He designed and installed cameras intended to operate year-round at the edges of glaciers in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana, ones that would take pictures repeatedly, throughout the year, year after year, in order to catch an ice sheet in its death swoon.
FORBES: Why 'Chasing Ice' Is Better Than 'An Inconvenient Truth'
That information, according to the NASA statement, can help predict how changes in the ice sheet will contribute to a potential global rise in sea levels.
In the Antarctic, the new findings confirm the trend of other recent studies - that the West is losing mass to the oceans whereas the ice sheet in the East is either getting thicker or remaining stable.
Without the flight measurements, "we would be blind" to changes in the ice sheet, said the mission leader, Seelye Martin of the University of Washington in Seattle.
After all, Dr. Broecker and his followers, too, may be emotionally invested in his ice-sheet theory: Confirmation bias can affect us all.
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The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, will roam the frigid landscape collecting measurements to help scientists better understand changes in the massive ice sheet.
ENGADGET: NASA's GROVER eco-rover to examine Greenland's ice sheet (video)
The conclusion, combining data and models, was that the Greenland ice sheet is relatively stable in the centre, but thinning slowly at the edges.
They estimate that there could be hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon stored in methane reservoirs under the ice sheet.
Hansen suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, pointing out that such a doubling time from a base of 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015 would lead to a cumulative 5-metre sea-level rise by 2095.
In fact, another recent study posted in Science, concluded that polar ice sheet melting has been massively overestimated.
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We fly over and land on Helheim Glacier, a major outlet for the ice sheet which has sped up dramatically in the last decade.
About 14 million years ago, a period of climate change caused the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, which averages one mile in thickness and gets up to three miles thick in some parts.
The lake's location in the heart of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet makes it one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet.
The plan to drill through the Antarctic ice-sheet to sample the hidden waters of Lake Ellsworth in December involves BAS and NOC and other bodies and is led by a professor from Bristol University.
The Elfstedentocht takes place anytime the weather is cold enough that the canals connecting 11 cities in the province form a thick and relatively unbroken sheet of ice.
Around 15, 000 years ago the Barents Sea ice sheet, which stretched from northern England to Siberia, disintegrated in perhaps less than 1, 000 years, probably because of warming seas.
Nasa is coming under fire for an alarming headline in a news release warning: " Satellites see Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Melt".
Nottingham Police said Ranson Road in St Ann's was closed on Monday night because of sheet ice.
"We do see these big variations in the temperature in the mantle across parts of Antarctica that will have a big effect on the ice sheet, " Wiens said.
In their Nature paper, the authors comment that their "findings suggest that the Antarctic Ice Sheet may be a neglected but important component of the global methane budget".
Greenland's surface layer vaulted into the news in summer 2012 when higher than normal temperatures caused surface melting across about 97 percent of the ice sheet.
ENGADGET: NASA's GROVER eco-rover to examine Greenland's ice sheet (video)
Temperatures on Tuesday expected to be in the 80s or higher were also expected to help, both with the ice onshore and the larger sheet now 200 to 300 yards out into the lake, he said.
The panels are mounted in an inverted V, allowing them to collect energy from the sun and sunlight reflected off the ice sheet.
ENGADGET: NASA's GROVER eco-rover to examine Greenland's ice sheet (video)
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