Glaciers have shaped the world's landscapes and continue to affect earth's climate just as human caused climate change impacts them. Datshiane Navanayagam talks to two women dedicating their lives to the study of these giant ice structures.

Jemma Wadham is a glacier biogeochemist and writer whose research has taken her to glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, Svalbard, Chilean Patagonia, the Peruvian Andes and the Himalaya. She’s particularly interested in glacier-hosted life and the impacts of glaciers on the global carbon cycle. She’s won several awards for her academic work. Her book Ice Rivers is for a wider audience. She works at the University of Bristol and the Arctic University of Norway.

Heidi Sevestre is a French scientist who's studied glaciers around the world, from the French Alps to Greenland, from the Arctic to Antarctica. She’s part of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme and also works on a project looking at the last glaciers of Africa, found in the Rwenzori Mountains National Park, in Uganda. She is passionate about communicating the wonders of the cryosphere and the threats targeting it.

Producer: Jane Thurlow

(Image: Heidi Sevestre (L) , Credit Mael Sevestre. (R) Jemma Wadham. Credit T Bruckner)