80,000 Students, One Icebreaker, and the Science Beneath Antarctica
From the Southern Ocean, scientists revealed how hidden ocean heat is reshaping the “Doomsday Glacier”—and why the answers matter far beyond Antarctica.
Classrooms at the End of the Earth
For ninety minutes, the Korean research icebreaker Araon became a floating classroom.
From the Southern Ocean, New York University glaciologist David Holland and I spoke live to more than 1,600 classrooms worldwide, reaching an estimated 80,000 middle- and high-school students during a global PocketLab event moderated by CEO Dave Bakker. The distance between Antarctica and those classrooms collapsed into a single conversation about science, risk, and the future of our coastlines.
The Stakes Beneath the Ice
At the center of the discussion was Thwaites Glacier, often called the “Doomsday Glacier.” The nickname may sound dramatic, but the science is precise. Thwaites is roughly the size of Florida, grounded below sea level, and vulnerable to warm ocean water melting it from underneath. If Thwaites and the glaciers it helps buttress were to fail, global sea level could ultimately rise by about ten feet.
Holland put it bluntly for students watching around the world: “This is effectively an unstable glacier. One that can significantly change the coastlines in the world by adding water to the ocean. And there’s warm water coming right up to it, causing a tremendous amount of melt.”
Much of the expedition’s science focused on a hidden boundary called the grounding line—the place where ice, land, and ocean meet thousands of feet below the surface. Warm, salty water circulating beneath the glacier is thinning the ice at this critical point, weakening its grip and accelerating its collapse.
Measuring the Invisible Ocean
One of the most innovative approaches this season came from Jamin Greenbaum, a geophysicist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He exploited the very fractures that make Thwaites so unstable, using a helicopter-deployed instrument he calls RIFT-OX to access ocean water beneath chaotic rifts in the ice.
Greenbaum explained the motivation clearly: “The main question that motivated this platform was: why are our predictions of melt of the ice too low? And what processes are missing?”
By lowering instruments into open water laid bare in rifts his team collected data where theory predicted intense melting—and found exactly that signal. The very features that alarm scientists, he noted, also “present an opportunity” to measure what has been invisible until now.
Another critical piece of the puzzle came from Mahren Hudson of UC Davis, who led the deployment of an autonomous underwater glider near Pine Island Glacier. The glider quietly profiled temperature and salinity for days at a time, riding buoyancy rather than propellers.
Hudson described it simply for students: “Once we deploy it, it’s pretty much on its own, out there in the ocean.”
Seeing Through a Mile of Ice
Another window into the glacier came from the ice-penetrating radar campaign led by geophysicist Chris Pierce of Montana State University. Flying long, precise survey lines roughly 1600 feet above the ice, the radar system sent pulses deep through the glacier and measured the echoes returning from internal layers and the bedrock below. Those signals reveal the glacier’s hidden architecture—its thickness, fractures, and the rugged terrain that controls how quickly the ice can slide toward the pole.
By mapping what cannot be seen from the surface, Pierce’s team is helping scientists refine the models that predict how fast Thwaites might retreat in the future. It is painstaking work, measured in miles of flight lines and terabytes of data, but it provides something Antarctica rarely offers: a clearer picture of what lies ahead.
Together, these tools help reveal how warm water moves beneath Antarctic ice—information essential to understanding future sea-level rise.
Clues Written in Sea Ice
On the surface, another crucial thread of the science unfolded in the meticulous work of Siobhán Johnson of the British Antarctic Survey, who studies the structure and history recorded in Antarctic sea ice. Using a corer attached to a cordless drill, she collects cylindrical samples from the frozen ocean and measures their thickness, density, and internal layers—tiny archives that reveal how the ice formed, melted, and refroze through the season.
Sea ice itself does not raise sea level when it melts, because it is already floating, but it plays a powerful indirect role. Changes in sea-ice cover can alter ocean circulation, expose glacier fronts to warmer water, and ultimately accelerate the loss of land ice from Antarctica’s interior. By carefully documenting the condition of sea ice today, Johnson’s work helps scientists understand how the broader polar system is shifting—and how those shifts may ripple outward to the rest of the planet.
Drilling to the Grounding Line
The livestream also highlighted the painstaking, backbreaking work of Keith Makinson of the British Antarctic Survey, a pioneer of hot-water drilling who bored through nearly 3,000 feet of ice, hoping to install long-term ocean sensors at the grounding line. While the full deployment ultimately failed when the borehole refroze, the effort yielded five snapshots of temperature and salinity from a place never measured before.
A Challenge to the Next Generation
One of the most memorable moments of the session came when David Holland turned the tables on the students and issued a challenge. After walking through the extraordinary difficulty of drilling through thousands of feet of moving, fractured ice with hot water, he posed a deceptively simple question: Is there a better way to drill a hole in a glacier? Could robotics, automation, new materials, or entirely different approaches do the job more safely, more efficiently, or more reliably than the methods scientists rely on today?
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Holland made it clear he genuinely wanted ideas from the next generation of engineers and scientists—students unburdened by the assumption that “this is how it’s always been done.” To underscore that point, he announced a contest: students who submit thoughtful, creative solutions will be considered for a winner’s prize—a signed photograph of the entire international science team standing together on the helicopter deck of the Araon, taken at the edge of the world in front of the glacier face.
It was a small gesture with a big message. The future of Antarctic science—and our ability to understand and respond to rapid ice loss—may depend on ideas that haven’t been imagined yet, by people who are still sitting in classrooms today.
The full PocketLab global classroom event is linked here.
Hi Miles. Thank you for this summary of your reports on the Thwaites Glacier. I was heartened to read that 80,000 students were involved in following your adventure. Your Araon Team is inspiring ....and very, very smart at what they do. I hope that many students respond to David Holland's challenge. It is intriguing and encourages some outside thinking. Huge appreciation for the excitement and enthusiasm that you shared in your reports. Even when the team was unable to achieve their big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG), there was still optimism in what had been completed. Safe return home.
Hopefully a few of these kids will be inspired to add science in their lives and careers.