Is Antarctica a time bomb for Trump?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09As nations jostle for influence on Antarctica, its ice is melting at a pace that could reshape the world.

0:19Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, now suddenly one of the hottest geopolitical battlegrounds. Just as the United States withdraws, other nations, including Russia and China, are expanding research stations, carving out influence and quietly positioning themselves for whatever resources might lie beneath. And all this happening while the ice under everyone's feet is disappearing at a pace the scientists simply didn't expect. So why the sudden interest in the most remote part of the Earth? And just how far could the effects of melting ice be felt? Our science editor, Tom Clark, has just returned from the not-so-frozen South.

0:57Tom, always a pleasure to have you back on The Daily. Was London not cold enough for you? Why on earth have you gone to the Antarctic?

1:03Tom Clarke:Because it was warmer. This is what I didn't realise. We went down there with the British Antarctic Survey and we went up to Cambridge where they're based and they kitted us out with all this serious gear that they loaned us for our trip. And we arrived. It's at the height of the Antarctic summer. Now it can get really cold. The weather's very changeable, high wind, stuff like that. It was pretty good while we were there. There were sunny skies on some days. it was about minus one, zero. And my wife was texting me from London saying, it's minus five. And I was thinking, it's great. And also I didn't realise about Antarctica yet.

1:33Tom Clarke:It's a desert. It's really dry. So even though it's cold, you don't feel as cold. You do want a drizzly, freezing morning in London. Describe the place to me, because of course, we have the Arctic, we have the Antarctic, and we tend to think of them as synonymous, but there are some pretty big differences. There are some fundamental differences. So the Arctic is a frozen ocean, which means from an environment point of view, climate change point of view, we don't have to worry about it so much in terms of raising our sea levels because all that ice is already floating on the sea and it's not going to raise them when it melts for the exception of Greenland, obviously topical, but for different reasons.

2:08Tom Clarke:But that also means you can navigate through it as it warms, geopolitics, that's what they're interested in. The Antarctic though, the opposite, is a massive rocky continent. When I say massive, this thing that kind of blew me well, I've never really got my head around the scales here. It's twice the size of Australia. It is larger than the contiguous states of the United States. It's a massive continent. And it's also rock, on top of which sits four kilometres of ice at the thickest point, around one to two kilometres everywhere else. And that represents 70 % of all the fresh water on the planet, which is why when people say, you know, if it's melting, we should be concerned about civil rights.

2:44Tom Clarke:If it was to all melt, and we're talking that would take probably thousands of years, even with current warming, all of it to melt, it could raise levels by more than 10 metres. Watching your report, I see you in the boat, surrounded by these scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, and just looking out across the water, it is clear that something is happening to the ice. Yes, and that's definitely the story we hear, just from anecdotal evidence from the scientists. There's less sea ice there in the winter. It goes quicker in the summer. There's less snowfall where they are. The other tricky thing about the Antarctic, though, is it's very big and that parts of it have actually been colder.

3:22Tom Clarke:in recent years. How is that working? Global average temperatures are going up and it's super complicated. It's a big continent, but it's also surrounded by this revolving ocean current which can do freaky things. But on average, across the continent, it has been warming. The only place warming faster than the Antarctic on the planet is the Arctic. It is one of the fastest warming places on the planet on average. And in West Antarctica, where we were, it is warming extremely quickly and that is having definite impacts. What are those impacts? Well, that's what they're trying to figure out. And I think one thing that's important to get in here quite early on, the Arctic is quite close to where most of the 8 billion people now on the planet live and historically as well.

4:01Tom Clarke:So we know a lot more about it. It's much more well studied. Antarctica, we've only really been doing what I'd say, modern science there since the 1950s. And in terms of satellites and being able to monitor it since the 70s, we know so little about it. That was the story that kept coming from these scientists. We really don't understand very much. And when you're trying to figure out how it's changing, if you don't know much about what it looked like before, that's a really hard puzzle to solve. Because historically, Antarctica has played a key role in the regulation of the planet's temperature.

