Venture into Earth’s most extreme ice fields to unlock the hidden history of our climate.
The polar seas help regulate Earth’s climate, storing carbon, driving ocean currents and sustaining vast ecosystems. But as sea ice retreats and oceans warm, scientists are racing to understand what comes next. Above the Arctic, NASA investigates the complex relationship between sea ice and clouds. In Antarctica, researchers aboard the RRS David Attenborough track changes in the Southern Ocean and the krill that support extraordinary wildlife. In the High Arctic, WWF scientists monitor the underwater soundscape as increasing shipping threatens marine life. Meanwhile, in Nunavut, innovators and Inuit communities test ways to restore sea ice. Together, their discoveries reveal a planet in transition.
Across the solar system, ice is scattered on comets, planets and moons. Where there is ice, there is water, raising the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos. To understand what we may discover out there, scientists journey to Earth’s frozen extremes: probing microbes living on air alone, uncovering ecosystems in glaciers, and measuring algae transforming the ice itself. From drones beneath Arctic seas to submersible dives under Antarctica, their work leaves us with a profound truth: life, in all its resilience and strangeness, is not confined to warm, sunlit places. Sometimes, it begins in the cold stillness of ice.