welcome to our Google+ hangout
celebrating 125 years of exploration
yes today I’m Lucy McNeil and I work in
national Geographics explorers team
helping them work on the next great
adventures in exploration so that we can
share them all with you as well today is
Earth Day and this is the kickoff for
the first google+ hangout on air which
are running all week so we hope that you
can join as many as you can today we’re
going to be asking about how technology
and innovation are pushing the
boundaries of discovery on our planet
and beyond we want to hear from you so
get all of your questions sent in to us
on every format you can join the
conversation on hashtag our earth and
let’s jump right in with our
participants today first of all we have
Tim Samaras who’s in Bennett in Colorado
and he’s a National Geographic Explorer
he’s waving there so you can see him tim
has built a fairly harrowing life’s work
for himself he predicts when a tornado
will hit he gets himself there before it
actually arrives to put down a recording
probe that he’s actually designed into
the twisters path and then he gets out
of the way so far he now spends every
May and June racing around tornado alley
in a van packed with weather recording
equipment and instruments so unlike the
rest of us he’s not sitting on a beach
next we have underwater very excitingly
in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia
Richard Fitzpatrick who’s waving there
as well he’s from Catlin Seaview
Richards a marine biologist whose
research like sharks and reef work he’s
also an Emmy award-winning
cinematographer and he has quite an
unusual way of approaching his research
tiger sharks and other species of sharks
by the tail he’s gonna tell us about why
he does that and how he does it
finally more than 50 films of unusual
animal behavior all over the world for
people like us a geographic BBC
discovery channel many never been seen
before so we’re excited to talk to him
and then we have I’m Christy Hansen’s
from NASA’s operation in Greece quite an
operation I fringe she’s calling him
from Goddard in Maryland in the United
States i’m kristi bellis her work on
operation ice bridge she’s like the uber
boss of everything they do she directs
the team she works out the mission and
she how much Graham that they’re going
to cover as well as jumping into that
High Arctic and Antarctic twice a year
I’m very jealous of Christie’s cutest I
just got back from a trip in Greenland
and so I know how amazing the landscape
is there as well we also have online
ninth and fifth graders from Muscle
Shoals school in alabama can you give us
a wave there hey hello we have Susan
Walton from Washington DC I season and
we have actually met qua from Kuala
Lumpur oh hi um so jumping right in I
think we’ll go to Tim first and can you
tell us about the innovations in your
field and the technologies that you’re
using around can you show us what you
have there as well Thanks oh sure um
some of the life work that I’ve been
involved with is the most impressive
contratos and being able to take direct
measurements from the inside when we
take measures looks like the tornadoes
we’re able to shut it more about how
powerful they are how powerful the wind
speeds are and perhaps we could
understand a little bit about the wind
field on how tornadoes react with the
ground and in long-term we’re hoping to
know more about these super storms these
storms that create these powerful
across the United States so that we can
better understand and brass perhaps
bring a better prediction to these
tornadoes right now the warning time is
about 15 minutes or so using the new
Doppler radar technology National
Weather Service has what we’re trying to
do to a courses to prove upon that time
and so that maybe we can get a 20-minute
warning or even a 25-minute to start in
terms of a tornado warning and that
actually saves lives in the end and so
that’s actually one of my thrusting
research the other thrust a research
excuse me is actually studying lightning
everybody probably thinks is a little
crazy side to go out and chase a
lightning strike but that’s what I’ve
done um I’ve actually looked at
lightning using high-speed photography
for those of you who are not familiar
with high-speed photography you see it
almost every Sunday or every Monday or
every sporting event that you watch on
television whether it’s baseball or
football after the game if you didn’t if
the operation of the play was too fast
for the eye they’ll actually go back and
play it in slow motion where you can
actually see how the outfielder missed
that ball or the receiver and missed
that catch near the end zone that’s high
speed photography I just taken that
technology and pointed towards the sky
for lightning strikes and that we’re
hoping to provide a better understanding
how a lightning strike forms and why
does it choose certain targets on the
ground so in a quick for a minute
summary that’s about my work out here
across the plains in the United States
that’s incredible thank you very much
Tim and that next question is to same
question is too I’m Richard I riches
oh oh here he is sorry we got me Shh s
yeah we have to keep meeting my
microphone otherwise it sounds like da
fighters in the first room sorry about
the delay oh yeah welcome to Israel two
o’clock in the morning here aside
technology don’t play a major role in
what we’re doing with the Catlin Seaview
survey one of the main innovations that
we’ve come up with is a specialized
camera system that we call the sp2 and
it’s a 360 degree panoramic camera
system mounted on an underwater scooter
that allows us to travel long distances
and take whole 360 degree panoramic
images every couple of seconds and these
images then form a very valuable data
base for us to do reef monitoring other
technologies that we use include our
deep water robots are these because as
divers we’re really limited to how deep
and how long we can spend on morning
images as well so yeah oh yes that the
great images from this kit but the
robots allow us to go deeper and to
explore and we’re finding new things all
the time we found a new species of coral
that is that 120 meters that was never
known before i got some cool gadgets to
like this one oh we’re waiting why is
that it’s a normal trivalent dropped in
an underwater her so usually underwater
travelin the court daughter so if you
also use this to control the term
assistance sister notice on it and we
can control the aperture and the shutter
speed of the camera systems so we turned
her to turn the cameras editor housing
to change other parameters
that’s just like your normal travel that
you have a hump skips in the modified
rousing so we can take it under water
I’m coming along as part of the
technology were doing at the moment it’s
underwater hangouts so to take people
are you guys now so a different world so
technology is a very big part of what
we’re doing with the Catlin Seaview
server well it’s very impressive Richard
and we are so appreciate the time that
you’ve got not to get underwater and get
all of your equipment together for us so
thank you very much um I want to thank
you with you in a second um and then I
wanted to also ask Christy I’ll just
repeat the question in case we still
have people tuning in can you tell us
about the innovation field and the
technologies that you’re using yeah
first I’d like to say I feel pretty
fortunate to be part of an amazing team
here with the project operation
IceBridge and I think what makes us
amazing is that we do have a lot of
diverse complex systems working together
it’s like an amazing set of choreography
to collect the data that we do we fly a
various NASA aircraft like a modified p3
and we also fly a dc-8 endless you what
we do is we take those aircraft and we
file we fly them low and slow over the
poles so we’ll collect data on ice
sheets sea ice and glaciers right using
a suite of a innovative instrumentation
essentially we have four radar systems
and with our radar systems we can we can
actually see through the ice to the
bedrock beneath and why that’s important
is understanding the shape at the
thickness of the ice and the the shape
of the bedrock below can help us put
that information in two models that
might predict in the future how these
glaciers and ice sheets might change
ultimately affecting see lower eyes we
also have a laser altimetry system that
flies that can detect elevation changes
in the ice and we can compare that to
what we see each year so we fly over
pretty much the same flight paths
glaciers where we know are dumping a lot
of ice per year see if the ice sheets
thinning how the cs is behaving and we
use all the instrumentation to measure
those changes and then we present all of
our data for free to the world for
anyone who wants you
use it that’s incredible I’ve seen a lot
of your images online recently as well
and it’s pretty impressive so thank you
that I think that um actually actually
has a question for Richard I don’t know
if you want to ask that now actually
pushes um I think this was the one to
talk about the evolution of Technology
in there a barrier reef for richer or
how did you feel of Technology half the
work being done on the Great Barrier
Reef and what what is that has really
change in the studies that were being
done in the past with a technology in
the fall and I compared to now okay um
images have always been an important
part of the balls in ecology the vet
very brief yeah we’ve got historical
photographs going back over 100 years so
there we can go back to those areas and
have a look the new technologies that we
have now particularly with the SB 2
means we can survey an area of a rate of
its 16 times faster than what we can do
as scuba divers the scooter places oh
yeah travels of couple kilometres an
hour I just over the last 12 months
we’ve surveyed 32 weeks we’ve traveled
at 150 kilometers underwater and have
taken just over a hundred and five
thousand 360 degree panoramic images so
it’s a massive gada over a large area
that’s gained and got very quickly Shh
so that’s one big advantage age as I
mentioned earlier the robots are
allowing us to do serve our areas in the
deeper waters as well it’s not just the
totals that we’re finding running out of
space of the first