4:31Tom Clarke:That's what's so important. And I think that's the picture that's coming out here. It's not just about the ice melting, coming off the continent and causing sea level rise, which we know it is. And it will continue to do so in that process with Accelerate. It does a lot more than that. And I think the thing that really stands out to me is the role which it plays as a bit like the air conditioning system for the planet. Antarctica is a massive block of very, very cold ice. It's also at the pole, so it's naturally colder because of where the sun is. But because of the way it's set up, there's an ocean that goes all the way around it that's ice free.

5:04Tom Clarke:And through that ocean revolves something called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It's the largest ocean current in the world in terms of that water that it carries. but it's also the only one that connects every other ocean on the planet. And as a result, the flow of water around the Earth, everything comes via Antarctica at one point or the other. It can take thousands of years for currents to get down there. There's deep bottom water flows down to Antarctica. But effectively, it cools those flows and it sends cooler water back up towards the tropics and back down. It's like a circulatory system and it has a role in cooling atmosphere, Which presumably it has been fulfilling, what, since the Industrial Revolution then?

5:47Tom Clarke:Absolutely. And calculations, roughly that 75 % of all the warmth that we've generated since the Industrial Revolution has been taken up by that Antarctic solar polar current. They've gone into those southern oceans and that's where that heat is being stored. And also more than 40 % of all the carbon emissions because the sea absorbs all that carbon. So it's a really important thing where we worry about what climate might do to Antarctica. So often we talk about sea level rise, and that is happening and will happen over centuries. But I think the much more immediate and relevant concern is the role of this current, because there's already evidence all that fresh water pouring off the continent through melting might interfere with its flow.

6:27Tom Clarke:If that starts going haywire, we really do need to understand it pretty quickly, because it could have significant impacts on how quickly the planet warms. Just explain exactly how Antarctic ice, all this current flowing around Antarctica, has sucked up the heat from the planet. It's oceanography. And whenever I speak to oceanographers, I suddenly realise those simplifications, you know, they fall apart pretty quickly. So if any oceanographers are listening, I apologise for this crude description, but I think I'm getting this right. So what you have is warmer water flowing down from higher latitudes to the poles, right?

7:02Tom Clarke:And warmer water floats on top of colder water in the ocean. And as it cools, as it gets down towards the Antarctic, that cools it and it sinks. The reason they're concerned is, We're talking about melting. Weird bit of like ocean physics here. You know, warm water usually floats on top of colder water, but fresh water floats on top of salty water because it's less dense, right? Because it's not got salt in it. So you've got this weird situation in Antarctica where you've got all this melt water coming off. That's fresh water, remember. That pours off, sits on top of the ocean water messing up that process, that flow, that current system.

7:39Tom Clarke:And that's what they're thinking they're seeing in these signals in the ocean currents that could be interfering with the dynamics of that massive system that I think any oceanography feds say they're really only starting to get their heads around. They know quite a bit about it, but there's a lot more to learn. It's a very, very big continent, lots going on. Explain the concept of the underwater tsunami. When you think about what I was just describing, you've got layers, you've got cold, fresh water at the top, you've then got warmer ocean water below. And if you have, and remember it's warm water that's coming down to Antarctica before it cools, we're interested in that warm water.

8:10Tom Clarke:So if you have an underwater wave, some kind of tsunami-sized thing, the reason they're using them with tsunami, we're thinking tens, maybe 100 or more metres high, these waves. If those waves are propagating through layers, it's a bit like a wave between water and air. It can break and mix those layers up, okay? Now, if you sit at the end of a glacier, and we did, because I wanted to get great pictures of a big block of ice coming off a glacier, it doesn't happen very often. It's sort of happening on a kind of daily, maybe a couple of days, a big chunk or break off in the summer when it's mostly the most.

