Once we are in our kayaks, our guide, Timothy Duffy, leads us into a 10-mile-deep ice field dotted with blue-white bergs that vary in size from refrigerator to SUV to two-story house.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Several hours from the South Pole, in the barren expanses of western Antarctica, a small team of American researchers has just finished their second field-season with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide Ice Core project.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

Although the ice-minus bacteria proved safe and effective at preventing frost damage in field trials, further research and commercialization were discouraged by the combination of onerous government regulation, the inflated expense of doing the experiments and the prospect of huge downstream costs of pesticide registration.

FORBES: Commentary

Being so far north, much of region - some 146, 000 square km - is covered by glaciers and ice caps (a type of ice field where glaciers flow off in many directions).

BBC: Canadian glaciers face 'big losses'

This has allowed scientists to retrieve information about the Arctic Ocean region's gravity field, its surface circulation, and the thickness of its sea-ice cover.

BBC: Cryosat spots Arctic sea-ice loss in autumn