00:00Ahead of their expedition to Antarctica, two French explorers in Cape Town prepare for their
00:08mission before trying to find out how the icy continent is responding to rising temperatures
00:13and the need to be able to tell how quickly sea level will rise because of the melting of Antarctica.
00:20The mission will last 90 days and will see the two explorers snow kite across Antarctica while
00:27dragging their equipment on sleds. We're starting in South Africa, crossing Antarctica and then exiting
00:34through South America so that's 4,000 kilometers and we'll be traveling with the energy of the wind,
00:40we'll be traveling with kites. We have four different kites to go in any wind conditions
00:46and these kites they will propel us on the on the ice to cover all this distance. We've been preparing
00:53in similar environments. We went to Greenland with Heidi a lot. The big overarching goal of the science
00:59we're doing during the expedition of under Antarctica will help us to better understand how Antarctica
01:05will respond in the future to raising temperatures. We need to know that in order to improve our models
01:13of sea level rise. Today hundreds of millions of people are concerned by the rate of melting in
01:20Antarctica and we need to be able to tell them how quickly sea level will rise because of the melting of
01:26Antarctica and this is exactly what we're trying to find out. There are currently 70 permanent research
01:31stations scattered across the continent of Antarctica which represent 29 countries from every continent on earth.
01:39India has two active research stations Maitri and Bharti in Antarctica. The US has six stations and Australia has three.
01:47China signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1983. The treaty designates the continent as a national reserve
01:54and prohibits commercial resource extraction.
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