Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart radio and mental floss. I'm seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles above the Arctic Circle at the very place
Speaker 1: where explorers had launched their quests for the North Pole
Speaker 1: more than a century ago. Before me lies the huge
Speaker 1: Greenland Ice Sheet, the world's second biggest expanse of ice
Speaker 1: after Antarctica. It's covered in a layer of spotless snow
Speaker 1: and rises from where I stand up to the horizon,
Speaker 1: where it meets a bank of clouds. Behind me, the
Speaker 1: bare terrain slopes for several miles to the sea, where
Speaker 1: I spot teeny little icebergs dotting the waters. The only
Speaker 1: signs of civilization are a couple of shacks and a
Speaker 1: gravel road that leads to the U. S. Military's Tully
Speaker 1: Air Base, hidden behind some hills, about eighteen miles away
Speaker 1: from my vantage point. It's easy to imagine that not
Speaker 1: much has changed since the explorer's time, but climate records
Speaker 1: show that it has changed dramatically. The Greenland Ice Sheet
Speaker 1: is losing two hundred and eighty gigatons of ice a
Speaker 1: year due to the warming climate. A metric gigaton is
Speaker 1: one billion tons, two hundred and eighty billion tons is
Speaker 1: equivalent to more than five million Titanics. It's hard to
Speaker 1: see an impact so massive, but that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1: I've come with two scientists from the Geological Survey of
Speaker 1: Denmark and Greenland, or gay Use, who have invited me
Speaker 1: to see how they gather the data that reveals the
Speaker 1: future of the ice sheet, and by extension, US. Glaciologist
Speaker 1: William Colgan and electrical engineer Christopher Shields are harnessing themselves
Speaker 1: to a pair of sleds filled with sensors, tools, and
Speaker 1: boxes of lead batteries that each way more than I do.
Speaker 1: Despite the six inches of fluffy snow, we still wear
Speaker 1: crampons over our waterproof boots. Our destination is an ice
Speaker 1: sheet monitoring station fift undred meters away, all uphill. I
Speaker 1: have the easiest job, just bringing up the rear while
Speaker 1: the guys man hall the sledges in true nineteenth century
Speaker 1: explorer fashion. But I still find myself huffing and puffing
Speaker 1: in the cold, dry air and terrain as slippery as
Speaker 1: a sand dune. More than one years ago, explorers like
Speaker 1: fritch Off Nonsen and Robert Perry traversed this Greenland ice
Speaker 1: their expeditions tested the boundaries of geography and human endurance.
Speaker 1: As I flounder of the icy slope and Chris's sled tracks,
Speaker 1: I begin to understand the extreme physical challenge is they
Speaker 1: faced in their quests. Our mission may be less strenuous,
Speaker 1: but perhaps more important. Leam and Chris will replace environmental
Speaker 1: sensors on the monitoring station and download two years worth
Speaker 1: of ice sheet data. This information is key towards understanding
Speaker 1: how the ice sheets doing now and what kind of
Speaker 1: catastrophes might occur in the future if we do nothing
Speaker 1: to halt climate change. From Mental Floss and I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Quest for the North Pole. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Cat Long, Science editor at Mental Floss and
Speaker 1: this is our final bonus episode live from Greenland. Just
Speaker 1: getting to this remote part of Greenland was an adventure.
Speaker 1: After flying from New York to Copenhagen by way of
Speaker 1: Raikiavik and racking up three negative COVID tests, I met
Speaker 1: up with Liam and Chris the following morning at the airport.
Speaker 1: We boarded an Air Greenland flight to Kangarloo, Sack, Greenland's
Speaker 1: major international hub. Then we transferred to a much smaller
Speaker 1: plane for our flight to Tuli air Base, about nine
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole. The base
Speaker 1: would be our research headquarters for the week. From the plane,
Speaker 1: the barren terrain of western Greenland spread out below my window.
