Sridhar Anandakrishnan is away for the winter holiday, somewhere where summer is in full swing -- an ice sheet at the end of the Earth.

The Penn State professor of geosciences is leading the University team that's part of a project on the Pine Island Glacier, an extension of the Antarctic ice sheet. The goal of the National Science Foundation-funded initiative is to get a better understanding of how the glacier, the ocean and the ice shelf are interacting, and what that could mean if water temperatures rise.

The massive ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking: According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, summer melt on the Greenland ice increased by 30 percent from 1979 to 2006. Though the situation in Antarctica is less clear, scientists are also seeing loss of mass there, particularly in the fragile West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

"About a year ago, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change came out with a report indicating that they are "highly confident that global warming and climate change are due to human-induced hydrocarbon burning. And when scientists are highly confident, you can take it to the bank." - Sridhar Anandakrishnan, associate professor in geosciences and the EMS Earth and Environmental Sciences Institute.

82° SOUTH, 122° EAST, Antarctica—

On this desolate, frozen plateau, the surrounding horizon is as flat and white as bone china. There are no mountains or hills here, no rocks or lichens. Nothing except the ceaseless, blowing snow that races across an icecap older than humanity.