but with ya climate change one of the
ideas is that the corals may retreat
down into the deeper waters where to be
cooler at the moment don’t have a handle
on that we’re just starting now with the
whole RV so the technology is allowing
us just to get better and more
information well it’s really critical we
have all this information right now as a
baseline so it just have something to
compare with as change occurs was what
was happening and what what there was
it’s incredible thank you Richard um I
haven’t I have a question for from
Gonzalo matos Aragon who facebooked us
he’s from Buenos Aires and he’s asking
Tim usually for capturing lightning you
need to set the camera with long
exposure values and his question is do
you actually stay still during the whole
exposure time and then another quick one
from become father from jammu he says he
asked us on Facebook what’s your go-to
aperture and ISO what equipment do you
actually use Wow ok well that’s up to
capture a lightning strike using high
school photography takes various you
know taking a very special camera and
the to take a big shot of a lightning
strike you have to have what they call a
lightning trigger to be adapted to your
time so when the trigger sees the flash
of lightning it’ll trip your camera and
then you have set the out to the daytime
exposure the problem with that trigger
is the fact that uh it the lightning
strike may only flash once and the
trigger cannot check the pulse fast
enough to open the camera quick enough
and so what I’ve resorted to is some
technology such as this I don’t know if
you can see this but this is this is
what they call a high school and this
camera has get go to you brought in
fifteen thousand frames per second and
this is what I use to capture a
lightning strike using high-speed
photography
and to see the lightning when it first
evolves out of the thunderstorm I have
to run the aperture basically wide open
like f 2 A or F 2 point 0 to get as much
light into this camera as possible it
gets a little technical but the problem
is yeah we don’t want to get to t text
is easy technical a shutter time is just
too short to get enough light into the
camera so we have to run an aperture
that’s wide wide open and so that’s what
I do of course now for nighttime
photography it’s pretty easy you can do
it with any camera and you can set it up
on a tripod you open the shutter up for
a period of time 10 seconds 20 seconds
30 seconds and when the lighting flashes
you close it and you run maybe a iso
maybe 500 or maybe 750 and maybe with a
an aperture starting out maybe at f8 or
f11 and then you look at the pictures
with digital technology to look at it
quickly and then you can aperture up or
after down if the lighting strike is too
hot that’ll amazing and that is a good
one full of our face o lovers out there
I’m Susan I think you had something that
you wanted to ask Christy because I know
that you have a huge interest in NASA
yeah I one of the things I’m curious
Christy do PR people surprised to find
out that you work for NASA but you polar
exploration yeah I think they are it’s
funny that you ask that question because
I know if I have friends or family asked
me what I do they look at me like I’m
lying to them like they can’t even
process that I fly on airplanes at 1,500
feet over the Greenland ice sheets and
go down to Antarctica it’s kind of hard
to to bring the why do you do this how
did you get into it to the general
public you know what does that mean you
don’t learn about that in school I mean
I didn’t really know about that in
school I didn’t realize how big airborne
science wasn’t NASA because people tend
to think human spaceflight or they know
about astronauts or the space station
but you know i’m pleased to admit that
I’ve been very impressed with the scope
of the airborne campaigns doing
atmospheric research my project flying
over the poles known Polar Research
pretty amazing so I think
definitely people are surprised by it
but i try to i’m trying to reach more of
a wider audience we have a Facebook page
now so that people outside of NASA kids
and school educators even family members
can understand a little bit about why we
go there why we’re studying it how do we
determine what flight paths how do we
pick our science targets from all of
that as a that’s fantastic and I school
are you guys ready to ask a question we
are sure go for it don’t be shy I’m sure
you’re not shy normally Richard this is
for Richard uh how will the information
gained from your data collected be
shared good job yeah that reason is so
much oh okay how will the information
games from your data collected be shared
okay the data from the sleeving survey
with the 360-degree photos they go off
to the researchers and that can analyze
the America cover Allison in the imagery
I also looking at fish abundance another
benthic corner and stuff what up but
then as a general problem you’re able to
access the data and go diving on a
virtual race I just looking on google
street view through the strait v there’s
a number of reefs on at the moment that
you can go in and explore so you just
can click along the reef can zoom tilt
all around eight to have a look so is a
large public engagement side but at the
same time the researchers in the book
run quantifying all the dollars
but you guys want to share it real-time
pretty what those are surveys have done
so if you just go into the sea view
website you’ll be in it watch some of
the roofs of the Great Barrier Reef that
have been surveyed so far and they’ll be
just more and more coming online first
time not just the very ring but other
ropes are in the world as well that’s
fantastic do you guys um it muscle shoal
want to be marine biologists now that
you seen what rich in dos what are y’all
I know I’d like to be at the Great
Barrier Reef instead of in Washington DC
right now pretty jealous well it’s gotta
do it somebody’s gonna get exactly and
so we’ll move on to our next theme now I
think I’m how are real-world examples of
technology that you’re all involved in
and that you see at NASA and catlin and
National Geographic being used to shape
the research and exploration that you’re
all involved in and even you know what
do you see in other industries that
you’re excited about not just in your
own because I think that gives us a more
personal flavor of what you’re into and
that first question is for Tim I think
well the technology that we’re bringing
to the field help understand these super
storms can certainly maybe lend itself
lend itself in other applications as
well the instruments that I design and
build to be put in the paths of
tornadoes and by the way let me let me
get done yeah sure yeah we’ve had all
about this we want to see it now this is
the instrument it weighs about 50 pounds
i’m going to put it down soon nah this
is in 15 places 50 pounds what side to
be placed in the directly in the path of
a tornado and it’s critical it’s shaped
like like like a pyramid a chronicle
pyramid and so the wind flow goes over
the top but yet it stays in place so the
most powerful tornado can hit it and
won’t bother at all as it does and
unlocks the secrets it’s good to put
that down
I of the tornado itself and for us to do
that help us understand what we call
some of the dynamics of tornadoes how
powerful the wind speeds are we measure
what we call the barometric pressure
drop on the inside of the tornado I hope
the world record measuring the lowest
pressure drop inside of a tornado ever
in that record still stands I so a lot
of the technology that we used to go
like this data also for a lot of the
lightning research that we’ve done we’re
kind of pushing the bounds of what we
could do technically I also designed a
camera that goes over a million frames
per second to help capture them very
brief moment of time as the lightning
strike hits the ground so we can see
what they call the attachment process
but we can understand how and why some
of that the lightning strike hits the
ground and for us to show some
illustrations and some pictures and some
other data that we collect you know help
us better understand that a lot of the
physics of lightning which we don’t
still don’t quite understand totally as
an example how does the lightning strike
originated inside a thunderstorm we
still don’t quite grasp that and so
we’re trying to understand that part and
so the technology that we’re bringing to
bear to help understand super storms
well ultimately lead to a better
understanding of storms themselves and
that in turn helps provide better safety
for you know our people here on the land
from tornadoes and lightning because if
we had some mitigating better mitigating
factors for lightning better understood
lightning then we can apply the new
technology and the new learning to keep
people say that and that obviously goes
for tornadoes as well it’s very exciting
thank you I’m Christie what would you
say yes so brief by sorry Christie
before you start I’m gonna ask the
students at muscle show hello if you can
get ready to tee up your experiment just
while Cristy is getting ready cuz i know
you have something cool to show us Thank
You Christie go oh yeah sure so on one
thing with me on operation ice bridge is
that I’ve been on the project for about
a year and like I said before I’m pretty
amazed with everything that’s going on
in airborne science
so what I’ve learned since I’ve been on
the project is I have a much better
understanding of changes that are
happening for our planet right now I
didn’t have a great appreciation for
that before I started working on ice
bridge so what I’ve learned and what I
can see in our data and talking to our
science teams or instrument operators
our aircraft team people who have been
going back to the ice for years ice
bridge is been around since since 2009
but airborne laser altimetry has been
around for 20 to 30 years so talking to
the experts and seeing some of the stuff
myself essentially what I spirit is
doing is measuring changes so we’re a
data collection project right so what we
can say is between 2009 2010 2011 we’re
seeing changes that are happening to the
ice sheet glaciers and it’ll you know I
don’t want to use too much of an
adjective but some of the ice loss like
