NOVA: Secrets Beneath the Ice

Can Antarctica’s climate past offer clues to what may happen to our warming planet?
Watch Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 8pm.

Can Antarctica’s climate past offer clues to what may happen to our warming planet? To gather crucial evidence, NOVA follows an ambitious Antarctic investigation — a state-of-the-art drill¬ing probe known as ANDRILL. Drilling deep beneath the Antarctic ice, down through the sea and three-fourths of a mile into the seafloor, ANDRILL recovers rock cores that reveal intimate details of climate and fauna from a time in the distant past when the Earth was just a few degrees warmer than it is today. As researchers grapple with the harshest conditions on the planet, they discover astonishing new clues — not only about Antarctica’s past, but also Earth’s future.

Watch Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 8pm.