. And each step has a certain rhythm cracking under your boots. And even though it's muffled, the fact that this is the only sound apart from the wind and your own breathing makes it stand out.

Another remarkable thing about camping on the Greenland ice sheet is the fact that the sun, this is in summer rather than rise and said, simply goes around you in circles 360 degrees. It's higher at noon, but still well above the horizon at midnight. It takes some getting used to. Obviously, the sun doesn't move in an arc from darkness to light and back to darkness like it does at low latitudes, but rather it moves in a complete, albeit tilted, circle around you. It's really quite beautiful. The light on the snow. It's just remarkable. And this leads to another beautiful aspect of the Arctic in general. And that's the fact that the long distance the sunlight has to travel through the atmosphere at high latitudes scatters away or strips off some of the blues and greens and yellows of sunlight, leaving an orangish red hue. When the sun is low on the horizon, the reddish light illuminates the ocean before you, with distinct colors, revealing in detail its undulating texture that extends endlessly into the horizon. These waves of snow and ice on the surface are created and shaped by a steady stream of wind that seems to grow louder at night as the other sounds grow quieter. I remember just falling asleep to it in that tent.

The relentless drone of the wind against the tent along the snow. And I knew I was in a harsh but beautiful and natural place. And even though the sun is out for 24 hours during the day, there's a clear difference in how the sun feels during the day when it's high up above the horizon than when it's night and the sun is low on the horizon and that's because the snow and ice are so reflective that direct sunlight coming from above is almost 100% reflected back at you from the surface. So it's an effective doubling of the sunlight because of the snow. So what this means is that despite these low temperatures, on those occasions when the wind isn't blowing, it actually feels warm on the ice and the day when the sun is high because you're effectively getting the heat from two suns, one from above and one reflected from below, from the snow at night. However, this effect goes away because the sun is low on the horizon and the coldness of the Arctic can really chill your bones.

But the Greenland ice sheet is beautiful, it's peaceful, it's pristine, and it offers a view of part of the earth that so few ever get to experience. And I feel very, very lucky. Finally, after a few weeks or months, the sounds with which one has become so familiar give way to the sound of a helicopter on the horizon, blades whirring softly at first, getting louder and louder as our ride home approaches. And as we roll our equipment in, we hear a number of thuds slamming down on the floor of the helicopter, and we climb on board, and it takes off as quickly as it arrives. Each of us, and that moment of departure looks back on the place we called home. And we carry with us not just the visuals, but the sounds, the feel of cold on our exposed skin and that very, very clean smell of what was untouched by the ice.