glaciers dumping in the oceans or kind
of an alarming rate so I didn’t realize
how much the polar processes affect the
overall climate like ultimately sea
level rise so a lot of our
instrumentation on including gravity
magnetics are altimetry our radars are
showing each year what’s thinning how
much ice we’re losing you know how thick
is the ice sheet has it changed what’s
happening to sea ice the sea ice extent
or the oval overall coverage is reducing
and what we do is we submit all of our
data sets for free to something called
nsidc org and then we have a science
team and international partners who look
at our data and can actually put papers
together based on trends that they’re
seeing so essentially that’s kind of how
our technology we’re using it to
understand the earth better very cool um
thank you very much Christy now muscle
shoals students are you ready to show us
yes your little plan we are ready what
we’re doing is we’re you sorry press
your words tell us about it okay we’re
using our Earth Day passports and each
group of fifth graders is going through
with my current juniors and seniors to a
different station with their passport
and learning and they will get a stamp
and they’ll journal what’s happening at
each station so this station for
instance we have albatross smallest
that Carson’s going to tell you just a
little bit about real quick so what it
is it’s actually these are from birds in
hawaii and it’s the regurgitation that
they actually feed their arm youth right
fielder yes what it is is you can uh are
these okay bring it closer guys bring a
little bit nicer also is that good yes
so right here you can kind of say some
of the plastics and stuff that are in
the uh what these birds are trying to
digest and what it is it’s from the
pollution actually and littering in like
California like the western coast of the
United States I’m glad I my breakfast
yet actually but what else horrible and
like the clashes and stuff actually get
caught in an ocean current and they
bring it around to the coast of Hawaii
where the seabirds actually digest all
this stuff like the plastics and I’ll
just just stuff that you can’t digest
wow that’s incredible anything you going
I no good sorry no no it’s just going to
ask how in studying that how long
they’ve been in a classroom and um we’ve
had the samples for over a year and we
just keep them wrapped up and no good it
smells it smells one of our other
stations is about polar animals and how
they adapt to different temperatures and
so we have to trace of ice and one has a
blubber um baggie you right we’re
in the blubber baggie let’s yeah just
tip it forward a bit so you can see it
just tip it over forward a little bit
more and then one in the ice so he’s
comparing his naked hand with the one in
the blubber and and I said he’s saying
so what do you think what do you think
saleable Alan this one is cold and this
one
so the insulation works it works do you
wish you were heard by now that’s
brilliant I love that you’re doing that
anyway you sure I’m sorry I’m so gone
that was my bell ringing we also have a
nice of a National Geographic education
world map about the hallway and we’re
tracing the route that Arctic Terns take
from the North Pole toward the South
Pole and the kids are using the math to
map the journey it’s amazing i wish i
wish i was in your science class when I
was little that’s fabulous alright guys
thank you very much um so then we’re
going to move on to our next question
from Facebook we’re trying to find out I
guess this one is for Tim well maybe
we’ll leave that one this is Norman
Martinez on facebook he asks is there
anything in our military arsenal that
can break a tornado funnel while it’s
warming I bet you get this all the time
too oh yes this is probably one of the
more common comedy that’s the quickie on
it yeah this is what a common question
that the short answer is absolutely not
to match the energy of a supercell
thunderstorm that creates a tornado
would be totally massive and people even
talked about detonating a nuclear
warhead next to the tornado and that’s
you know that’s totally absurd so at the
moment is the technology just does not
exist and so we’re just gonna have to
learn and cope and Warren as best we can
at least powerful wind storms it does
seem to be now um I wanted Susan do you
have any more general questions on this
same theme yeah I actually have a
question for it’s probably for all three
Tim Richard and Christie like how much
of the future of exploration do you
think is going to be moving more towards
like autonomous vehicles doing the bulk
of sort of the actual exploring with
humans more sitting back and doing the
analysis you know our are these are
ovies and cameras going to take away
from people actually being in the field
good question I could jump in on that
okay yeah well I can just give you a
small part I’m sorts a wider picture
than what i have but um with operation
IceBridge we’re currently focusing on
human or manned aircraft so we have
teams going into the field I mean
there’s a lot of flexibility with that
and it’s nice having human in the loop
because we can make quick decisions if
weather’s bad wouldn’t go instead of
point a go to point B I’m at the same
time you do send people in this field
for that well future options include you
may have heard of Global Hawk and has
some other unmanned aerial systems we’re
considering melling some of our laser
altimeter zon that are either showing
the p3 right now that’s what we just
flew to Greenland it’s still there
pretty amazing aircraft but um yeah
definitely we are considering and
looking into options for putting some of
our instrumentation on unmanned aerial
vehicles and they can fly a lot longer
they can fly higher we can collect just
tons of data with them so it was an
option that we were looking into that’s
amazing thank you Richard what about you
yeah are you raised a different major
part of the future in marine biology
particularly in the open oceans and the
deep ocean and there are literally
thousands of oh you these are all around
the globe at the moment that are called
gliders that simply dropped through the
layers of the ocean collecting all the
data of the temperature salinity and
other water quality parameters and then
they’ll come back to the surface and
transmit that information via satellite
and then start back down again so the
ATVs are going to allow us to know from
water quality data over all these very
hostile and very deep environment that
as humans we just cannot get it’s just
it is like Prince of to spend time up
there so the good news is it will still
leave all the lovely shallow water
environments to strive to explore
ourselves but even there with what we’re
doing a sea view is the next generation
will be using a UV so we can serve our
more rapes quicker longer faster and
gain the doubt of that Shh I v’s will
play a very important role that will
still need people out there as well
fantastic um and I wonder do you have
another question for us as well um
season oh yeah actually I was interested
to see what Tim thinks about that
because in the type of in the type of
work that he does it seems like putting
humans in that path is a little
self-destructive yes indeed it it
certainly is destructive I don’t want to
be in the path of tornado change
measurements that’s why we use a rodent
remote instrumentation like I just
showed you we place those in the path
but there’s other remote instrumentation
that is currently being in used to
detect these monster storms and that is
one of them is a National Weather
Service nationwide radar system is
actually called wsr-88d and what that
system is is actually detect notation
and thunderstorms and it allows us to
provide adequate warning for
thunderstorms that may be approaching
your area and that’s one of them another
one would be a system specifically to
study lightning we have what we call a
sprite network or sprite as an upper
atmospheric discharge of electrical
discharge many miles above the
thunderstorm and we have these cameras
these low lights cameras all around the
country looking and detecting these
sprites that discharge themselves up
above the atmosphere and finally the one
is that the final one is actually NASA
NOAA are going to launch a brand-new
weather satellite that has an incredible
camera that is able to watch and detect
lightening up here on the planet which
I’m really looking forward to that’s
really going to be a real boon for
science Wow so what do you think about
that akshay I mean sprites and booms for
science does that get you excited
yeah yeah sorry my record really so I
would do to ask if there is any
possibility of harvesting these energies
I mean from the lightning from the upper
atmosphere not from the ground the front
of atmosphere is there any possibility
of doing that moving the future well uh
yes that’s that question I’ve been asked
several times before the question is is
there is it possible the harvest energy
from the lightning and I think
theoretically it’s possible but the
problem is although the lightning strike
has got a lot of energy millions of
volts and thousands of amperes of
current that happens in a millisecond a
few milliseconds and the problem is
harvesting that much energy in two short
of the time you have to have huge super
conductors and a capacitor effectively
to take the charge in that instant brief
a time brief amount of time
unfortunately we’re just not there yet
we’re doing a great job of harvesting
power from the wind we’re doing a great
job of higher singh power from the Sun
lightning and tornadoes we’re a little
ways off and although i’d love to see if
my lifetime I just don’t think it’s
going to be possible right but that
brings us to another piece I think that
brings us in the next point in our
discussion quite nicely because we’re
trying to get a scale of what we have
learned so far before we get that far I
mean Richard when you’re looking at the
images that you get from your research
in Catlin what do you think is the most
resonating image and why I mean one of
the big picture implications and and how
does it affect the man in the street if
it affects him
yeah I growing up on the Great Barrier
Reef son I’ve been watching it literally
