Program Information

NASA Scientist Eric Rignot on Melting Glaciers in Antarctica

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A collaboration between Radio Ecoshock and TUC Radio archive

Program Type:

Weekly Program

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Contributor:

Maria Gilardin Contact Contributor

Date Published:

Feb. 5, 2019, 9:18 p.m.

Summary: Even mainstream media reported at the beginning of February, 2019, a sensation in sea level rise. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, confirmed that a huge cavity â two-thirds the size of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet tall â has melted into the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. This glacier is about the size of Florida, and is currently already responsible for about 4 percent of global sea level rise.

Thwaites is sometimes called a culture changer since the collapse of that one glacier would raise the oceans by two feet, threatening so many centers of civilization that are built on the coast lines of the world.

Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena is the co-author of this new study, which was published in Science Advances. Rignot is one of the first scientists who had the data to quantify the increasing discharges from the glacier system in the Amundsen Sea Embayment where the Thwaites is located.

This program is a collaboration between TUC Radio and Radio Ecoshock. Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock interviewed Eric Rignot at the end of January 2019 about the article: "Four decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance from 1979 - 2017", released on January 14, 2019.

Then Maria presents a segment of her archived 2014 interview with Rignot on "Ice Melt in Part of Antarctica âAppears Unstoppable'". Rignot was the lead author in this NASA study. She specifically asked Rignot about the research methods that he used to study the fastest melting part of West Antarctica, the Amundsen Sea Embayment where the Thwaites glacier is located; hoping that if people understood how the science works they would more likely to act upon the information.
If all the ice of Antarctica melted, it would raise global sea levels by 58 m

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Version 1: eric_rignot_ecoshock_and_tuc