“Secrets Beneath the Ice”
When a 200-meter-thick ice shelf collapsed into the ocean off the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, it raised speculation that there may someday be an ice-free Antarctica. Such a phenomenon would raise world sea levels so high that New York City would be flooded up to the level of the Statue of Liberty’s shoulders. In an effort to see if this could really happen, a scientific drilling project recovered material from floating sea ice that reveals not only intimate details of climate and fauna from the time of the dinosaurs, but also startling evidence that Antarctica has actually melted and frozen again dozens of times during the past 15 million years.
