CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND-- After long hours on the plane, crossing the international dateline, and lots of security checkpoints, I have finally traveled the first leg of my long journey!...

FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA— We had our first day of snow here in Flagstaff, AZ and it was -5 °C, so I got a small reminder of what it is like to be cold! Not feeling my fingers was a gentle reminder that I better be well prepared for the temperatures at WAIS (West Antarctica Ice Sheet)...

Heidi Roop is part of a team more than 100 scientists collecting and analyzing a 2-mile-long (3.5-km-long) ice core from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide. The WAIS team estimates that this ice core will reveal climate changes that have happened as far back as 100,000 years, a time when woolly mammoths still walked the earth.