on my life and definitely I’ve seen
changes caring and not only the great
barrier reef but of course Allah in the
world we are seeing a decline in quality
of hooves particularly those associated
with him a presence on the mainland yeah
where you got runoff from agriculture
urban industry so as humans we are
definitely having an effect on coral
reefs Shh and we’re really at a critical
point in time where the decisions were
making now well basically determine what
quality of reef we are going to have in
the future they can run the Taurus will
always be around yeah they’re the
ultimate survivors have been around
hundreds of millions of years through
sea level changes shame major climatic
effects through history Shh but what the
roofs are facing now is an unprecedented
it’s the rate of change of the issue Shh
and if we want to have resilience and
fire diverse race we need to be
protecting them now having some time set
aside as protected areas and other areas
that can be used Shh but it change is
definitely happening but the amount of
change is going to be totally up to us
right exactly we’re working on a similar
project here at National Geographic
which is very exciting for that too
called pristine seas we have the other
Richard from Catlin online to I think
Richard is safe on dry land and letting
other it to do all the hard work today
but at least he’s up for a 2 a.m. in the
morning as well we’ve got a question
here from from the team how much of the
work that we need to do to save reefs
happens underwater versus above the
waves Oh Richard oh no this is a mole
and drop this is the dry land Richard up
there
are you there itches hello Richard babes
can you can you talk to that got me okay
well we’ll just put it back to you
Richard can you talk about it for sure
thank you when people think of it Mon
biologists are they doing the job that
we spent all our time out in the ocean
unfortunately this is far from the truth
so you know just an hour surveilling
underwater can literally lead two days
of data processing processing the images
you know of quantifying what in those
images so a lot of the work is done dry
side and file much much larger team of
people and that’s one of the ideas we
have the sea view though you have a very
small teams go out do rapid assessment
of the roofs and bring that data back to
a whole team of scientists not only just
tear in Australia but all over in the
world then pull the data from those and
regions so Shh it’s a lot of dry side
work out also almost sort of ten percent
work not even so dry right exactly and
Christy what about you what’s your sense
of scale of where you are in in NASA’s
rich history what do you think’s the big
picture yeah well my observation so far
has been that you know we are definitely
in a period of change I think um you
look at what’s happening to the climate
and again ice bridge is just collecting
data but looking at the trends changes
are happening and they’re happening
faster than they ever have in the past
so one thing that we can say with
certainty from my project is that uh
we’re losing ice the polar regions are
losing ice t i6 then is less than it was
I can say from first hand knowledge
flying over the Arctic oceans we flew
out of Fairbanks it was for totally Air
Force Base in Greenland
able to see immediately that the ice
cover from previous years looked up
thinner there were warm water open leads
that chemical ever seen in the past so I
think change is happening right before
our eyes so that’s one thing that we can
kind of say with confidence we’re not
here to say what’s causing it
necessarily but we’re saying we’re these
trends each year that something is
happening to our polar ice um and
characterizing those changes yeah and
it’s fantastic to have no service part
of that huge global conversation it
really is Tim I was we have one for me
from killing ashore in North Carolina
who asks on Google+ to this same theme
are we getting better at detecting
understanding and predicting lightning
writ large we are definitely improving
that in fact a large government agency
has launched a pretty exhaustive program
to study lightning the original
lightning like i have discussed how the
lightning strike it involves inside of a
thunderstorm or a cloud that’s a process
we still don’t quite understand we
developed a lot of technology out to
detect lightning and actually provide
what we call a 3d mapping of a lightning
strike as the lightning strike emerges
out of the cloud we have these radio
receivers located all around the
thunderstorm that actually provide a 3d
a mapping of how that lightning strike
emerges out of the thunderstorm you know
why and how then where lightning strike
that’s a tough one and that’s something
that we’re currently digging into I feel
like although we know quite a bit about
lightning and the hows and whys and it’s
generation we’re still kind of
scratching the surface and a lot of
research is still being conducted on you
know the effects of lightning and even
perhaps prediction of lightning so we
still have a little ways to go fantastic
and then our participants do any of you
want to ask delve deeper into that
question and ask a specific you know
from something that you’re interested in
on you know what what what is the scale
of what’s happened in a particular
subject I don’t know if actually wants
to jump in if there’s something that you
want to you really want to know where
we’re up to no well then yeah one
question that I have is you know I think
Richard touched on this a little bit
about how he’s using the panoramas to
engage the public in the research is
there Chris for Christian 10 is there a
public participation portion of the
kinds of work that you’re doing that can
even broaden the scope to sort of bring
meaning to to the general public
absolutely um it I was just going to
jump in here unless somebody else wanted
to okay we have a very successful and
large public outreach and education
outreach program with operation
IceBridge we um so we’re trying to
engage the public we’re trying to engage
classrooms as much as we can I think
we’ve really gotten to be very
successful this year so some ways that
we’re doing it our social media we have
a new Facebook page so we’re exposing
more people the ice bridge we have a
Twitter account we also what we do is we
bring teachers into the field with us so
literally just this campaign in
Greenland we had three teachers with us
we had a an American teacher a
Greenlandic teacher and a Danish teacher
so we flew them on our aircraft and in
real time they SAT with our instrument
operators developed lesson plans and
they expose those real-time lesson plans
so their kids back in the classroom
we’re able to even chat with with
classrooms while flying at 1,500 feet
over the Greenland ice sheet we were
chatting with um schools all over the
United States and even in different
parts of the country I’m getting kids
engaged in why do you fly over polarize
what does that mean how can I get
involved in that so I feel like we’re
starting to now touch all different
parts of humanity from teachers students
the general public friends and family
and I I just continue to hear a great
feedback from these these teachers who
say today their students said it was the
best day of the year because they got to
talk to the NASA scientist while they
were flying as I feel like we do have a
a really great we have videos out there
on our on our website that show what
it’s like we have a forward camera that
flies in the cop
the p3 so you can actually watching that
video you can feel like you’re taking
ride with us on our p3 we post all that
on our Facebook page you can mess up you
through the show in there yeah that is
absolutely wild I’m Tim quickly I mean
what’s your public outreach with the
work you do with Geographic well
certainly we bring back first off the
course so we bring back incredible
imagery from the field although the
research that we’re doing is certainly
important for our understanding
tornadoes lightning the imagery that we
bring back and the knowledge that we
bring back to the public I also provide
a lot of educational outreach to
calculate classrooms along with the
society and a lot of them my images that
I thought I’ve collected a lot of the
data that I’ve collected I actually
appear in small textbooks believe it or
not and it to help kids to understand
the weather the weather processes and
and show how scientists engage
themselves in research what are the
research processes and that to me is
really the important part of a lot of
the mission that we go out there is to
get kids engaged in that and so they can
actually see scientists at work in the
field and there are also a lot of other
things that the public does participate
and with certainly with the weather as
an example for those of you who enjoy
watching thunderstorms you can actually
contact your local National Weather
Service and become what they call storms
fire and I lost them yeah you can
actually go out and help spot storms and
report your findings directly to the
National Weather Service and they in
turn based on your report will actually
induce a trader warning of the severe
thunderstorm warning so that’s a way
that the public can get engaged and
there’s some other amateur scientists
that have personally personally have
taken on cameras to actually go out and
photographs sprites and they are very
good at it and that’s a perfect the
citizen science piece of that is a
perfect move into our lightning round
which is only going to be a few seconds
each for each view so just the first
thing that comes into your head but you
know a lot of people are out
going on social media how do I get
involved Jessica Metzger is one how do I
get involved just as an enthusiast
without a science degree in the sorts of
work that you’re doing but I think even
bigger than that we’re asking you know
how did how did you guys before you had
science degrees get involved in the work
that you’re doing today so just very
quickly what what were the key pieces
Christie go go yes um I ever since I can
remember when I was little I I always
loved science I lungs of space and
interested in um I’d read any book I
could on on house what things were in
space human spaceflight um what’s going
