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[Music]

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Narrator: It is easy to imagine Greenland as a land of perpetual ice.

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However, scientists have recently estimated that the Greenland Ice Sheet may

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be gone within the millennium.

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Andy: My name is Andy Aschwanden, I am a Glaciologist with the University

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of Alaska, Fairbanks. I work at the Geophysical Institute.

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Narrator: Andy and his colleagues have used data

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collected by NASA to model some of the possible futures of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

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Andy: So, we see our projection

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of how the Greenland Ice Sheet will retreat

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over the course of the next roughly 300 years.

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It’s really cool that now we can actually watch

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in the animation, in the simulation, how we think it behaves.

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I mean, we put the best physics possible in there and we can

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actually watch what could happen. That is something we could not have done before.

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NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge

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over the past decade has been instrumental in gathering the

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datasets that help drive our model.

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Narrator: This model gives us a more accurate picture of how greenhouse gas

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emissions may affect Greenland - and us - in the future.

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Andy: Of the three scenarios that we tested there was one sort

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of a low emissions, medium emissions,

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and high emission scenario. And,

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at the moment, it looks like we’re on the highest scenario.

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The three different scenarios lead to

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basically three different futures, three different Greenlands.

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If we choose the path we are on right now,

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if we stay on that path, there is actually good chance that within 1000

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years or so, the whole Ice Sheet

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will be gone.

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Narrator: These scenarios show that the melting ice could contribute at least 80% more sea level rise than previous estimates.

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This model helps us understand the dynamic nature of the Greenland

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Ice Sheet, and arms us with the knowledge we need to inform our future.