Konnie Steffen is a scientist who has worked in the Arctic
for over three decades.
He and his team are high up on the Greenland ice sheet.
They're trying to discover what's causing it to speed up
and to find out if this acceleration is related to climate change.
From 95 onwards, the climate got warmer, the ice started to move faster,
and that increased from a few percent to 10%.
Now it's over 80% faster in extreme
summers, and it produced more water like this river.
And this water is probably the explanation why the ice here
starts to move faster.
Each summer on the ice sheet
increased meltwater is forming more
and more lakes and rivers.
And this is where the water flows.
Into deep shafts called moulins.
No one knows for
sure where the water ends up,
but Konnie believes it flows straight to the base of the ice,
lubricating it and making it flow faster.
If he's right, then there would be a direct connection
between climate change and the retreating glaciers.
But so far, no one's been able to prove that the meltwater reaches the bedrock
or if it simply flows through the ice and never reaches the bottom.
Now Konnie and his team are going to drop a camera into a Moulin
to trace the route of water takes.
It's the first time anyone's attempted this.
They're using a special waterproof camera built by NASA
designed to withstand freezing temperatures.
They've chosen the biggest moulin they could find.
There's no water running into it at surface level,
but they know there's plenty down there because they can hear it.
It's a precarious business.
They don't know how thick the overhang of ice is.
This is pretty safe, right?
I think so.
Okay.
We go down.
We hang on the rope and our colleagues
take us out again.
They've got a thousand metres of cable, which Konnie believes
is enough to lower the camera all the way to the bedrock.
Sixty metres.
This is amazing.
Seventy metres. Seventy metres.
Here we go.
Now, we’re submerged.
Now it’s alive.
Finally, ninety metres down
and they've reached melt water.
It's a good sign that
the camera's on the right track.
But if this moulin does reach the very bottom,
there’s still a long way to go.
I think it's stuck.
It's stuck on the wall.
It's hit a ledge. We have to pull it back.
The camera seems to have reached a bend in the moulin and it's not moving.
It could just be a kink in the moulin
or it could be the water never reaches the bedrock.
To find out, Konnie and his team will have
to return next summer with a new type of camera.