on in earth science what’s going on in
astronomy so I just had this this born
natural desire to understand how things
worked and I definitely have a lot of
determination and drive so I I pretty
much I couldn’t be stopped how did this
work I look it up or I want to do this
and somebody might say no you can’t do
that and I never listened to them so I
just continue to press with my passion
and was able to get your eyes their
determination so that’s fantastic okay
Richard tell me the funniest thing
that’s happened to you at work
preferably under water my hair was funny
is the funniest notice carious something
is our scariest um I got dragged off the
back of a boat once by a five made a
great white shark oh and i had a special
know him and I stupidly had the camera
on a harness so in the shower curved and
swallowed the camera and swam off with
it I was attached to the plumber pole
and got dragged into the water with it
readers and scariest virtual sort of
shark attack that have had it mean to be
I grew up on the Great Barrier Reef as a
kid I had marine t-shirts and being a
boy I had white sharks and stone fish
and sea snake and I loved other venomous
dangerous animals and I like taking
photos of them so my whole career been
bouncing between science and Phil
I can and I just love it underwater it’s
more about I prefer it under here than
on the top side to me this is home at
the moment it’s wonderful that’s
wonderful what about you Tim what’s the
scariest cuz you must have had a few
close shaves by now oh excuse yeah pops
into your head oh boy I can go on this
all day long no you’re not hard you
calling a lot time it’s a lightning
round it’s your round it’s lightning
that’s why Kid well you know the
scariest time probably for me was about
15 years ago we were actually chasing a
tornado at night and of course a tornado
at night you can’t see you go in south
central Kansas it gets so dark out there
you put your hand in front of your face
you can’t see your hand the only way to
see tornadoes is with lightning we were
actually chasing a tornado at night the
Lightning was pretty infrequent and the
tornado was going at us is 1030 and we
were trying to deploy our estimate and
finally we just said you know what this
tornado is getting too close he drove
out of the path that tornado crust right
where we were park about 45 seconds
later oh wow that’s not funny ya know
that was 15 years ago and I since then
I’ve never chased nighttime tornadoes
ever again good lesson learned I
remember that one for me as well okay
we’ve got the kids now the students at
mussel shells they’re going to ask I
think their last question go for it hi
for Christy crazy yes with the data you
are collecting how can we help to desert
to preserve the ice that’s a very very
good question right so um right now with
the data were collecting that anybody
could look up you can look it up we can
show how everything is changing right so
what does that mean like we can say
there’s less sea ice the we’re losing a
lot of high school a sures are calving
into the ocean and in each year it looks
like it might be more and more right so
those are things that we know that are
happy to happen so we can take that
information and try and educate the
public we can try and educate Congress
on the people who make decisions above
our heads
and say hey you know what something is
happening here and it’s happening faster
than it ever did in our earliest records
you know we can look and see what what
happened in the past and we can try and
point out that hey these changes with
the ice melting faster than then average
may be influenced by things that human
beings are doing on the planet right now
so you take a look why are these changes
happening is it something that human
beings are doing on the planet are we is
it because we’re burning fossil fuels
right is that what is dumping more
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that
might be contributing to this heating of
the planet and subsequently melting the
ice so I think the best that we can do
on our project is just educate people
say something is happening and then what
we need is help from the public in the
Congress to take a look at that and say
you know what mom we are convinced we do
believe that human beings are
influencing this melting and from there
maybe take steps to try and reduce the
burning of fossil fuels leg being
smarter with our transportation using
smart fuels things like that so those
are things that you know we hope to
eventually come out here by um getting
everybody on the same page and everyone
understanding what’s going on so we can
kind of move forward as a community to
make the right decisions and be smart
about protecting our planet one day at a
time yeah that’s great is that does that
help you guys muscle shoals yeah great
great thank you so we’re going to move
on to what’s next you know what um what
are we going to see in the future I know
actually you have a question about what
we can do in the future over for
lightning but I think I wanted to just
put maybe to Richard first what issues
you think we’ll be measuring and facing
in sort of 20 years or 50 years what
will your colleagues be studying when we
think that sort of agree way I think a
lot of the issues will be what we’re
looking at now where we’re monitoring
climate change and the effects on the
car race themselves these corals and
this is an anatomy leave of hot side
beat this brown color actually trans
from
I it fills that live inside the car dr.
chase food for the falls from the sound
anything it’s a wonderful symbiotic
relationship but what happens during our
warm water oven Shh but it’s really
really hot it’s that the symbiotic
relationship goes out of whack and the
car is expelled the brown microscopic
algal cells healthy weight pearls right
now I want they those a healthy the ones
that we’re seeing you with right now Deb
totally these are healthy some
brown coal it’s healthy Carl don’t
believe what you see on TV because the
term of people only trick the really
pretty curls most of the curls are
actually just brawn yes but then these
bleaching events and he first started
about 20 years ago Shh and we’re going
to see the more and more frequently so
in the future in another 20 30 40 50
years I think it’s marine scientist who
every monitoring more and more bleaching
events and unfortunately that the
frequency of these placing event allah
khair more and more often to be
unfortunate but if the conditions return
to normal quickly the cars can recover
Shh but if that is they starve too long
from a bleaching hope they can’t die and
that’s one of the main ways of the
corals roost why we’re losing them
around the world it’s from these plates
immigrants got it Tim Tim what do you
think you’re going to be seeing in 50
years time or you think your buddies are
gonna be saying well you know we only
have a minute because we’re getting
we’re just so starting to wrap up in a
second I understand I think you know the
the things that Christie was studying
you know up in Greenland or certainly
changes in our planet and I think what
we’re going to be faced with the next
20-30 years is trying to understand how
the weather is going to be changing
along with the changes we see in the ice
pack we don’t really
no and it’s very very difficult because
of the tone you know the oscillations of
the the jet stream and so forth could be
very difficult but I think in a long
term 20 years from now we should better
understand how that’s going to affect
our weather some of the micro
measurements that I’ve taken
thunderstorms and lightning may provide
a little bit of a clue but the global
aspect is going to be studying on
average how many of these super storms
are going to happen right Susan anything
to add to that as a final question from
you and actually get ready if you have
one more question too I would just ask
like how given how fragile everything
you guys are examining is how optimistic
are you that we’ll be able to turn this
around given that it’s Earth Day like
Duke yeah from everything you’ve seen I
know Chris you touched a little bit on
this place like how optimistic are you
yeah yeah you can talk about the Technic
technology changes in the next 20 years
that would be great Christy thank you
thanks Susan yeah well I was going to
hit just briefly on I think a lot it is
a you know we’re advertising we’re
showing these trends that we’re taking I
mean satellite data is contributing to
it we have airborne science so we have a
lot of different platforms collecting
data on the changing planet like folks
were talking about weather changes but
um I think we’re observing a pretty
consistent message are the data that
icebridge collects in measuring the
changes in the ice sheet we’re looking
in our data sets right and then we’re
looking at new satellites like i SAT two
is about to launch in 2016 it’s a polar
orbiting satellite so they’re going to
start collecting data in so we’re going
to compare our datasets to make sure
that they match and it’s called
calibration and validation so we’re I
feel like from a scientific standpoint
we’re a team going forward from the plan
I mean we have international partners
with European Space Agency we work with
we’re working with other NASA centers
multiple satellite programs even now my
team is still in Greenland I’m here
we’re talking with the program managers
of the cryo SAT satellite which is at
another polar orbiting satellite from
isa and through those relationships were
kind of validating that we’re all
collecting the same information so we’re
coming forward with the same
you know we’re not measuring different
things than the satellites measuring so
I feel like the best we can do is show
our trends back up all of our data and
say something is happening here it’s
happening now it’s probably going to
even speed up more in the future so what
can we do from there so it’s really now
helping to convince the the entire
planet that maybe we do need to do
something about it I think that is the
hardest part not the technology I don’t
think the technology is that hard it’s
not convincing our population that we
need to take steps to try and reduce
that right you heard it here first it’s
not the technology that’s difficult it’s
