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Operation Ice Bridge is one of NASA's new missions

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and what we're doing is we're monitoring the sea ice and the ice sheets.

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Right now we're up in the Arctic. We also go to the Antarctic.

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We're using the NASA aircraft to monitor these areas

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because our ICESat satellite recently died and ICESat II

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will not be launched until 2015, so in the interim we're using these aircraft.

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It gives us actually improved capabilities over the satellites

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because the satellites were measuring the surface elevations of both

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the ice sheets and the sea ice and with these aircraft we can add additional

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instruments that peer beneath the ice.

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Q: New findings about the health of the Arctic are about to be released.

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Can you give us a preview of how the ice faired this winter?

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Yes, actually we're flying over the sea ice right now because the sea ice is coming

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out of the winter season and in the winter it grows and the summer it shrinks,

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and so right now coming out of the winter, it's reaching its maximum extent.

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What we're seeing from the satelltes, we have a 30-year history of this

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that the sea ice extent is about average this year, just

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a little below average, so that's good news that it's about average

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but it is thinner than average.

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Q: Well, why is the Arctic ice such an important measure for Earth's climate health?

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The Arctic ice is a very important measure

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for the Earth's health because the Arctic will see

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climate change first as well as it will see accelerated warming

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The Arctic sea ice acts

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as a mirror on top of the Earth and as it shrinks in the summer

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it does not reflect back the sunlight, it can warm the

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oceans. As well as, when we look at the ice sheets

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as we see warming there, we see speedup

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of the glaciers, the outlet glaciers, as well as thinning which

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relates directly to sea level rise so these are important areas to monitor.

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Q: IceBridge isn't just looking at sea ice, but at glaciers too.

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Why are they so important to study?

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Yes we're actually looking at glaciers on the edges of the Greenland glaciers right now.

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These are called outlet glaciers. These glaciers drain the ice from the interior of

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the ice sheets and flow to the ocean. What we've seen in these glaciers over the past

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two decades is that many of them are thinning as well as

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increasing in speed and that means they're taking more ice and putting it into

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the oceans so we really want to understand the dynamics of what's going on

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with these glaciers so we can make better predictions of sea level rise

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in the future.

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Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about the aircraft that NASA's using -- what kinds of instruments are on them and what are they there to do?

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Yes, NASA's using two different aircraft, we're using our DC-8 aircraft

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as well as our P-3 aircraft. These aircraft are outfitted with

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many different instruments. We're using two different LIDAR measurements.

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These LIDARs are a laser altimeter and

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they send a laser pulse down and they measure the surface height

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of the ice. Then we use radars. We use four different radars that all

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look at different depths into the ice -- our deepest radar will actually look

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down to the bottoms of the ice sheets -- it can look through three kilometers of ice

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and monitor more of what's going on at the bases of the ice sheets.

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Q: Well, where can we go to learn more about Operation Ice Bridge and Earth's poles?

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You can go to our website, www.nasa.gov/icebridge