Speaker 1: In the southwest of the country, Countless lakes speckled the
Speaker 1: glacier scoured rock. A bit farther north, we flew past
Speaker 1: the Jakobshavn Icefield, one of the world's fastest moving aschers,
Speaker 1: which appeared to litter the sea with icebergs. The terrain
Speaker 1: shifted from weathered rock to snow covered hills, and then
Speaker 1: finally the Greenland ice sheet, which covered the land except
Speaker 1: for a narrow level strip at the coastline. That's where
Speaker 1: we were headed. Canude Rasmussen, a Danish Greenlandic explorer honored
Speaker 1: with a bronze bust at the Kangarloosoak Airport, connected this
Speaker 1: area to the ancient legends of Tuli when he set
Speaker 1: up a trading post here in long before that, this
Speaker 1: area served as a crossroads of people and ideas. Waves
Speaker 1: of Arctic settlers migrated the short distance across Baffin Bay
Speaker 1: from present day Canada to Greenland, between b C and
Speaker 1: twelve hundred C. They found a treeless land rich in
Speaker 1: food sources. Thanks to the confluence of Arctic, Atlantic and
Speaker 1: glacial waters. The seas support a vast web of marine life,
Speaker 1: from the tiniest fish to the fattest walruses, as well
Speaker 1: as Arctic foxes and musk ox, which were common sights
Speaker 1: during my visit. The plentiful game supported a village in
Speaker 1: the shadow of a tall, flat topped mesa, both of
Speaker 1: which were named Umanac, which means heart shaped. In earlier
Speaker 1: episodes of The Quest for the North Pole, we mentioned
Speaker 1: how John Ross and William Edward Perry were the first
Speaker 1: European explorers to meet the in white here in eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: In the century following that meeting, more explorers and whalers
Speaker 1: dropped their anchors at the foot of Umanac. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, HMS north Star was on a mission to
Speaker 1: resupply ships searching for the missing Franklin expedition. The North
Speaker 1: Star got iced in and its crew was forced to
Speaker 1: spend the winter just offshore, which gave its captain, James Saunders,
Speaker 1: plenty of time to bestow British names on all of
Speaker 1: the surroundings. On a map today, you'll find north Star Bay,
Speaker 1: Saunders Island, and Mount Dundas, the British name for the MESA.
Speaker 1: Robert Peery made the area his headquarters for his attempts
Speaker 1: to reach the North Pole, though his main camp at
Speaker 1: Eta was about a hundred forty miles north of Umanac, Canud.
Speaker 1: Rasmussen lived in Umanac while operating the training post and
Speaker 1: conducting his seven TOOLI expeditions across the Polar Wilderness between
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve and nineteen thirty three. His colleague Peter Ferkin's
Speaker 1: house still stands among the small cluster of brightly painted
Speaker 1: shacks on the edge of North Star Bay. When I
Speaker 1: visited the village, now usually called Dundas, it was eerily quiet.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was abandoned. The U. S military had
Speaker 1: removed the twenty seven families who lived here in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties to a new settlement sixty miles north because
Speaker 1: the Americans were building a top secret air base on
Speaker 1: the other side of the bay. It was called Operation
Speaker 1: Blue Jay. We'll be right back. At the height of
Speaker 1: the Cold War, the US invested heavily in building air
Speaker 1: bases to create a network of defenses against the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Because the Soviets could theoretically launch ballistic missiles the short
Speaker 1: distance over the North Pole to the US, American military
Speaker 1: leaders realized they needed an Arctic based system to detect
Speaker 1: those missiles. After securing agreements with NATO and Denmark, which
Speaker 1: administered Greenland, the U. S Army launched Operation Blue Jay
Speaker 1: to construct totally base. In nine More than seven thousand
Speaker 1: construction workers and engineers departed from Norfolk, Virginia to build
Speaker 1: the base, but the mission was so secret they weren't
Speaker 1: even told where they were going. The Tully airstrip opened
Speaker 1: in September, followed by sleddog patrol units and a lot more.
Speaker 1: The specially designed construction materials proved so sturdy that most
Speaker 1: of the barracks and offices dubbed flattops at Tulli today
Speaker 1: are the original nineteen fifties facilities. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: the military went public with Operation Blue Jay. A few
Speaker 1: years later, the US built camps nearby to experiment with
Speaker 1: cold weather defense and nuclear technology. One was Camp Tuto,
Speaker 1: an acronym for Tulli Takeoff. It served as a staging
Speaker 1: area for transporting equipment to Camp century, a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: base dug inside the ice sheets. Inland there were red
Speaker 1: plywood buildings with snow all around them. So someone would
Speaker 1: be like a mess hall. Another would be the latrine,
Speaker 1: another would would be the library, and the library was great.
Speaker 1: That's Jim Finnel. He was trained as a weather observer
Speaker 1: in the Army and served at Camp two to into
Speaker 1: And what were your duties during your weather observations. There
Speaker 1: was a standard sheet that you had to fill out
Speaker 1: every hour, which was of course the temperature, wind speed, direction,
Speaker 1: and then you go out and estimate that cloud heights
Speaker 1: and the types and the and the visibility. All these
Speaker 1: things were done, of course without any radar or any
Speaker 1: thing is that people used today. Uh. The only mechanical
Speaker 1: thing that we had where the wind speed and direction
Speaker 1: a little looked like a little airplane that was spent
Speaker 1: around and that would it out on a printer in
Speaker 1: a in a weather station. I remember the one thing
Speaker 1: that most stood out was I recorded a low temperature
Speaker 1: for and that was minus sixty three of the Camp century.
