Antarctica
Icebergs as Big as a New York City Block
I think it was at Cierva Cove that we saw the biggest icebergs. Being surrounded by icebergs the size of a block in New York, as tall as a huge, fat colonial-style building, was really surreal. It was a hot, sunny day, and we were on a Zodiac navigating the slush and floes, but there was too much wave action in the bay, and we had to call off an ice landing.
Antarctica Holds 90 Per Cent of All the Ice on Earth
Antarctica holds about 90 per cent of all the ice on Earth.1 Icebergs are pieces broken off the ends of glaciers and ice shelves, and they are made of fresh water.2 They start as snow. Antarctica gets very little snow, because it is the driest continent on Earth, but over thousands of years the snow piles up, gets squashed into ice, and flows slowly towards the sea.2,3
In places the ice is 4,757 metres thick. If it all melted, which would take many centuries, the sea would rise by about 58 metres.4 Say goodbye to the Maldives. And Singapore. Together, the ice of Antarctica and Greenland holds more than two-thirds of all the fresh water on Earth.5
Some of that ice holds bubbles of air more than 1.2 million years old.6 That’s older than our own species!7
The Bird Who Came to Listen
We could not land the piano on an iceberg. It was just too dangerous. In the end, the piano performance was done on Paulet Island. While I played, a seabird got so curious that it looked at me and my hands, then jumped up right next to the keyboard and stared at my performance for a couple of minutes. It was really funny, and I could hardly concentrate.
Watermelon Snow Is Not as Nice as It Sounds
At most of our Antarctic landings there were patches of pink and green on the snow. The layers of pink and green, like a slice of watermelon, give it the name watermelon snow. Both colours are algae, which bloom where summer temperatures sit just above freezing. It’s not a good sign, and it made many of the scientists on our expedition unhappy. Not only is it a sign of warmth in the south polar region, but these coloured patches absorb more sunlight than white snow, so the snow melts faster. Scientists expect them to spread as Antarctica warms.8,9
Rain on the Driest Continent
Snow falls when the air all the way from the cloud to the ground is cold enough. If the air near the ground is warmer, the snow melts on the way down and lands as rain.10 So heavy rain in Antarctica is a sign of warmth. When I was there in 2023, it sometimes rained at night, and once it rained really heavily when we were deep inland after a hike. Not a good sign.
Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth.3 On the Antarctic Peninsula, rain has become more common over the decades. Climate models project more frequent and heavier rain on the Peninsula by the end of this century.11,12 Together with warm air, rain melts the snow that feeds the glaciers, and meltwater pooling on a floating ice shelf can help crack it apart, as it did when the Larsen B ice shelf broke up in 2002.12,13
The Third Pole: the Himalayas (Bhutan)
Yaks, Horses and a Piano, 4,000 Metres Up
People came to the Royal Highland Festival from villages 4,000 to 5,000 metres up in the Bhutanese Himalaya. Many of them walked for days, together with their yaks and horses, to reach the festival ground above Laya, 4,000 metres up on a mountain top.14
The wind was very strong and freezing cold during my performance, and my hands went totally numb. I couldn’t tell whether I was touching the keyboard at all, but I think I played okay.
What I remember most clearly are the people: their beautiful faces and costumes, and their generosity, even though they did not speak English. The mountains were beautiful and peaceful.
Rivers from the Third Pole Feed About Three Billion People
The Himalayan mountains and the Tibetan Plateau are called the Third Pole, because together they hold the largest store of frozen water outside the Arctic and Antarctica.15 Glaciers, ice and snow feed rivers that bring fresh water to eleven countries, from Pakistan to Vietnam. Almost two billion people live in these mountains and along the rivers below them, and the food grown in their river basins reaches about three billion.16,17
Bhutan Lost 9 Per Cent of Its Glacier Area in Ten Years
Between 2016 and 2025, Bhutan lost about 9 per cent of its glacier area.18 There aren’t that many 9 per cents left to lose.
As glaciers shrink, meltwater can collect in glacial lakes held back by walls of loose rock. And the mountains themselves can give way. On 26 August 2026, a huge mass of glacier ice and rock broke off a slope near Langtang Lirung in Nepal, close to the border with Tibet, and crashed into the valley below. It dammed a river for a few minutes before the water burst through. The flood tore down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers, swept away more than 20 bridges and damaged six hydropower plants.19,20 By 11 October, 1,457 people had been confirmed dead and 4,720 were still missing.21
Bhutan now keeps watch on 17 glacial lakes it considers potentially dangerous.22
First Flood, Then Drought
A glacier is like a savings account of water. In the dry months, when there is no rain, it pays out meltwater to the rivers.
As the glaciers melt faster, the rivers get more water than usual at first, and floods become more likely. But spend your savings too fast, and one day they run out. Then the rivers run low, and the valleys and plains below face drought: less water to drink, to grow food and to make electricity. Scientists call the turning point peak water. In the eastern Himalaya, where Bhutan is, it may already be here.23
In drought summers, glacier meltwater in Asia’s mountains covers the basic needs of about 221 million people.24
The Arctic
The First Piece of Ice Was Not Good Enough
“No, the ice is too thin. It doesn’t look dense. We’ll need to find better ice further north.”
I was geared up in mud boots and a life vest, with my red flowy dress under an oversized expedition jacket. The piano was packed up and already on a Zodiac, ready to go. The captain made the last-minute decision that the ice the crew had found was unsafe. I can understand the stress he must have been under.