the outreach and communication because
that is always persuading people rather
than things is the hardest part I’m
actually we are about to wrap up but i
think you have one final question oh no
I guess can I no no no no I guess I I
got the answer ok ok no problem well I
think that we’re coming to the end of
our time now so I’d like to thank
everybody here our production team and
pics i have been working their socks off
to get you hooked up seamlessly and
thanks to all of you for joining Google
Plus hangout we hope that you can join
us for the rest of the earth day series
where we’ll be talking about clean water
nature and nature’s engineers are beg
your pardon I’m recycling and oceans so
there’s a lot of topics to get into
there and check out national Geographics
google+ page for connecting and remember
everyone’s an explorer and you can
explore more by joining National
Geographic calm for one thing so thank
you again all of you especially from all
the crazy places that you’ve joined us
and we look forward to seeing you again
right
celebrating 125 years of exploration
yes today I’m Lucy McNeil and I work in
national Geographics explorers team
helping them work on the next great
adventures in exploration so that we can
share them all with you as well today is
Earth Day and this is the kickoff for
the first google+ hangout on air which
are running all week so we hope that you
can join as many as you can today we’re
going to be asking about how technology
and innovation are pushing the
boundaries of discovery on our planet
and beyond we want to hear from you so
get all of your questions sent in to us
on every format you can join the
conversation on hashtag our earth and
let’s jump right in with our
participants today first of all we have
Tim Samaras who’s in Bennett in Colorado
and he’s a National Geographic Explorer
he’s waving there so you can see him tim
has built a fairly harrowing life’s work
for himself he predicts when a tornado
will hit he gets himself there before it
actually arrives to put down a recording
probe that he’s actually designed into
the twisters path and then he gets out
of the way so far he now spends every
May and June racing around tornado alley
in a van packed with weather recording
equipment and instruments so unlike the
rest of us he’s not sitting on a beach
next we have underwater very excitingly
in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia
Richard Fitzpatrick who’s waving there
as well he’s from Catlin Seaview
Richards a marine biologist whose
research like sharks and reef work he’s
also an Emmy award-winning
cinematographer and he has quite an
unusual way of approaching his research
tiger sharks and other species of sharks
by the tail he’s gonna tell us about why
he does that and how he does it
finally more than 50 films of unusual
animal behavior all over the world for
people like us a geographic BBC
discovery channel many never been seen
before so we’re excited to talk to him
and then we have I’m Christy Hansen’s
from NASA’s operation in Greece quite an
operation I fringe she’s calling him
from Goddard in Maryland in the United
States i’m kristi bellis her work on
operation ice bridge she’s like the uber
boss of everything they do she directs
the team she works out the mission and
she how much Graham that they’re going
to cover as well as jumping into that
High Arctic and Antarctic twice a year
I’m very jealous of Christie’s cutest I
just got back from a trip in Greenland
and so I know how amazing the landscape
is there as well we also have online
ninth and fifth graders from Muscle
Shoals school in alabama can you give us
a wave there hey hello we have Susan
Walton from Washington DC I season and
we have actually met qua from Kuala
Lumpur oh hi um so jumping right in I
think we’ll go to Tim first and can you
tell us about the innovations in your
field and the technologies that you’re
using around can you show us what you
have there as well Thanks oh sure um
some of the life work that I’ve been
involved with is the most impressive
contratos and being able to take direct
measurements from the inside when we
take measures looks like the tornadoes
we’re able to shut it more about how
powerful they are how powerful the wind
speeds are and perhaps we could
understand a little bit about the wind
field on how tornadoes react with the
ground and in long-term we’re hoping to
know more about these super storms these
storms that create these powerful
across the United States so that we can
better understand and brass perhaps
bring a better prediction to these
tornadoes right now the warning time is
about 15 minutes or so using the new
Doppler radar technology National
Weather Service has what we’re trying to
do to a courses to prove upon that time
and so that maybe we can get a 20-minute
warning or even a 25-minute to start in
terms of a tornado warning and that
actually saves lives in the end and so
that’s actually one of my thrusting
research the other thrust a research
excuse me is actually studying lightning
everybody probably thinks is a little
crazy side to go out and chase a
lightning strike but that’s what I’ve
done um I’ve actually looked at
lightning using high-speed photography
for those of you who are not familiar
with high-speed photography you see it
almost every Sunday or every Monday or
every sporting event that you watch on
television whether it’s baseball or
football after the game if you didn’t if
the operation of the play was too fast
for the eye they’ll actually go back and
play it in slow motion where you can
actually see how the outfielder missed
that ball or the receiver and missed
that catch near the end zone that’s high
speed photography I just taken that
technology and pointed towards the sky
for lightning strikes and that we’re
hoping to provide a better understanding
how a lightning strike forms and why
does it choose certain targets on the
ground so in a quick for a minute
summary that’s about my work out here
across the plains in the United States
that’s incredible thank you very much
Tim and that next question is to same
question is too I’m Richard I riches
oh oh here he is sorry we got me Shh s
yeah we have to keep meeting my
microphone otherwise it sounds like da
fighters in the first room sorry about
the delay oh yeah welcome to Israel two
o’clock in the morning here aside
technology don’t play a major role in
what we’re doing with the Catlin Seaview
survey one of the main innovations that
we’ve come up with is a specialized
camera system that we call the sp2 and
it’s a 360 degree panoramic camera
system mounted on an underwater scooter
that allows us to travel long distances
and take whole 360 degree panoramic
images every couple of seconds and these
images then form a very valuable data
base for us to do reef monitoring other
technologies that we use include our
deep water robots are these because as
divers we’re really limited to how deep
and how long we can spend on morning
images as well so yeah oh yes that the
great images from this kit but the
robots allow us to go deeper and to
explore and we’re finding new things all
the time we found a new species of coral
that is that 120 meters that was never
known before i got some cool gadgets to
like this one oh we’re waiting why is
that it’s a normal trivalent dropped in
an underwater her so usually underwater
travelin the court daughter so if you
also use this to control the term
assistance sister notice on it and we
can control the aperture and the shutter
speed of the camera systems so we turned
her to turn the cameras editor housing
to change other parameters
that’s just like your normal travel that
you have a hump skips in the modified
rousing so we can take it under water
I’m coming along as part of the
technology were doing at the moment it’s
underwater hangouts so to take people
are you guys now so a different world so
technology is a very big part of what
we’re doing with the Catlin Seaview
server well it’s very impressive Richard
and we are so appreciate the time that
you’ve got not to get underwater and get
all of your equipment together for us so
thank you very much um I want to thank
you with you in a second um and then I
wanted to also ask Christy I’ll just
repeat the question in case we still
have people tuning in can you tell us
about the innovation field and the
technologies that you’re using yeah
first I’d like to say I feel pretty
fortunate to be part of an amazing team
here with the project operation
IceBridge and I think what makes us
amazing is that we do have a lot of
diverse complex systems working together
it’s like an amazing set of choreography
to collect the data that we do we fly a
various NASA aircraft like a modified p3
and we also fly a dc-8 endless you what
we do is we take those aircraft and we
file we fly them low and slow over the
poles so we’ll collect data on ice
sheets sea ice and glaciers right using
a suite of a innovative instrumentation
essentially we have four radar systems
and with our radar systems we can we can
actually see through the ice to the
bedrock beneath and why that’s important
is understanding the shape at the
thickness of the ice and the the shape
of the bedrock below can help us put
that information in two models that
might predict in the future how these
glaciers and ice sheets might change
ultimately affecting see lower eyes we
also have a laser altimetry system that
flies that can detect elevation changes
in the ice and we can compare that to
what we see each year so we fly over
pretty much the same flight paths
glaciers where we know are dumping a lot
of ice per year see if the ice sheets
thinning how the cs is behaving and we
use all the instrumentation to measure
those changes and then we present all of
our data for free to the world for
anyone who wants you
use it that’s incredible I’ve seen a lot
of your images online recently as well
and it’s pretty impressive so thank you
that I think that um actually actually
has a question for Richard I don’t know
if you want to ask that now actually
pushes um I think this was the one to
talk about the evolution of Technology
in there a barrier reef for richer or
how did you feel of Technology half the
work being done on the Great Barrier
