Campbell part of PBH NewsHour feature about ‘doomsday glacier’
Geophysicist Seth Campbell was featured in the PBS NewsHour story “A risky expedition to study the ‘doomsday glacier.’” The assistant professor in the Climate Change Institute and School of Earth and Climate Sciences journeyed with a team to Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier — “the largest, most menacing source of rising sea levels all over the world [which is] melting at an alarming rate” to conduct research. The glacier, which is about the size of Florida, is retreating about a half-mile and thinning annually as much as 15 feet. The team’s remotely operated vehicle — Icefin — provided unprecedented images of the ice-covered shore of a glacier. The team also collected sediment cores and dropped in instruments to measure water salinity, temperature and turbulence and learned the ocean under Thwaites is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above freezing, which is too warm for the ice to remain stable. The show also used his GoPro videos of an ice cave, traveling on the glacier and a crevasse.