Landing called off. Boots, life vest and jacket hung up, and we moved on. A few hours later, we found better ice: stable, dense, big enough. Even then, the floe was not that big, and it was drifting towards a larger mass of ice. Luckily it was a bright, sunny day with very little wind. The piano was delivered onto the ice without much drama, and I followed in another Zodiac.
I played the slow movement of Norwegian composer Grieg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 7, a couple of times, and the camera crew got busy filming. I felt kind of small playing on that ice, with miles and miles of flat sea ice as far as the eye could see in every direction. I also felt that the icy, sunny landscape was generous towards me, like a warm hug! Playing for my non-judgemental audience was a beautiful experience.
The Ice Is Earth’s Giant Mirror
Polar sea ice is Earth’s giant mirror. Snow-covered sea ice reflects about 85 per cent of the sunlight that reaches it, and this plays an enormous part in keeping our planet cool. Imagine wearing a black jacket on a sunny day: the black fabric traps the sun’s heat, and you get really hot. In a white jacket, most of the sunlight bounces off, and you stay cooler. Open sea is the black jacket. It reflects only about 7 per cent of the sunlight and absorbs the rest.25 So as the ice melts, the darker sea takes in more heat, the ocean warms, and more ice melts. The Arctic has been warming roughly three to four times faster than the world as a whole since around 1980.26
Sailing Inside a Glacier
How do you sail inside a glacier? Well, when a glacier is retreating fast, the captain’s charts can’t keep up, and they show the ship sailing into the glacier. In reality, the ship was perfectly safe on the open ocean, and the glacier front was miles away. Between 1985 and 2023, 91 per cent of Svalbard’s glaciers shrank significantly, losing more than 800 square kilometres at their edges.27
Near the end of the trip, in the south of Svalbard, it was hot. I was sweating under my life vest. That summer turned out to be one of the four warmest ever recorded at Svalbard Airport.28
The Rainforest
Rainforests Are Earth’s Natural Sprinklers
Rainforests are Earth’s natural sprinklers. Trees draw water up from the soil and release it as water vapour through tiny pores in their leaves.29 A large canopy tree can move hundreds of litres a day, and the very biggest more than a thousand.30 Across most of the tropics, air that has passed over a lot of forest in the previous few days brings at least twice as much rain inland as air that has passed over little vegetation.31
Rainforest Trees Help Seed Clouds
Rainforest trees also give off a gas called isoprene, and storms carry it high into the sky, where it helps form the tiny particles that cloud droplets grow on.32 Standing tropical forest keeps the land surface cooler than nearby cleared land: about 1°C on average across a year, and up to 2.4°C.33
H2O: Its Journey from Space to Planet Earth
Water in Our Oceans Is Older Than the Sun
Water in our oceans is older than the Sun!34 Scientists still don’t know exactly how it reached Earth: on asteroids, on comets, or inside the rocks Earth was made from.35 Since then, the same water has been going round and round.
The Ocean Is a Giant Sponge for Heat and Makes About Half of Earth’s Oxygen
The ocean is a giant sponge for heat. It has absorbed more than 90 per cent of the extra heat trapped by global warming.36 It also makes about half of Earth’s oxygen, although sea life uses up about the same amount.37
The Ocean Gives Its Water Back to the Sky
When the sea is warmed, water evaporates and rises into the air as invisible water vapour. About 90 per cent of the moisture in the air comes from oceans, seas, lakes and rivers.38 Warm air can hold more of it: for every 1°C of warming, about 7 per cent more water vapour.39
As the moist air rises, it cools, and the vapour turns into tiny droplets. That’s a cloud. When the droplets grow big enough, they fall as rain, or as snow when it’s cold enough.40
Clouds Meet the Mountains
When moist air is pushed up over mountains, it cools even more and drops its water on the side facing the wind.40 That’s how the summer monsoon builds Bhutan’s glaciers, with snow high up in the mountains.41 It’s also why moist air from the Indian Ocean brings almost all the rain that falls on western Sumatra.42
Rivers Carry It Back to the Sea
Rivers carry the melted snow and ice down to the valleys and plains, where people drink it, grow food with it and turn it into electricity. Farming alone uses about 70 per cent of all the fresh water people take.43 Then the rivers run back into the ocean, and the journey starts again.
Sea to sky. Sky to snow. Snow to glacier. Glacier to river. River to sea. Into a rainforest, out through a leaf, up into a cloud.
Music and Our World. Music and Our Souls.
I believe music connects souls. You don’t need to speak the same language or come from the same place. When I play, something passes between me and whoever is listening, and for a moment we feel the same thing.
I think music connects us to places too. When I play on the ice, on a sandbank in the middle of the sea, or in the mountains above Laya, I’m not only playing to the people there. I’m playing to the place. I listen to it, and I try to answer it.
It’s a special feeling when I perform in nature, and I don’t know how to describe it. The acoustics are bad. It’s cold, or it’s hot, and there’s noise. But feeling the sound of the piano blend with nature is indescribable, and yet it feels right, and understood. I’m certain an exchange happens when a person, through music, reaches Mother Nature.
That’s why I take my music to these places. If people can feel a glacier, or the sea around a sandbank, the way they feel a piece of music, maybe they’ll care for it the way they care for the people they love.