NASA’s climate change competition includes teams from Scripps Institution of Oceanography - FOX 5 San Diego

Scripps Institution of Oceanography participates in NASA's climate change competition

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — NASA directed a $5 million grant to glaciologist Dr. Helen Fricker with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography to identify in real time the melting of critical ice sheets due to climate change.

“Antarctica and Greenland are the two ice sheets we are monitoring because as they are losing mass around the edges. They are losing ice and melting. That ice is going into the ocean and causing the ocean to rise,” explained Dr. Fricker.

NASA has identified four potential investigative missions for major funding to help understand our changing climate but only two will receive funding of the $310 million and have their investigative satellites launched for advanced Earth monitoring.

Scripps Institute of Oceanography was granted two chances to have their proposals move forward.

“We are worried about, or concerned about, how much ice we are going to lose around the ice sheets. That is going to have ramifications all around the world, especially for island nations and low laying areas,” said Dr. Fricker.

At home in San Diego, that could mean Imperial Beach, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach — any beach community — could feel the impacts of the sea level rise.

Dr. Fricker said her proposed mission will utilize a satellite firing 40 lasers to map in real time the loss of ice sheets into the water.

“With the orbit choice for this mission edge, we’ve chosen it for where all the changes are concentrated,” she explained. “So we will get really really dense maps of the change.”

With the clear information only, glaciologists might be able to identify what might be coming to a San Diego County beach — and soon.

“A lot of this is about modeling because you need to be able predict the future, but you have to know what is happening now to do that,” said Dr. Fricker.