Reef and what what is that has really
change in the studies that were being
done in the past with a technology in
the fall and I compared to now okay um
images have always been an important
part of the balls in ecology the vet
very brief yeah we’ve got historical
photographs going back over 100 years so
there we can go back to those areas and
have a look the new technologies that we
have now particularly with the SB 2
means we can survey an area of a rate of
its 16 times faster than what we can do
as scuba divers the scooter places oh
yeah travels of couple kilometres an
hour I just over the last 12 months
we’ve surveyed 32 weeks we’ve traveled
at 150 kilometers underwater and have
taken just over a hundred and five
thousand 360 degree panoramic images so
it’s a massive gada over a large area
that’s gained and got very quickly Shh
so that’s one big advantage age as I
mentioned earlier the robots are
allowing us to do serve our areas in the
deeper waters as well it’s not just the
totals that we’re finding running out of
space of the first
but with ya climate change one of the
ideas is that the corals may retreat
down into the deeper waters where to be
cooler at the moment don’t have a handle
on that we’re just starting now with the
whole RV so the technology is allowing
us just to get better and more
information well it’s really critical we
have all this information right now as a
baseline so it just have something to
compare with as change occurs was what
was happening and what what there was
it’s incredible thank you Richard um I
haven’t I have a question for from
Gonzalo matos Aragon who facebooked us
he’s from Buenos Aires and he’s asking
Tim usually for capturing lightning you
need to set the camera with long
exposure values and his question is do
you actually stay still during the whole
exposure time and then another quick one
from become father from jammu he says he
asked us on Facebook what’s your go-to
aperture and ISO what equipment do you
actually use Wow ok well that’s up to
capture a lightning strike using high
school photography takes various you
know taking a very special camera and
the to take a big shot of a lightning
strike you have to have what they call a
lightning trigger to be adapted to your
time so when the trigger sees the flash
of lightning it’ll trip your camera and
then you have set the out to the daytime
exposure the problem with that trigger
is the fact that uh it the lightning
strike may only flash once and the
trigger cannot check the pulse fast
enough to open the camera quick enough
and so what I’ve resorted to is some
technology such as this I don’t know if
you can see this but this is this is
what they call a high school and this
camera has get go to you brought in
fifteen thousand frames per second and
this is what I use to capture a
lightning strike using high-speed
photography
and to see the lightning when it first
evolves out of the thunderstorm I have
to run the aperture basically wide open
like f 2 A or F 2 point 0 to get as much
light into this camera as possible it
gets a little technical but the problem
is yeah we don’t want to get to t text
is easy technical a shutter time is just
too short to get enough light into the
camera so we have to run an aperture
that’s wide wide open and so that’s what
I do of course now for nighttime
photography it’s pretty easy you can do
it with any camera and you can set it up
on a tripod you open the shutter up for
a period of time 10 seconds 20 seconds
30 seconds and when the lighting flashes
you close it and you run maybe a iso
maybe 500 or maybe 750 and maybe with a
an aperture starting out maybe at f8 or
f11 and then you look at the pictures
with digital technology to look at it
quickly and then you can aperture up or
after down if the lighting strike is too
hot that’ll amazing and that is a good
one full of our face o lovers out there
I’m Susan I think you had something that
you wanted to ask Christy because I know
that you have a huge interest in NASA
yeah I one of the things I’m curious
Christy do PR people surprised to find
out that you work for NASA but you polar
exploration yeah I think they are it’s
funny that you ask that question because
I know if I have friends or family asked
me what I do they look at me like I’m
lying to them like they can’t even
process that I fly on airplanes at 1,500
feet over the Greenland ice sheets and
go down to Antarctica it’s kind of hard
to to bring the why do you do this how
did you get into it to the general
public you know what does that mean you
don’t learn about that in school I mean
I didn’t really know about that in
school I didn’t realize how big airborne
science wasn’t NASA because people tend
to think human spaceflight or they know
about astronauts or the space station
but you know i’m pleased to admit that
I’ve been very impressed with the scope
of the airborne campaigns doing
atmospheric research my project flying
over the poles known Polar Research
pretty amazing so I think
definitely people are surprised by it
but i try to i’m trying to reach more of
a wider audience we have a Facebook page
now so that people outside of NASA kids
and school educators even family members
can understand a little bit about why we
go there why we’re studying it how do we
determine what flight paths how do we
pick our science targets from all of
that as a that’s fantastic and I school
are you guys ready to ask a question we
are sure go for it don’t be shy I’m sure
you’re not shy normally Richard this is
for Richard uh how will the information
gained from your data collected be
shared good job yeah that reason is so
much oh okay how will the information
games from your data collected be shared
okay the data from the sleeving survey
with the 360-degree photos they go off
to the researchers and that can analyze
the America cover Allison in the imagery
I also looking at fish abundance another
benthic corner and stuff what up but
then as a general problem you’re able to
access the data and go diving on a
virtual race I just looking on google
street view through the strait v there’s
a number of reefs on at the moment that
you can go in and explore so you just
can click along the reef can zoom tilt
all around eight to have a look so is a
large public engagement side but at the
same time the researchers in the book
run quantifying all the dollars
but you guys want to share it real-time
pretty what those are surveys have done
so if you just go into the sea view
website you’ll be in it watch some of
the roofs of the Great Barrier Reef that
have been surveyed so far and they’ll be
just more and more coming online first
time not just the very ring but other
ropes are in the world as well that’s
fantastic do you guys um it muscle shoal
want to be marine biologists now that
you seen what rich in dos what are y’all
I know I’d like to be at the Great
Barrier Reef instead of in Washington DC
right now pretty jealous well it’s gotta
do it somebody’s gonna get exactly and
so we’ll move on to our next theme now I
think I’m how are real-world examples of
technology that you’re all involved in
and that you see at NASA and catlin and
National Geographic being used to shape
the research and exploration that you’re
all involved in and even you know what
do you see in other industries that
you’re excited about not just in your
own because I think that gives us a more
personal flavor of what you’re into and
that first question is for Tim I think
well the technology that we’re bringing
to the field help understand these super
storms can certainly maybe lend itself
lend itself in other applications as
well the instruments that I design and
build to be put in the paths of
tornadoes and by the way let me let me
get done yeah sure yeah we’ve had all
about this we want to see it now this is
the instrument it weighs about 50 pounds
i’m going to put it down soon nah this
is in 15 places 50 pounds what side to
be placed in the directly in the path of
a tornado and it’s critical it’s shaped
like like like a pyramid a chronicle
pyramid and so the wind flow goes over
the top but yet it stays in place so the
most powerful tornado can hit it and
won’t bother at all as it does and
unlocks the secrets it’s good to put
that down
I of the tornado itself and for us to do
that help us understand what we call
some of the dynamics of tornadoes how
powerful the wind speeds are we measure
what we call the barometric pressure
drop on the inside of the tornado I hope
the world record measuring the lowest
pressure drop inside of a tornado ever
in that record still stands I so a lot
of the technology that we used to go
like this data also for a lot of the
lightning research that we’ve done we’re
kind of pushing the bounds of what we
could do technically I also designed a
camera that goes over a million frames
per second to help capture them very
brief moment of time as the lightning
strike hits the ground so we can see
what they call the attachment process
but we can understand how and why some
of that the lightning strike hits the
ground and for us to show some
illustrations and some pictures and some
other data that we collect you know help
us better understand that a lot of the
physics of lightning which we don’t
still don’t quite understand totally as
an example how does the lightning strike
originated inside a thunderstorm we
still don’t quite grasp that and so
we’re trying to understand that part and
so the technology that we’re bringing to
bear to help understand super storms
well ultimately lead to a better
understanding of storms themselves and
that in turn helps provide better safety
for you know our people here on the land
from tornadoes and lightning because if
we had some mitigating better mitigating
factors for lightning better understood
lightning then we can apply the new
technology and the new learning to keep
people say that and that obviously goes
for tornadoes as well it’s very exciting
thank you I’m Christie what would you
say yes so brief by sorry Christie
before you start I’m gonna ask the
students at muscle show hello if you can
get ready to tee up your experiment just
while Cristy is getting ready cuz i know
you have something cool to show us Thank
You Christie go oh yeah sure so on one
thing with me on operation ice bridge is
