Entombed by ice, as it were, a leading global warming scientist died when his snowmobile went down a huge crevasse.

A climate scientist who studied glaciers died in Antarctica on Saturday when the snowmobile he was riding went into a 100-foot-deep crevasse, according to the National Science Foundation, which was funding his research.

The researcher, Gordon Hamilton, died on White Island in the continent’s Ross Archipelago, according to the University of Maine, where he was an associate research professor in the glaciology group at the Climate Change Institute. He was 50.

“Ice sheets are the biggest potential contributor to rapid sea level rise, and if we want to know how much sea level’s going to rise in the coming century, we need to understand how ice sheets behave,” he said in a short video uploaded to YouTube by the University of Maine in 2013.

(See related story here: "Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum.")

I think the Beach Boys have produced the best tribute to Mr. Hamilton there can be:

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.