A trip to Antarctica might feel less like crossing the ocean and more like crossing the galaxy, but what happens there impacts the world well beyond the coast — influencing weather patterns and food supply around the globe.
National climate reporter Chase Cain traveled to the frozen continent to see just how connected it is to our lives back home.
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WATCH HERE"It's a kind of a magic place," said James Barnes. "It grabs you."
Barnes co-founded the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition in 1978 to help conserve and protect a place that’s not just environmentally unique, but politically, too.
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SIGN UP No country owns it. Instead, it’s common ground with a common goal: science.
"On a larger scale, too, it's about friendship — the friendship between nations that are not maybe naturally friends. What they can cooperate on is science," Barnes said. "The science there is so crucial to our future."
A lesson from the 1980s proved just how true that is.
Just two years after Antarctic scientists discovered the hole in the ozone layer, the world banded together to solve the problem. Now, NASA says the ozone hole should fully heal within our lifetime.
It’s a sign of what is possible, but also a cautionary tale not to ignore what’s happening here.
Tourists who make the trip with , an organization that takes travelers on a tour of some of the world's most remote places, get to see the truth of climate change firsthand, often braving tough conditions to collect samples and data for scientists around the world.
"[It's] allowing people to understand the consequences of changes into a system," said Verena Meraldi, a chief scientist at HX. "Everything is connected. Everything needs to be [balanced]."
Meraldi created HX's science program seven years ago. Today, it supports scientists from dozens of universities, researching things like how krill — a critical food source for Antarctic wildlife — are becoming more scarce.
It's creating ripple effects for fisheries across the United States, proving that what happens in Antarctica impacts everything from the world's food supply to flooding along the coasts.
"We often think what happens at the poles stays at the poles, but that is not true," said Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate scientist. "We live on a planet where everything is connected."
In the next 25 years, the projects sea levels will rise up to eight inches along the west coast and up to a foot and a half along the Gulf.
"Sea level is rising twice as fast now as it was just 25 years ago because all of that ice is melting so fast," Hayhoe said.
A lot of that extra water is flowing to our shores from Antarctica, where — as ice melts into the Southern Ocean — it also changes the water temperature. That can change ocean currents, which drive weather patterns all the way back home, putting everyone from firefighters to farmers on the frontlines of climate change.
And Antarctica shows how it’s all intertwined
"When you're kayaking up front with the whale or you see the glaciers and the magical ice, you just want to protect it," said Aaron Davis, a tourist from San Diego. "You're going to go, 'I have to protect that!'"
