Ice and the Sky

Fans of Luc Jacquet's Oscar-winning March of the Penguins (2005) may be a tad disappointed by this return to the snowy wastes, this time to recap the career of French polar explorer and glaciologist Claude Lorius. The 80-something Lorius paid his first visit to Antarctica as a 23-year-old in the 1950s when he acquired an understanding of the region's fragile eco-system. However, it was a couple of decades later that Lorius realised how imperilled the poles really were when he discovered it was possible to determine surface temperature from the air bubbles trapped inside glacial ice. By digging down 72,000 metres, therefore, he could chart climate change over some 800,000 years and his findings confirmed the reality of humanity's role in hastening the natural process of global warming. Switching between home movies, expedition footage and glossy shots of Lorius striding across the icy wilderness, this is fascinating stuff, though the fussily faux soundtrack and heavy-handed hagiographic tone occasionally intrude too much.