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Big Picture Science

Water is essen­tial for life – that we know. But the hon­ey­comb lat­tice that forms when you chill it to zero degrees Cel­sius is also inex­orably inter­twined with life.

Ice is more than a repos­i­to­ry for water that would oth­er­wise raise sea lev­els. It’s part of Earth’s cool­ing sys­tem … a bar­ri­er pre­vent­ing decay­ing organ­ic mat­ter from releas­ing methane gas … and a vault entomb­ing ancient bac­te­ria and oth­er microbes. 

From the Arc­tic to the Antarc­tic, glob­al ice is dis­ap­pear­ing. Find out what’s at stake as atmos­pher­ic CO2 threat­ens frozen H2O.

Guests:

  • Peter Wad­hams — Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Ocean Physics at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty in the U.K. and the author of A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic

  • Eric Rig­not — Earth sys­tems sci­en­tist, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, senior research sci­en­tist, NASA Jet Propul­sion Laboratory

  • Åsmund Asdal — Biol­o­gist, Nordic Genet­ic Resource Cen­ter, coor­di­na­tor for oper­a­tions and man­age­ment of the Sval­bard Glob­al Seed Vault, Sval­bard, Norway

  • John Priscu - Polar biol­o­gist, Mon­tana State University