Original subtitles

This white wilderness, this emptiness is the North Pole. I'm

standing in the middle of a frozen ocean. Beneath my feet

and for over 500 miles in every direction there are several

meters of ice. But something significant is likely to happen

here at the North Pole soon. Chances are that sometime

within the next few decades, perhaps even as soon as 2020,

there will be open water here for the first time in human recorded history.

The Arctic and Antarctic are changing. Enormous masses

of ice that have been frozen for thousands of years are

breaking apart and melting away.

Ice scientists are going to extremes to find out exactly

what's going on. For them, these are exciting times. But the

transformation that's being seen here will be felt far beyond the polar wilderness.

In this program, I'll be trying to understand what these

changes mean not just to the wildlife and people that live

around the poles, but to the whole planet.

I'm starting my journey in the Arctic, the far north of our planet.

It's still very cold outside by most people's standards, but

the Arctic has been warming fast, twice as fast as the rest

of our planet. My first mission is to find out what effect

that's having on the animals, although first we have to find

them. It's April in Svalbard. We're a thousand miles north

the Arctic Circle in search of the region's top predator.

We need to travel away from the land and out over the frozen sea.

Over there.

I'm with a Norwegian team which is giving the

polar bears of Svalbard their yearly health check.

She's under us now. Come round for a clean shot.

The team works together to give an anesthetic injection from

a dart gun without hurting the bear. It takes tremendous

skill.

Nobody likes to see a magnificent animal like a polar bear

lolling about unconscious on the ice, but it's only by

darting them in this way and keeping check on them year

after year that we can be sure that we know what is

happening to them and the population of polar bears as a

whole. Over the last 30 years, many teams have been seeing

the condition of their local bears deteriorate,

although not every bear is suffering.

How much? 96 here. And 102 here. 197. Is that good? It's not

too bad. It's a bit above our reach, so she's a bear in a

good condition for Svalbard to be. The trouble is that if

this was underweight, she would be in trouble, not only from

our own point of view, but from the point of view of

our cubs, because an underweight female gives birth to

underweight cubs and underweight cubs have a great

problem of surviving their difficult first year in these

circumstances. It can be minus 40 degrees centigrade when

polar bear cubs emerge at the start of the Arctic spring

from their dens where they were born.

This mother hasn't eaten for half a year. She and her cubs

need to fatten up fast over the next few months and their

chances of survival depend on what's happening beneath their feet.

These polar bears aren't walking on land. They're

roaming across the frozen surface of the sea.

And the bear's food lives under the ice.

Ring seals are hunted by polar bears. In fact, in some

parts polar bears eat almost nothing else, so it's fairly

understandable that this little mother ring seal is

looking at me now. She should be a little apprehensive.

That pup of hers is only about three or four days old and

the pup won't be able to swim for another two or three days.

Seals have good reason to be nervous around their holes.

They need the holes to breathe when the sea is frozen, but

this makes them easy to find.

Polar bears can sniff out seal holes even if they're covered in snow.

Spring is the best hunting season.

This mother's found a food store under the snow that was

probably made by an Arctic fox. It's a time of plenty now,

but the bear family need to make the best of it

because the good times are about to come to an end.

As the weather warms, the ice beneath the bear's feet starts

to break up and then melt. And as the ice dwindles, so do

the bear's chances of a successful hunt.

Most of the ice is lost over the shallow

coastal waters where most of the seals live.

It's now summer and these bears have a choice. Take their

chances on the shrinking ice floes or make for the safety of

the land.

It's a case of sink or swim.

Bears have always gone hungry in the summer, but the length

of time when there's enough ice for them to go hunting is

getting shorter and shorter across much of the Arctic.

This is hitting cubs particularly hard because they can't

survive for as long without feeding as their mother. Cubs

that were born underweight are at the greatest risk.

This mother and her cubs may well not get another chance at

hunting, but they do have a meal until the sea freezes again

in winter. There's not much to eat on land and the fact is

that the longer the cubs have to wait until the ice returns,

the more likely they are to die.

Longer summers with no ice are probably the main

reason why many polar bear populations are dropping.

To help monitor bears into the future, this female is

being fitted with a radio collar to track her movements.

It's an extraordinary sensation to be so close to such a

powerful animal with luck carrying that collar. She will

have more years to go yet and be telling us a great deal

about herself and the rest of the race of polar bears as

they face this very uncertain future.

The future of the ice cover on the sea isn't just an issue

for the animals. It's a big concern for the people who live

in the Arctic and travel across the ice every day.

