Hektoria Glacier 50% smaller, Colorado University researcher reports w images- 9NEWS Denver Dec 2 short video w transcript, Heating Planet blog

While researching a separate topic, Naomi Ochwat noticed that a glacier in Antarctica had shrunk by 50%. What she learned was alarming. WATCH Denver news: CU Boulder researcher discovers disappearing glacier Dec 2, 2025, transcribed below [Official YouTube channel of 9NEWS in Denver, Colorado]

TRANSCRIPT:

It's Earth's 5th largest continent, what we think of when we think the South Pole. Antarctica is entirely covered by an ice sheet. That ice sheet holds about 90% of the world's ice. Ice scientists and researchers study year-round. One of them, in particular, Naomi Ochwat, is one of those researchers. *Unlike anything I had seen. And that was Hektoria Glacier*

In 2023. Ochwat recorded something never seen in modern history. While conducting a study on Antarctica's disappearing sea ice, she noticed the Hektoria Glacier, a glacier roughly the size of Philadelphia, had shrunk by about 50%. This time lapse shows its demise.

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*Some of the warmest Antarctic summers on record are happening at the Antarctic Peninsula.*

Warmer temperatures at the pole are causing changes in weather patterns, including unusual wind events. Those winds create strong waves. Those waves in turn break up the sea ice, and without the protective sea ice barrier and so if you remove that floating part, then the glaciers that are on the land no longer have this sort of barrier, and so they can speed up and go into the ocean.*

The obvious concern if this happened to one glacier, how many more will it happen to? And if that 90% of the planet's ice were to melt into the oceans, researchers worry just how destructive that sea level rise could be.

*It is unsettling. It is a bit scary, and We don't know all the answers*

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But they do have the pictures to show us all what is really happening at our South Pole, what will likely keep happening if we continue the track we're on.

*We definitely need to come together and try to understand the rate at which the sea level is going to change and what processes control it and how we can make a difference with our own carbon emissions and reducing our CO2.*

Now Ochwat noted that 2022 marked the first record low sea ice concentration year in Antarctica. Since then though, that record has been broken time and time again. But again, as we report on this latest research and talk about the current track we're on, it's also important to point out we can get off this track. Almost every researcher I've talked to in my 20 years of climate reporting has said if we all can do our part to cut carbon emissions, we can prevent these kind of big changes. END OF TRANSCRIPT

[KE: Everything climate scientists predicted about global warming/ climate change since the 1970s is coming true, only faster]