Flying Above Antarctica With NASA's Operation IceBridge

Getty Images photographer Mario Tama recently spent several days accompanying NASA scientists making 12-hour research flights over West Antarctica. NASA's Operation IceBridge has been studying how polar ice has evolved over the past eight years. The data and observations are being used to determine the state of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—and whether it is in an irreversible state of decline, accelerating the global rise of sea levels. Tama reports that “NASA and University of California, Irvine researchers have recently detected the speediest ongoing Western Antarctica glacial retreat rates ever observed.”

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