Speaker 1: That's minus sixty three degrees fahrenheit. By recording the weather
Speaker 1: conditions at Camp Tuto and century, Jim became part of
Speaker 1: the earliest organized climate research in this area of the Arctic.
Speaker 1: To me, it was more of an adventure. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to go to Germany, I didn't get to travel
Speaker 1: in Europe, but I at least got a fight break
Speaker 1: from staying in the US all the time. These camps
Speaker 1: were abandoned roughly a decade after they were built. The
Speaker 1: Army dismantled Camp Tuto's red buildings, but left the long
Speaker 1: gravel access road from too Lea Air Base out to
Speaker 1: the edge of the ice sheet. And that's where I
Speaker 1: found myself in September, bouncing along in the back seat
Speaker 1: of a red pickup with Liam at the seal, Chris
Speaker 1: on the passenger side, and sea shanties blasting from the stereo.
Speaker 1: The terrain, as far as I could see, had been
Speaker 1: bulldozed to create material for the road. The light layer
Speaker 1: of snow gave the plantless brown land a sugar dusted look.
Speaker 1: As we neared the end of the road, the edge
Speaker 1: of the ice sheet came into view. The smoothly sloping
Speaker 1: mountain of ice broke off in a slushy lake on
Speaker 1: one side of the road. On the other, I could
Speaker 1: see that the ice had receded and left behind a
Speaker 1: field of rounded boulders. The remains of the road leading
Speaker 1: to Camp Century rose about a hundred fifty feet above
Speaker 1: the surface of the ice sheet. Though it was no
Speaker 1: longer safe to travel on, we used the old ramp
Speaker 1: as a landmark on our slippery truck up to the
Speaker 1: ice monitoring site. The station is not a building or
Speaker 1: large structure. It's a tall steel tripod and T shaped
Speaker 1: metal bar with sensors to measure wind speed and direction,
Speaker 1: air temperature, solar radiation, and snow height to other sensor
Speaker 1: arrays were installed within the ice to measure temperature and
Speaker 1: pressure at different depths. They're all connected to a box,
Speaker 1: which Chris described as a station's brain, that transmits the
Speaker 1: data by satellite to the Internet. Anyone can view the
Speaker 1: status of the Greenland ice sheet in real time. This
Speaker 1: site is paired with another identical site higher up on
Speaker 1: the ice sheet. The eight pairs of stations scattered around
Speaker 1: Greenland make up gay Uses Program for monitoring the Greenland
Speaker 1: Ice Sheet a k A pro mice. As Liam explains,
Speaker 1: these stations one lower and one higher. Their goal is
Speaker 1: to measure ice and climate parameters, and so that means
Speaker 1: things that we need to know about how the ice
Speaker 1: sheet is responding to climate change, and so we have
Speaker 1: to measure all the things you might need in a
Speaker 1: climate model, for example, we want to actually measure them,
Speaker 1: as we say, in situ or out in the real world,
Speaker 1: so we can compare what our climate models sees or
Speaker 1: thinks is happening versus what is actually happening. No one
Speaker 1: had visited this station since May. Thanks coronavirus, Liam and
Speaker 1: Chris had to lay the whole station on its side
Speaker 1: to replace the sensors, and that required digging the tripod
Speaker 1: out of a year and a half of accumulated ice.
Speaker 1: Then each sensor had to be unscrewed from its amount
Speaker 1: and a new one screwed in. Knots of frozen wires
Speaker 1: had to be untangled. Easier said than done when it's
Speaker 1: about seventeen degrees and snowing sideways like it was during
Speaker 1: our visit. This is why you get like frostbite on
Speaker 1: your fingers because you're you're doing this really fine detailed work,
Speaker 1: like splicing a wire in and then trying to like
Speaker 1: close the cap back on and like doing these little screws,
Speaker 1: and you know, something like that it'll take forty five
Speaker 1: minutes to troubleshoot and solve. The pain is worth it.
Speaker 1: Two Glaciologists like Liam because it leads to a better
Speaker 1: understanding of the ice sheets mass balance, the measure of
Speaker 1: how much mass the ice sheet is accumulating through snowfall
Speaker 1: and how much it's losing through melting or icebergs breaking off.
Speaker 1: The idea is if we can get a handle on
Speaker 1: the mass balance, the inputs and the outputs through time
Speaker 1: through space, then we can understand how the ice sheet
Speaker 1: health is changing through time and space today or at
Speaker 1: least in recent years. When we look into the climate
Speaker 1: projections that the UN talks about, we can look at
Speaker 1: the different climate pathways and try to say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is what the ice sheet health is going to be
Speaker 1: under each pathway based on our knowledge of these processes today,
Speaker 1: and so what is the health today that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: Um The ice sheet is in a state of persistent
Speaker 1: decline or poor health today. It has a negative mass balance,
Speaker 1: which means the output that is the melt water runoff
Speaker 1: and the iceberg having the outputs are much greater than
Speaker 1: the inputs. And as the climate warms, you know that
Speaker 1: has a direct effect on how much the ice sheet melts.
