Humans tend to view the world around them in an anthropocentric way. From this perspective, glaciers are of interest to the wider public in a specific context – if the glaciers melt, will our homes end up underwater? I suspect that the significance of glaciers is broader than this slightly vulgarised description.

That practical aspect is true, and it connects with the question, "is there a shortage of research subjects in Latvia, so one must go to study glaciers?". In fact, the question is very complex because glaciers are linked to the climate and natural systems to a very high degree. Let me give a simple example. Let us imagine Antarctica or Greenland – they are massive ice masses. Antarctica has an area of 13.9 million square kilometres, covered in ice. Ice has a very high reflectivity, known as albedo. In other words, most of the solar radiation is reflected back into the atmosphere. We are still living in an ice age, which began about 2.6 million years ago, and the aforementioned ice domes or ice sheets ensure the continuation of this ice age. Another aspect is that glaciers have a close connection with the global circulation of the ocean, which in turn is the foundation for the climate anywhere in the world, including Latvia. I am referring to the so-called thermohaline circulation. It is precisely near the glaciers – both by Greenland and by Antarctica – that the coldest and densest waters in the world are formed, which sink to the very bottom of the ocean and then flow out into all the oceans. These cold waters are the primary factor driving the aforementioned circulation "conveyor belt".