David Ikakwalu is an Inuit from the village of Clyde River in the Canadian Far North.

There are very few roads up here so David and his community

like most Inuit people have always traveled across the

frozen sea.

Dog sleds are the safest way to get around because the

dogs feel thin ice underfoot and won't lead travelers into

trouble.

Old timers like David know the ice as we know the streets in our local neighborhood.

Every spring cracks have always formed in the same places

at the same time. It's going to be big very soon after two

weeks maybe. We'll be more open. But now cracks are

appearing where they never did before so David and his

friend Laimiki have taken on a new job. They are using

special GPS units to record the position of new cracks or

weak ice.

These findings will be used by locals for their own safety

but they're also being studied by ice scientists who want to

predict how the ice will change in years to come.

The Inuit are keen to know what the future holds too because

they've seen with their own eyes the changes that the

scientists have seen from space. This satellite photo from

1980 shows the Arctic Ocean at the end of the summer when

ice cover is at its minimum. Since then there's been a 30%

drop in the area covered by ice. But these images can't tell

us about changes to the most important factor, the thickness of the ice.

Measuring thickness across the whole ocean was beyond

scientists for many years until help came from an unexpected

source.

The Arctic Ocean is of huge military importance as it's

the shortest route between North America and Russia.

Since the late 1950s, British, US and Russian

submarines have been patrolling the Arctic Ocean.

But as well as looking out for enemy activity, they've

also been measuring the thickness of the ice, critical when

looking for a place to surface.

When scientists got permission to look at the submarine

crew's records, they discovered that the ice has been

thinning fast. In fact, it's nearly halved in thickness since 1980.

Across most of the Arctic Ocean there are now just a couple of meters of ice.

It's so thin that it could melt away almost entirely in the

summertime and that includes the ice at the North Pole. If

current trends continue then there will be an open ocean

here by summer's end sometime within the next few decades.

So the days of the Arctic Ocean being covered by a

continuous sheet of ice seem to be past. Whether or not

that's a good or bad thing, of course, depends on your point of view.

Nobody has had a better view of the changes to the Arctic

Ocean than the people of Barrow, the most northerly town in

Alaska. The people here have always survived by hunting on

the frozen sea and they celebrate this at a festival every

year. The blanket toss was once the best way to spot distant

animals to hunt, as lifelong resident Lewis Brower explains.

When we throw ourselves up into the blanket, you know, you

get that much more of an awe of seeing further and further

out. So sometimes you'll jump 15, 20 feet in the air and

hopefully you're being caught right back into the blanket.

But the old way of life is under threat. When Lewis was

young the sea stayed frozen to the horizon until July and

some ice remained offshore all summer. But now it's breaking

up in June and melting away completely for two or three

months. I used to go out on the ice all the time this time

of the year but we can't do that anymore because there's no

more no more ice. Lewis can also see that the loss of sea

ice is affecting the animals he hunts for a living. Since

2007 something very strange has been happening

on the stretch of coastline close to Barrow.

Mother walruses, confused by the lack of ice, are crowding

onto the land with their pups. This very tight crowding

isn't normal and it's caused many youngsters to be crushed to death.

Many Arctic animals are threatened by the changing

conditions and that's also bad news for the traditional

hunters. But the ice loss could be good news for some people.

There are trillions of dollars worth of oil and gas under

the Arctic Ocean but the only way to get to them until now

has been by building expensive artificial islands like this.

But if the sea ice goes it will be much easier to drill for

the huge riches below so the countries that surround

the Arctic are scrambling to stake their claims.

This daring attempt by the Russians to claim the disputed

seabed at the North Pole in 2007 caused fury among the

competing countries and it's unlikely to be the last such dispute.

The Arctic has never been so important and not just because of its resources.

The Northwest Passage, a legendary sea route around the

north of Canada and Alaska, cleared of ice in the summer of

2007 for the first time since records began. This promises a

much faster and cheaper shipping route between the Atlantic

and Pacific Oceans.

And some wildlife could benefit from an ice-free Arctic too.

Bowhead whales are one of just a few whales that can live

year-round in the Arctic because they have no dorsal fin.

This means they can come up for air in small spaces and

travel easily under the ice. Their unique body shape used to

mean that the Arctic whales have the seas to themselves for

most of the year but now some cousins from down south are

moving in.

Killer whales are now a much more common sight in the

Arctic. Their tall fins make it difficult for them to travel

under ice but the longer summers mean they can travel much

farther north and make the most of the rich Arctic seas.

