By Raymond Zhong, The New York Times
The glacier’s rippling mass sprawled from the hills and volcanoes of the Antarctic interior out into the Southern Ocean, covering an area the size of Britain. Won Sang Lee stood on its ice, his tall frame wrapped in a red polar suit, and watched his team at work. Nine scientists, engineers, and guides, some of whom had been planning this mission with him for more than half a decade. Now, they were at its final stage: drilling through the melting glacier to reach the vast ocean cavity beneath it.
They were tired and hungry. They kept themselves going with tea, crackers, and protein bars. They’d crossed the world’s wildest ocean, flown in helicopters over the wasteland of the glacier’s wounded ice, then toiled for days through lashing winds, all for a shot, a single shot, at piercing the ice at the bottom of the Earth. Periodically, they heard booms as the glacier shifted and crevassed under their feet.
The team’s scientists knew that warm currents were eating away at this glacier, the Thwaites, from below. They also knew that, sometime in the coming decades, Thwaites could give out entirely, causing so much ice to heave into the ocean over several centuries that it might raise global sea levels by more than 15 feet
Raymond Zhong spent two months aboard the research ship Araon
