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arctic sea ice maximum 2009

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the 2009 arctic sea ice maximum extent

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has just been reached this is a

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measurement of the amount of sea ice

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covering the arctic at the end of each

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winter for the past several decades the

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maximum arctic ice extent has been

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declining scientists monitor this vital

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element of our planet from space with a

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variety of different spacecraft that

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make global measurements in remote and

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treacherous locations not easily

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accessible from the ground for more log

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hi i'm bob ben chadler i'm a scientist

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at nasa's goddard space flight center i

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study ice i'm a glaciologist and i've

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been doing it here for almost 30 years

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west antarctica

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pine island glacier drains into an ice

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shelf and the satellite data tell us

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that's the spot that's the spot where

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the ice is thinning very rapidly it's

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doubled at speed in less than 10 years

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right now it's moving a foot an hour

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this ice is racing into the ocean

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faster and faster and we need to know

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why

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two months ago i was able to stand on

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the ice shelf

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there was debate in our community you

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can't even land on the ice shelf it's

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too heavily crevassed but again with

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satellite imagery we were able to

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identify a spot that we thought we could

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land and we did

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we're in the sweet spot on the ice shop

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about the only place you can land

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that was the good news the bad news was

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the surface was so hard that the

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airplane

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again and again and again with with

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heavy cargo lows so we couldn't put our

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because we couldn't land on the ice

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shelf what we were going to do we still

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had some instruments we set these

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instruments up as close to the ice shelf

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as we could an automatic weather station

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fairly complex it took us about three

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days to set it all up but it's there

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it's working it's going to operate we

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hope all the way through the the dark

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cold antarctic winter helping us to

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prepare for the next time we're going to

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go to the ice shelf

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we also set up some two gps receivers

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that tell us how fast the ice is going

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and if there are any changes that also

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bones its data back by satellite phone

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so we can receive these data right now

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in as we prepare for the next field

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we'll go back we'll go back with