For animals and people, it will be those who

can adapt who will thrive in a changing Arctic.

But the loss of sea ice isn't just an issue for the Arctic

because the state of the ice affects the climate of the

whole planet.

Because it's white, the ice reflects up to 90% of the sun's

energy. This is called the albedo effect and it's why we

often see heat haze in the Arctic even when the air feels cold.

The frozen Arctic Ocean acts as a huge reflector bouncing

back the sun's heat into space. Throughout history that has

helped to cool the planet but when the ice melts it's a different story.

Because sea water is dark it absorbs most of the sun's

heat. In the Arctic this can trigger a chain reaction as the

warming water melts more ice exposing more water to the sun's heat.

This cycle of warming as huge areas start to absorb rather

than reflect heat is the main reason why the Arctic, a

region the size of North America, is warming

twice as fast as the rest of the Earth.

So melting sea ice is a big issue but there's another kind

of ice that could have an even more dramatic impact on our

world. The Arctic is a place where the Arctic is the most

important in the world. The ice that is found on land.

This is freshwater ice formed from thousands of years of accumulated snowfall.

This is the front of the glacier, quite a small one believe

it or not. Glaciers are like rivers of frozen freshwater

flowing across the surface of the land. This one like most

polar glaciers is flowing down from a vast inland ice sheet

and it's what happens to those ice sheets that could

radically alter the face of the planet. The Greenland ice

sheet is by far the largest in the Arctic. It's two miles

thick in places and six times the size of the United

Kingdom.

Every summer some of the surface of the ice sheet melts

forming sapphire blue lakes of meltwater. More and more of

these lakes have been forming as Greenland has warmed over

the last 20 years. This lake has grown over several weeks

and now it's overflowing carving a deep channel through the ice.

A network of channels crisscrosses the ice

sheet but many of them come to an abrupt end.

Huge holes like this can open up quite suddenly, draining the meltwater away.

Alan Hubbard is a glaciologist studying the enormous power

of these waterfalls which are known as moolands. We've got

this amazing mooland going on here today. The water is

overflowing from the lake which is beginning to drain. Tons

of water cascading down this pipe that is effectively

plummeting to the depths of the ice sheet through over a

kilometer of vertical ice.

Alan is here to study where the meltwater goes and what

effect it has on the remaining ice. To do that he needs to

find a mooland that has recently run dry.

Just a week ago there was a three mile long 10 meter deep

lake here. The weight of all that water cracked the ice

beneath and the lake drained in just a few hours with incredible force.

A thousand ton ice boulders were tossed about like dice.

Alan's team have found the hole down which the lake

disappeared and they want to have a closer look. It's not a

job for anyone with a fear of heights.

As you can see it's dry up here but if you listen you can

hear the thunder of there's a lot of water entering it at

some depth. Alan wants to place a sensor deep into the

mooland to discover how much water is flowing through the

ice.

As they drop they travel back in time. 30 meters down and

they reach ice formed from snow that fell 10,000 years ago

in the last ice age.

When this lake drained and the plug got pulled and the whole

lot flushed down through here this ice sheet it rose by a

meter as that water accessed the bed and force jacked up the

ice sheet. So we know that the water and this whole plumbing

cavity system down here we know that shoots straight through

the ice and actually hits the bed of the ice sheet. We've

hit the water, can see the water now. Great, nice work.

This daring experiment is measuring how the water flowing

under the ice sheet affects the speed with which the

glaciers flow from it down to the sea. The theory is that

the water is acting as a lubricant so the more water there

is the faster the glacier flows. To the naked eye, glaciers

don't appear to move at all, but move they do. These unique

time lapse images were captured over the last four years.

Through long observations we now know that Greenland's ice

is flowing down to the sea twice as quickly as it was 20

years ago. The speed of the glaciers affects our sea levels

because when they reach the water they break apart into

icebergs. Occasionally a real mega-burg is born.

This is the store glacier in May 2010.

This is the store glacier in May 2010. This is the

store glacier

in May 2010. 75 million tons of ice that have been

sitting on land for thousands of years has broken away.

Events like this have become increasingly common

as Greenland's glaciers flow faster into the sea.

Every single one of these icebergs raises the sea level a

small amount. Scientists monitoring the ice sheet predict

that Greenland might add as much as a half meter to world

sea levels by the end of the century, enough to swamp many

of the world's low-lying islands.

99% of the Arctic's freshwater ice is in Greenland. It's a

staggeringly big ice sheet but it's just a drop in the ocean

compared to that at the southern end of our planet.