8:41How big potentially are we talking?

8:42Tom Clarke:In almost, I mean, it depends on the size of the glacier. The glacier we were filming was 40 metres high above the sea, but below the sea, 150, 200 metres of ice going down before it stops where it's floating on the sea below. When a piece breaks off that, you know, it's the size of a massive, you know, London tower block. Of course, that's going to create quite a splash. So it's not happening very frequently, but remember, Antarctica is enormous and it's fringed with glaciers, all of which are carving. add all that together, these waves could be having an important role in mixing all that together.

9:14Tom Clarke:And you might think that's a bit niche. Like, does it really matter? What the science is saying, it really does, because the only way we can really figure out what will happen in the future is to make computer models of these things. And right now, the models are like, we know we've got this current and that temperature and we've got tides and they've got those in their model. If there's something else that's speeding it up, it could be a very small number, but put it into your model, it can make a very big difference. I mean, how bad could it get if this ice melt is having the effect that some scientists assume?

9:42Tom Clarke:The place you have to look, if you want to know how bad it could get, is something you might have heard of, the Doomsday Glacier. The scientists don't really like that name. It's called the Thwaites Glacier. It's about a thousand miles south of where we were, also in the west of Antarctica. It's about the size of Florida. OK, it's a big old glacier. And it is like an ice sheet. The flow of ice off the continent has fanned out across the ocean, and it's a big ice sheet there. And it's breaking up really quite quickly. It's carving away, breaking up into icebergs, and it's accelerating. We've noticed for years it is accelerating quite fast.

10:18Tom Clarke:It's held back by a grounding line, sort of locked on the continent. And the big worry is when it gets past that grounding line, will it collapse? Effectively, like, you know, smashing a car windscreen, little icebergs, bosh, the whole thing goes. It's one of these tipping points that we're concerned about. Scientists, and they vary in their views on this, but some people think it could be imminent, as in in the next few years. Others are like probably another couple of decades, but it'll go. And the reason Thwaites, though, is the worry. And the reason when you ask how bad could it get, it's like a cork in a bottle.

10:50Tom Clarke:It sort of holds back something called the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is huge. It's a very large amount of ice, enough to raise sea levels by between three and five metres. And for coastal communities, that could be the end of those coastal communities. Cities like Mumbai, most of Bangladesh, it could have a big, big impact. If Thwaites goes, which we think it will, the West Antarctic ice sheet will inevitably sort of start to melt. But it will be probably 23rd century, so 200 years from now, we'll start to see the real melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. I mean, have we just focused far too much on the Arctic when it comes to global warming then?

11:24Tom Clarke:There's justified reason to look at the Arctic. Even though it's not going to contribute to sea level rise in the same way, Greenland has a lot of ice and it's a rock as well. So there's a lot of sea level rise potential in Greenland. So there's definitely an interest from a global change point of view there. And also the Arctic is very important, reflecting heat. Yeah, it is important. But because we know far less about Antarctica and because it plays probably the largest role in dictating how fast, because of the ocean current thing we were talking about in terms of its store of heat in the oceans, it probably plays the largest role other than carbon dioxide emissions in dictating how warm the planet's going to get and how quickly.

12:00Tom Clarke:So from that point of view, we really do need to understand it better and try and pick up any signals it's giving us as early as possible. On top of all of this, what has been fascinating to me is the recognition that there are big games of geopolitics going on when it comes to the Antarctic. I mean, Donald Trump's administration isn't investing, though. It's actually pulling out. Yeah, this is the fascinating thing. So you've got Europe and America squaring off over Greenland, Donald Trump making clear plays for territory there. But what I think is fascinating is when we've been down in Antarctica, it appears the opposite is happening.

