Why has this river of Antarctic ice stalled?

How do you drill through 600m of thick Antarctic ice? Using hot water, of course. In this episode from the 2020 series Voices from Antarctica, Alison Ballance joins researchers hoping to solve the puzzle of why a giant river of ice has stalled.

It's a slow-moving stream of Antarctic ice across West Antarctica, that feeds the world's largest floating ice shelf.

So why has the Kamb Ice Stream been stalled for the past 170 years?

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It's a puzzle researchers are trying to solve in this episode of Voices from Antarctica, produced by Alison Ballance. This is the last episode we're replaying from the award-winning 2020 series in this mini-rerun.

The ice stream goes through periods of flowing and stopping, but as climate change intensifies, it's important to figure out what this means for the ice - and us - in a warming world.

To figure out what's happening, the team are using a hot water drill to access the liquid seawater and seafloor beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, which is 600m thick.

Listen to the full episode to dive beneath the ice.

Thank you to Liz Garton for help with this episode.

Learn more:

Read Alison's story from the original episode that first aired in 2020.

Find all the Voices from Antarctica episodes here.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details