In Antarctica there is 10 times more ice, by

far the largest concentration of ice on Earth.

Our exploration of the Antarctic only began a little over a hundred years ago.

The study of ice retreat here was unwittingly begun on

an expedition led by the great early explorer Ernest

Shackleton.

In 1916, after their expedition boat was crushed and sunk by

ice, Shackleton and two companions set off to summon help in

a tiny boat.

They sailed over 800 miles across the Southern Ocean to

the island of South Georgia on the edge of the Antarctic.

Near starving and dressed in rags, the three men walked

across the ice sheet at the center of the island, knowing

there was a wailing base on the opposite coast where they could summon help.

This team of Royal Marines is retracing the steps of that

journey in tribute to Shackleton and his men. But for all

their efforts, they can't exactly copy the

Great Walk because the ice is not as it was.

A number of South Georgia's glaciers were photographed by

Shackleton's cameraman. Frozen planets saw a dramatic change

when they returned 94 years later.

Most of South Georgia's glaciers have shrunk since

Shackleton's time, and most of that has happened since I

first went to the Antarctic 30 years ago. I've been to South

Georgia several times and seen how greatly the glaciers

there have changed.

This photograph of a glacier reaching right down to the sea

was taken just six years before I first visited in 1981. Now

that glacier has retreated by 400 meters away from the beach.

Temperatures in South Georgia have risen sharply, but the

southern hemisphere's most dramatic warming has happened a

little further south. In recent years, stronger winds

blowing over the southern ocean have brought warmer air to

the 800-mile-long finger of land that forms the

northern extremity of the Antarctic continent.

Here on the Antarctic Peninsula, the changing wind patterns

have driven temperatures up by nearly 3 degrees Centigrade

over the last 50 years, 10 times the average rate of the rest of the planet.

The rapid warming is having a big effect on the bird life.

The daily penguin is the most southerly nesting of all

penguins. And like the polar bear up in the north, their

lives are dependent on the sea ice. A daly spent their whole

lives near ice. These birds have spent the winter feeding at

the ice edge, but now it's spring and they've

started a long trek over the frozen sea towards land.

They're heading for areas of exposed rock where they gather

to breed in colonies that can be over 100,000 strong.

But it seems that a daly's don't find the conditions on the

peninsula to their liking anymore. 17 years ago, when I was

last in the Antarctic, there were large colonies of a daly

penguins all along the Antarctic Peninsula. Now, warming

temperatures have meant less sea ice and a daly penguin numbers are in decline.

Many colonies have been empty and fast.

It may be that penguins are starving or it may be that

they're heading south to colder climes where there's still

plenty of ice on the sea.

But as in the Arctic, while ice-loving animals are feeling

the heat, animals that like it a bit more cosy are moving

in.

The bright orange beaks of gentoo penguins are a much more

common sight on the peninsula these days. I always used to

know them as residents of the slightly warmer islands

north of the Antarctic, but they've moved south in numbers.

They're thought to be 10 times more gentoos

on the peninsula now than just 30 years ago.

The peninsula has warmed a great deal, but the same is not true further south.

The Antarctic continent is smothered by the world's greatest

ice sheet, one and a half times the size of Australia and up

to three miles thick.

A staggering 75% of the Earth's fresh water is locked up in this ice.

Global sea levels would rise by some 60 metres if all this was to melt.

But what chance is there of that happening here

in the coldest, most hostile place on Earth?

The ice beneath me up here on top of the ice cap is so thick

that I am short of breath simply because of the altitude.

This is midsummer and the average temperature is some 20

degrees below freezing. I can tell you it feels much lower

than that. And even the worst predictions don't suggest that

the air is going to warm enough to melt the ice. But now

scientists are asking a different question. Could the speed

at which the Antarctic ice flows off the land be increased

by a warmer ocean? Where the ice sheet meets the sea,

scientists are going to extreme lengths to find out.

Andy Smith works for the British Antarctic Survey. What we

have here is a one kilogram of pentelite explosive. We're

going to use this to generate a shockwave and record

the echoes that come back from underneath the ice.

Andy is particularly interested in mapping the underside of

the ice around the coast. Because here it isn't resting on

land, it's floating on seawater. So if sea temperatures

rise just a little, it can be melted from below.

Around the coast of Antarctica, the glaciers have flowed out

across the sea to form immense masses of floating freshwater

ice called ice shelves.

These freeze to the land around them, sticking fast and

acting like bath plugs, holding back the flow of the

glaciers into the sea.

