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CNN Live At Daybreak

Interview of Dr. Carol Pudsey, British Antarctic Survey

Aired March 19, 2002 - 06:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Earlier we told you about that huge iceberg that is floating free in the Atlantic. Right now, we have with us on the phone Dr. Carol Pudsey, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey aboard the RRS James Clark Ross.

I understand, doctor, that you got an up-close look at this iceberg. Can you describe it for us?

DR. CAROL PUDSEY, BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY: Yes, indeed - good morning.

Well it wasn't one single iceberg, it was actually more like the aftermath of an explosion of one of the small ice shelves in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. The ice shelf was something like 20 miles by 40 miles before we started the cruise. And this - this integrated into a massive iceberg from smaller pieces, occupying something like four times the area. So it wasn't just one huge iceberg, it was a great massive ice in the sea through which we had to navigate.

COSTELLO: How massive was it, can you - I know you can tell us the dimensions, but it was bigger than Manhattan, right?

PUDSEY: Oh very likely, yes. I mean, the mass of ice was something like 500 billion tons. I don't know how many buildings in Manhattan that translates into.

COSTELLO: You're on board a research ship. What are you researching?

PUDSEY: We're actually looking at the history of these ice shelves, because several masses of ice of similar size have actually fallen apart in recent years. And we're looking at the marine geological record on the sea floor to see if there was evidence of this having happened before.

COSTELLO: Is there any danger? I mean, why should we be so interested in this?

PUDSEY: It could be a precursor to other parts of the Antarctic ice sheet melting. We need to make a lot of field observations so that climate monitors can actually predict which - which parts of the ice sheets are going to collapse next. And, in fact, our colleagues - our glaciological colleagues -- at BAS (ph) had predicted the collapse of some of these smaller ice shelves a few years ago. So those - those computer models have actually been shown to be very good.

COSTELLO: Might this be a study, too, of global warming?

PUDSEY: Yes it is. It's certainly a symptom of regional warming, not necessarily global. It's - the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula is warming much faster than most other areas of the world. So it's a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) indicator of climate. That's why we have scientists down there, glaciologists on the ice, and ourselves at sea.

COSTELLO: As these giant icebergs melt, how does that affect us who don't live up in Antarctica?

PUDSEY: It doesn't affect anybody directly because the ice was floating to start with. So the fact that it's now in millions of small pieces rather than just one huge piece doesn't affect global sea level at all.

COSTELLO: Are you afraid being on that research ship? Because all I can think about right now is the Titanic running into an iceberg.

PUDSEY: Well, we were lucky in the - the days that we were in the immediate area, because we had fine clear weather and we were able to receive excellent satellite images showing us where the largest icebergs were and also showing us where the edge of the debris was. So we were able to sail carefully in between the two. And we were also able to make our escape before the debris moved any further, because the mass of debris is still expanding outwards. And, in fact, the part of the ocean where we were is no longer accessible to ships and probably won't be for a few years until the mass of debris has dispersed. But we do have excellent navigational aids and radar and a very experienced marine staff to take us through this lot.

COSTELLO: But you actively have to avoid those icebergs, because it's hard to have a sense of how fast they're moving.

PUDSEY: The icebergs move very much more slowly than the ship. I mean, the ship is capable of 12 to 15 knots, and the icebergs very rarely move at more than one knot. So we can move more than 10 times as fast as icebergs. The only thing we really have to be careful is if an iceberg actually falls apart and we're near it. So we have to keep a safe distance, usually several times the diameter of the iceberg away from it, just in case pieces fall off onto us.

COSTELLO: OK. Thank you, Dr. Carol Pudsey. Our best wishes to you. Thank you for joining us on DAYBREAK.

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