Antarctic Ice Increase

Guest: Jay Zwally, PhD, Glaciologist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center  As global temperatures rise, ice caps shrink and seas rise. Right? Well, last year, scientists from NASA released a report said that the ice in the Antarctic is actually increasing, which contradicts several other reports in recent years that claim that the Antarctic has been losing ice. The findings are so controversial that even within NASA, scientists don’t agree about them. Eric Rignot, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been quoted as saying that “\[t]here is no quality data to support the claims made by the authors of \[ice] growth in East Antarctica.” It’s complicated, measuring the ice on this frozen continent, but lead author Jay Zwally defends the science behind his findings.