On the Antarctic peninsula, a one degree sea temperature

rise has helped to break apart seven major ice shelves in

the last 30 years. This is the Larson B ice shelf, three

times the size of Greater London breaking apart in 2002.

Afterwards, the glaciers it had been holding

back started flowing up to six times faster.

In 2008, a much larger ice shelf at the southern end of the

peninsula started to break up. It's an enormous event that's

never been filmed before.

Andy Smith is flying down the peninsula to study this

phenomenon firsthand. We're flying to a place called Wilkins

Ice Shelf. It's an ice shelf that over the last couple

of years has showed a very sudden and dramatic breakup.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a two hour long flight south from

his research base. But Andy can start to see the evidence of

ice shelf breakup a long way before he gets there. As we're

heading further south, we can see more and more icebergs in

the ocean. And most of the big ones will be ones

that have broken off the ice shelves in this area.

Once we cross the mountains, we should be able to see

Wilkins Ice Shelf. And then it's not far then to the ice

front here where it's collapsing.

As Andy's team reaches their destination, the scale of

what's been happening sooner Here, for thousands of years,

an area the size of Yorkshire has been covered by a sheet of ice 200 metres thick.

But now, over half of that has broken apart.

Andy has been studying Antarctic ice for 25 years, but

even he is blown away by what he's seeing. That is pretty

awesome. That is remarkable. The edge of the ice shelf has

just kind of disintegrated. Some of the big pieces look like

they could be a mile or more in size. It's almost like a

sort of a slow motion explosion. It all pushes outwards very

quickly.

Every one of these huge icebergs will slowly drift out to sea.

To study how fast that happens, Andy needs to get closer

to the action. We're going to look around and see if we can

find a place where we can land. But if we can, we'll be able

to put on an instrument that will help us monitor the big

icebergs that are breaking off as the ice shelf breaks up.

Landing on an iceberg is another first for Andy's team.

This satellite transmitter will help to track

the continued breakup of this colossal ice shelf.

The remainder of the Wilkins looks set to break apart soon.

It's the latest ice shelf to disintegrate in a wave that's

been traveling southwards, playing a major role in the loss

of ice from the peninsula.

Next in line, and already weakening in place, is the first

ice shelf to disintegrate. The only places are the ice

shelves that hold back Antarctica's gigantic continental

ice sheet. And it would only take a small corner of this to

slide into the sea to have major global consequences.

We've only started to see changes in the Arctic and

Antarctic recently, so it's hard to predict exactly what

impact these changes will have. But we can see for ourselves

that these places are changing and on a scale that is hard

to ignore.

The poles, north and south, may seem very remote. But what

is happening here is likely to have a greater effect upon us

than any other aspect of global warming. If the Arctic sea

ice continues to disappear, it will drive up the planet's

temperature more quickly. And the melting ice sheets

could contribute to a sea level rise of a meter, enough to

threaten the homes of millions of people around the world's

coasts by the end of the century. We've seen that the

animals are already adapting to these changes. But can

we respond to what is happening now to the frozen planet?

The Ice The increasing unpredictability of the ice was a

big issue for the frozen planet team, who spent three years

working on top of it.

Whether on sea, land, lake or river, the state of

the ice was the first concern for most filming crews.

Unexpected breakups left many a cameraman in need of a swift

rescue. Sometimes help came by boat and sometimes by air.

The North Pole I had a chance to see the changing ice

conditions for myself when I visited the North Pole. I flew

with the team to a temporary camp that is set up every

year in the center of the frozen Arctic Ocean to support

expeditions to the pole.

The North Pole I had never visited the North Pole before, so

this was a great highlight for me. But it was hard going in

temperatures of minus 40, so as soon as filming finished, we

flew south. Little did we know that we had made it out just

in time. We got back from the pole camp last night and I've

just bumped into the Russian commander, who's just heard

from the camp. And the news is that a little crack, which

I'd seen in the ice between our tent and the airstrip, which

was no more than an inch or so wide, has overnight widened

to 20 meters. Temporary breakups caused by stormy weather

and strong winds have happened before, but they've been

getting more and more frequent over recent years as the ice

has got weaker.

It was only swift action by the staff that prevented

a lot of valuable equipment going in the drink.

The biggest concern was that the ice airstrip might break

apart, but luckily it held and everyone was able to evacuate

when the weather improved.

The frozen planet team's clearest demonstration of the power

and unpredictability of breaking ice came when they went to

film the melting of a frozen planet. Producer Mark Linfield

and researcher Matt Swarbrick have travelled to the far

north of Canada.

