What You Can Learn from Living in Antarctica
Joe Pettit is a person of contradictions. A lover of solitude who manages teams, an engineer who writes poetry and paints, a family man who spends several months a year on remote Antarctic glaciers, installing delicate scientific instruments. It’s a rare mixture of qualities to find anywhere in the world—except, perhaps, in Antarctica.
Indeed, these days Pettit’s job involves finding other engineers like him, assembling the crack teams that place ice-penetrating radar and other equipment at both poles of the Earth. It’s challenging work, but vital.
Pettit’s teams provide support and equipment to researchers studying polar glaciers. Glaciers are constantly in motion, flowing outward under the pressure of accumulated snow that compresses into glacial ice. Some glaciers flow as fast as several kilometers a year. They are also melting. As our climate warms, the planet’s ice sheets are vanishing faster than anyone expected, pouring meltwater into rising seas. Understanding glaciers is critical to predicting some of the most severe climate disturbances we face. Researchers need to know
