A Satellite Lets Scientists See Antarctica’s Melting Like Never Before

The information, in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, will help researchers better understand the largest driver of ice loss in Antarctica, the thinning of floating ice shelves that allows more ice to flow from the interior to the ocean, and how that will contribute to rising sea levels. Researchers have known for a long time that, while the continent is losing mass over all as the climate changes, the change is uneven. It is gaining more ice in some areas, like parts of East Antarctica, and losing it quickly in others, in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. 

Helen A. Fricker, an author of the paper, said that scientists have tried to study the link between thinning shelves and what is called grounded ice, but have been hampered because most observations were of one area or the other, and made at different times. “Now we’ve got it all on the same map, which is a really powerful thing,” said Dr. Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. 

The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, was launched in 2018 as part of NASA’s Earth Observing System. It replaced a satellite that had provided data from 2003 to 2009. ICESat-2 uses a laser altimeter, which fires pulses of photons split into six beams toward the Earth’s surface 300 miles below. Of the trillions of photons in each pulse, only a handful of reflected ones are detected back at the satellite. Extremely precise measurement of these photons’ travel times provides surface elevation data that is accurate to within a few inches. 

Read the story from The New York Times - “A Satellite Lets Scientists See Antarctica’s Melting Like Never Before.”

Youth Climate Activist Jamie Margolin on Why We’re Caught in a Climate Emergency

Between founding a youth climate coalition, organizing a national climate march, writing a book, and going to high school, 18-year-old Jamie Margolin’s schedule is pretty packed. “What am I doing to address climate change?” asks Margolin. “Girl, what am I not doing to address climate change is the real question.”

Jamie Margolin.

The engaged teenager started working on issues surrounding the climate crisis when she was a freshmen in high school in Seattle. She testified on and lobbied for legislation at the city and state levels, gave speeches, and organized and attended events.

“Then after about a little over a year of doing this, I was growingly frustrated that the work I was doing locally was not enough; people were not taking enough action,” Margolin explains. She took to social media and started an organization called Zero Hour to put together a youth climate march in Washington, D.C., and around the world, which took place on July 21, 2018.

Read the story from Rolling Stone magazine by Reed Dunlea - “Youth Climate Activist Jamie Margolin on Why We’re Caught in a Climate Emergency.”