They've driven through the vast northwest territory on a

mission to film the moment when this frozen waterfall breaks

apart.

The breakup, when the frozen river above the waterfall

thaws and masses of water start to flow again, can be a

spectacular event. But predicting exactly when it's going to

break is the big challenge if Mark and Matt want to get the

best shots.

And they're not the only ones who want to know. When the

waterfall breaks, it can flood the town of Hay River just

downstream with millions of tons of water and ice. Mark is

taking advice from the scientist Faye Hicks, who has the job

of predicting when the ice will break. What happens is you

get ice jams form upstream and they start to dam up the

water and it builds and builds and builds and that can let

go and that's a much bigger wave of water than just the

normal flow. So it just depends upon how dramatically it

unfolds. Faye takes her research helicopter to monitor the

situation upstream of the waterfall.

Just ten miles upriver, the ice is starting to break. The

locals are concerned because huge amounts of water can build

up if these ice chunks dam the river and that can lead

to devastating flooding in the town when the dams burst.

Using cameras and sonar to assess the state of the river,

Faye makes her best guess of when this breakup will hit the

waterfall just above the town. So now guys, I think we have

about 48 hours to go. Faye's prediction of the 24th of April

is exciting news for the team.

Upstream from here, it's already starting to melt and Faye

thinks that we may only have another one or two days before

this whole thing goes, which is almost impossible to imagine

looking at it now, but that's what she says. With the

breakup seemingly imminent, the team set up their cameras in anticipation.

Over the next 48 hours, the weather warms to well above

freezing, but there's no sign of the breakup. The team waits

and waits and waits. Mark is

concerned that the crew have to return home soon, so he

heads into town to get the advice of long-term resident Red

McBrien. We just have to live with it and take whatever base

of action we can. Red has had 50 years of witnessing the

power of the river. Well, we're hoping that she may break

up in two or three days even. Oh, no, no, no, no. That's too

soon. You think it'll be longer? Oh, no, no. Boys, you're

looking at seven or eight days before she breaks of any

significance. And if she breaks, she can jam and hold up.

She'd be down here probably around the fifth or sixth of

May. The townspeople are on tenterhooks, waiting for the big

day, but another week goes by before anything starts to happen.

Finally, it seems that things might be happening. We've just

heard some cracks from upstream, so if we're lucky, we might

get some action. Seven o'clock, which gives us two hours

light. If it happens at night, we're going to miss the whole

thing.

Sure enough, the town is put on red alert that the river

is about to break in the middle of the night. They've just

called a full evacuation of the island where we're staying.

If we don't move now, we're all going to be underwater and

possibly get trapped here for a few days. The team have to

move out and get up to the waterfall, hoping that it doesn't

break before it's light enough to film.

Luckily, the sun is up before the main event begins.

That is a serious amount of ice coming around the corner.

After weeks of waiting, sleeping giant of a river, we

thought nothing was going to happen, and suddenly, look at

this! This is what we're here for. Unbelievable! Absolutely

unbelievable! Holy ****! How are you? The team is used to

handling multiple cameras, but they don't usually have to

dodge. They can even dodge 10-ton ice flows at the same

time. You can see it racing over at an unbelievable speed.

The power, if you are here to feel this, it's the deep

rumbling sound of the river. I can feel it up to my feet.

The power, I just can't imagine. It has to crush a house in

no time. The team takes to the air to witness the

destruction that's unleashed. Huge ice blocks are pushed

downstream on the wave of water released by the breaking waterfall.

This could devastate the town.

But this year, the townspeople's luck is in. The town has escaped flooding.

Crucially, the ice blocks did not dam the river. It's

running free. And the date of the break-up? 6th of May.

Red's got it right again. I don't use any of these gauges

and mechanical assistance. I just go by what I see on the

river as I walk it down. And I say, I walk it down, I back

and forth every day on the river, to see what's happening,

and from that I gauge when it's going to hit here, and what

the situation's going to be like when it does get here. You

know, when it went this morning, I said to my students,

guess what the date is. Red told us it's the 6th of May. And

I'm not surprised because we've been here a couple times

and that's happened. Ten days, two weeks out, he just looks

around and goes, 5th of May. How does he know that? It's

incredible. It's because he just has lived on this river and

lived this break-up for 50 years. I see scientists on

improving the accuracy of their predictions all the time,

but in the meantime, the people of Hay River have a

remarkable guardian. Red, you were completely right this

year. Are you right every year? No, I missed

the odd one. Yes. In 1985, I missed it.

Music