Speaker 1: Remember those five million titanic's worth of ice lost each
Speaker 1: year that I mentioned at the beginning of our story.
Speaker 1: That's equivalent to about eight or nine thousand metric tons
Speaker 1: per second, which is also an almost inconceivably large number,
Speaker 1: But maybe it also helps to contextualize it when you
Speaker 1: just think of thousands of tons of mass loss per second,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's the annual average. That's day in,
Speaker 1: day out, around the clock, around the year. All of
Speaker 1: this is actually changing gravity. Essentially, as Greenland loses ice,
Speaker 1: it becomes lighter, which means it can exert less gravitational pull.
Speaker 1: Because of that, it can't hold ocean waters as close
Speaker 1: to it as four The waters are released to slosh
Speaker 1: around the earth and collect elsewhere, meaning that places thousands
Speaker 1: of kilometers away are more affected by melting ice than
Speaker 1: places nearer to the poles. Another mind boggling effect of
Speaker 1: Greenland's loss of ice is called post glacial rebound. For millennia,
Speaker 1: Greenland's land has been pressed down under the weight of
Speaker 1: the ice sheet, but as the ice sheet melts, it
Speaker 1: gets lighter and the land below it springs upward at
Speaker 1: a monitoring station near the fast moving Yakopshoven Glacier. The
Speaker 1: bedrock is now ten ft higher above sea level than
Speaker 1: in nine That's ten times the average. Other Greenland glaciers
Speaker 1: have experienced one foot of rebound in that time period,
Speaker 1: which is still a lot. Knowing how different Greenland looked
Speaker 1: back then, I couldn't help but reflect on the many
Speaker 1: ways the explorers experiences differed from mine. The glaciers and
Speaker 1: icebergs and snowpack they witnessed no longer exist. The Greenland
Speaker 1: ice sheet near the Tudor Road terminates in a lake
Speaker 1: instead of land. Just the fact that I, a regular
Speaker 1: New Yorker, could visit this part of the world, was
Speaker 1: an indication that times had changed. Instead of sea boots
Speaker 1: and woolen mittens, we wore layers of down and fleece.
Speaker 1: Instead of hauling thousand pounds sledges over the ice, we
Speaker 1: carried only the gear we needed for each day's work.
Speaker 1: And instead of spending months or years in the Arctic wilderness,
Speaker 1: we went back to the air Bass hotel each night.
Speaker 1: We even had a beer at the top of the
Speaker 1: World Club the local bar. Our. Days were hard, they
Speaker 1: were tough, they were long, they were cold and windy,
Speaker 1: But if you back up almost a hundred years, you know,
Speaker 1: now we have you know, cortex and like goggles and stuff.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would be like to be
Speaker 1: sledging across the ice sheet in anything colder than full
Speaker 1: polar summer. You know, must have just been super tough.
Speaker 1: I was encased in multiple layers at all times on
Speaker 1: of my entire body for this entire week. So for
Speaker 1: all the obsessing and reading and historical analysis I've done
Speaker 1: of the Arctic, this was my first time actually going
Speaker 1: there and I survived and that's okay. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even have to eat any pemmican, So no, I mean,
Speaker 1: by Arctic standards, this is the first week that the
Speaker 1: snow has started to collect on the ice sheet, so
Speaker 1: it was still Arctic summer here last week, and now
Speaker 1: the snow is starting to collect, and we're in single
Speaker 1: digits negative temperatures, so it's cool. I can't help but
Speaker 1: notice that throughout the whole week in Greenland, you never
Speaker 1: once wore a scarf. Can you discuss how this is possible? So, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't pack a scarf. It was colder than I expected,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't It wasn't that bad to me. This
Speaker 1: trip really capped off the story of the Quest for
Speaker 1: the North Pole. I was able to see the dramatic
Speaker 1: effects of climate change on a place that explorers believed
Speaker 1: would be frozen forever. It drove home the idea that
Speaker 1: what happens in the Arctic does not stay there. Its
Speaker 1: future is our future too. The Quest for the North
Speaker 1: Pole is hosted by me cat Long. This episode was
Speaker 1: researched and written by Me, with fact checking by Austin
Speaker 1: to Simson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by Dylan Fagan. Thank you to Jim Fennel, Liam Colgan,
Speaker 1: and Chris Shields for transcripts, a glossary, and to learn
Speaker 1: more about this episode, visit Mental Flaws dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
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