12:31Tom Clarke:I don't think it's intentional, but that's what's happening. So Donald Trump has made it very clear he doesn't want to support climate change, science, or any research to do with this. So what he's done is he's axed the budget for the National Science Foundation when it comes to Antarctic research. That's the body that funds science in Antarctica. And as a result, America can't deploy as many scientists as it used to. It's also removed the lease for America's only Antarctic icebreaker, called Nathaniel B. Palmer. It's gone back to its base in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving American scientists with no icebreaker this year.

13:04Tom Clarke:And I wonder what Donald Trump would think of this. When we're down there, we found out that Ukraine, which has an Antarctic base, it has an Antarctic research ship, interestingly, it bought off the UK when we got a new one. The Americans had to borrow it this year just to continue their operations. Whereas America used to be a big leader down there. It had all the assets. Other people used to borrow their kit to do stuff. Now it's the other way round. I was on the UK's new icebreaker ship, the David Attenborough, which is owned by the British Antarctic Survey. It's an amazing thing. And something I've never seen before, Americans coming on board going, wow, wish we had a boat this good.

13:39Tom Clarke:Everywhere else in the world, it's the other way round. Leaving aside Donald Trump's view of climate change, I mean, if he doesn't have a scientific presence in Antarctica, or at least to the same extent, I suspect that there are a couple of other nations, Russia, China, who will. And I think that's why this is one to watch, because by putting its focus on the Arctic, cutting funding for Antarctic science, under something called the Antarctic Treaty, the only way a country currently can maintain any kind of influence or presence in Antarctica is through scientific research. That's what the treaty says.

14:08Tom Clarke:You can't use it for commercial, military purposes. And that's what we do. I mean, I think there's no secret made of the fact that the British Antarctic Survey, yes, its primary function is science, but it's also there to establish UK presence. We have a territorial claim called Wedge of Antarctica. Initially, we've got a research base, Rothera, where we were, the West Antarctic, the one further to the east called Halley 6. They define the territorial boundaries of Britain's claim. That's the game that's played down there. And what we've seen recently is Russia has been increasing its interest.

14:40Tom Clarke:Just last year it announced it's made a big oil discovery. China is also, although it doesn't have a formal claim to Antarctica, and it's never made one, it doesn't have to, it's meant to be preserved for everybody. But China has been massively increasing its presence there. We saw China's new ice-breaking ship. In fact, while we were in Antarctica, China announced it was opening yet another research base, putting more scientists in Antarctica. They aren't, as far as we know, doing anything remotely nefarious, but China are trying to increase their influence through this process of science. Yet we see America stepping back.

15:13Tom Clarke:That shifts the geopolitics. I think that's significant. And given China is interested in feeding its population, they make a lot of noise about the fishing and things like that. And one thing that was put to me, and I think this is really interesting, is so far everyone's honoured that treaty, the Antarctic Treaty. They're not using it commercially. There's been no direct challenge. But what if there was, or what if someone's interested to, and they say, if you look at the way the language of geopolitics is changing with the way Donald Trump's talking about Greenland and the Arctic and having what he thinks he deserves or should have, if that's the new face of how geopolitics is done, other countries could turn around and say, well, you know, we could do the same in Antarctica.

15:55You only go back a handful of days ago from Antarctica. What is your lasting impression of the place? I was surprised by how harsh it is in one respect, that the land is frozen.

16:10Tom Clarke:There's nothing, nothing except some moss and a few algae in the ice. Nothing grows there. But in the oceans, it was totally different. There were humpback whales in the bay where we were every single day. One day they counted 30 to 40 humpback whales out in this bay. Seals, sea life like you'd never imagine. And that's this amazing contrast that you just don't see anywhere else. And it was unbelievable, spectacular. And I literally can't wait to go back. Tom, many thanks. Antarctica used to be the blank bit at the bottom of the map. Now, geopolitics has waddled south to join the penguins. But the melting ice doesn't care who gets a strategic foothold.

16:49It cares only that the world is warming and what we do about it. The Sky News Daily is back tomorrow.

16:59Thank you.