that I’ve been on the project for about
a year and like I said before I’m pretty
amazed with everything that’s going on
in airborne science
so what I’ve learned since I’ve been on
the project is I have a much better
understanding of changes that are
happening for our planet right now I
didn’t have a great appreciation for
that before I started working on ice
bridge so what I’ve learned and what I
can see in our data and talking to our
science teams or instrument operators
our aircraft team people who have been
going back to the ice for years ice
bridge is been around since since 2009
but airborne laser altimetry has been
around for 20 to 30 years so talking to
the experts and seeing some of the stuff
myself essentially what I spirit is
doing is measuring changes so we’re a
data collection project right so what we
can say is between 2009 2010 2011 we’re
seeing changes that are happening to the
ice sheet glaciers and it’ll you know I
don’t want to use too much of an
adjective but some of the ice loss like
glaciers dumping in the oceans or kind
of an alarming rate so I didn’t realize
how much the polar processes affect the
overall climate like ultimately sea
level rise so a lot of our
instrumentation on including gravity
magnetics are altimetry our radars are
showing each year what’s thinning how
much ice we’re losing you know how thick
is the ice sheet has it changed what’s
happening to sea ice the sea ice extent
or the oval overall coverage is reducing
and what we do is we submit all of our
data sets for free to something called
nsidc org and then we have a science
team and international partners who look
at our data and can actually put papers
together based on trends that they’re
seeing so essentially that’s kind of how
our technology we’re using it to
understand the earth better very cool um
thank you very much Christy now muscle
shoals students are you ready to show us
yes your little plan we are ready what
we’re doing is we’re you sorry press
your words tell us about it okay we’re
using our Earth Day passports and each
group of fifth graders is going through
with my current juniors and seniors to a
different station with their passport
and learning and they will get a stamp
and they’ll journal what’s happening at
each station so this station for
instance we have albatross smallest
that Carson’s going to tell you just a
little bit about real quick so what it
is it’s actually these are from birds in
hawaii and it’s the regurgitation that
they actually feed their arm youth right
fielder yes what it is is you can uh are
these okay bring it closer guys bring a
little bit nicer also is that good yes
so right here you can kind of say some
of the plastics and stuff that are in
the uh what these birds are trying to
digest and what it is it’s from the
pollution actually and littering in like
California like the western coast of the
United States I’m glad I my breakfast
yet actually but what else horrible and
like the clashes and stuff actually get
caught in an ocean current and they
bring it around to the coast of Hawaii
where the seabirds actually digest all
this stuff like the plastics and I’ll
just just stuff that you can’t digest
wow that’s incredible anything you going
I no good sorry no no it’s just going to
ask how in studying that how long
they’ve been in a classroom and um we’ve
had the samples for over a year and we
just keep them wrapped up and no good it
smells it smells one of our other
stations is about polar animals and how
they adapt to different temperatures and
so we have to trace of ice and one has a
blubber um baggie you right we’re
in the blubber baggie let’s yeah just
tip it forward a bit so you can see it
just tip it over forward a little bit
more and then one in the ice so he’s
comparing his naked hand with the one in
the blubber and and I said he’s saying
so what do you think what do you think
saleable Alan this one is cold and this
one
so the insulation works it works do you
wish you were heard by now that’s
brilliant I love that you’re doing that
anyway you sure I’m sorry I’m so gone
that was my bell ringing we also have a
nice of a National Geographic education
world map about the hallway and we’re
tracing the route that Arctic Terns take
from the North Pole toward the South
Pole and the kids are using the math to
map the journey it’s amazing i wish i
wish i was in your science class when I
was little that’s fabulous alright guys
thank you very much um so then we’re
going to move on to our next question
from Facebook we’re trying to find out I
guess this one is for Tim well maybe
we’ll leave that one this is Norman
Martinez on facebook he asks is there
anything in our military arsenal that
can break a tornado funnel while it’s
warming I bet you get this all the time
too oh yes this is probably one of the
more common comedy that’s the quickie on
it yeah this is what a common question
that the short answer is absolutely not
to match the energy of a supercell
thunderstorm that creates a tornado
would be totally massive and people even
talked about detonating a nuclear
warhead next to the tornado and that’s
you know that’s totally absurd so at the
moment is the technology just does not
exist and so we’re just gonna have to
learn and cope and Warren as best we can
at least powerful wind storms it does
seem to be now um I wanted Susan do you
have any more general questions on this
same theme yeah I actually have a
question for it’s probably for all three
Tim Richard and Christie like how much
of the future of exploration do you
think is going to be moving more towards
like autonomous vehicles doing the bulk
of sort of the actual exploring with
humans more sitting back and doing the
analysis you know our are these are
ovies and cameras going to take away
from people actually being in the field
good question I could jump in on that
okay yeah well I can just give you a
small part I’m sorts a wider picture
than what i have but um with operation
IceBridge we’re currently focusing on
human or manned aircraft so we have
teams going into the field I mean
there’s a lot of flexibility with that
and it’s nice having human in the loop
because we can make quick decisions if
weather’s bad wouldn’t go instead of
point a go to point B I’m at the same
time you do send people in this field
for that well future options include you
may have heard of Global Hawk and has
some other unmanned aerial systems we’re
considering melling some of our laser
altimeter zon that are either showing
the p3 right now that’s what we just
flew to Greenland it’s still there
pretty amazing aircraft but um yeah
definitely we are considering and
looking into options for putting some of
our instrumentation on unmanned aerial
vehicles and they can fly a lot longer
they can fly higher we can collect just
tons of data with them so it was an
option that we were looking into that’s
amazing thank you Richard what about you
yeah are you raised a different major
part of the future in marine biology
particularly in the open oceans and the
deep ocean and there are literally
thousands of oh you these are all around
the globe at the moment that are called
gliders that simply dropped through the
layers of the ocean collecting all the
data of the temperature salinity and
other water quality parameters and then
they’ll come back to the surface and
transmit that information via satellite
and then start back down again so the
ATVs are going to allow us to know from
water quality data over all these very
hostile and very deep environment that
as humans we just cannot get it’s just
it is like Prince of to spend time up
there so the good news is it will still
leave all the lovely shallow water
environments to strive to explore
ourselves but even there with what we’re
doing a sea view is the next generation
will be using a UV so we can serve our
more rapes quicker longer faster and
gain the doubt of that Shh I v’s will
play a very important role that will
still need people out there as well
fantastic um and I wonder do you have
another question for us as well um
season oh yeah actually I was interested
to see what Tim thinks about that
because in the type of in the type of
work that he does it seems like putting
humans in that path is a little
self-destructive yes indeed it it
certainly is destructive I don’t want to
be in the path of tornado change
measurements that’s why we use a rodent
remote instrumentation like I just
showed you we place those in the path
but there’s other remote instrumentation
that is currently being in used to
detect these monster storms and that is
one of them is a National Weather
Service nationwide radar system is
actually called wsr-88d and what that
system is is actually detect notation
and thunderstorms and it allows us to
provide adequate warning for
thunderstorms that may be approaching
your area and that’s one of them another
one would be a system specifically to
study lightning we have what we call a
sprite network or sprite as an upper
atmospheric discharge of electrical
discharge many miles above the
thunderstorm and we have these cameras
these low lights cameras all around the
country looking and detecting these
sprites that discharge themselves up
above the atmosphere and finally the one
is that the final one is actually NASA
NOAA are going to launch a brand-new
weather satellite that has an incredible
camera that is able to watch and detect
lightening up here on the planet which
I’m really looking forward to that’s
really going to be a real boon for
science Wow so what do you think about
that akshay I mean sprites and booms for
science does that get you excited
yeah yeah sorry my record really so I
would do to ask if there is any
possibility of harvesting these energies
I mean from the lightning from the upper
atmosphere not from the ground the front
of atmosphere is there any possibility
of doing that moving the future well uh
yes that’s that question I’ve been asked
several times before the question is is
there is it possible the harvest energy
from the lightning and I think
theoretically it’s possible but the
problem is although the lightning strike
has got a lot of energy millions of
volts and thousands of amperes of
current that happens in a millisecond a
few milliseconds and the problem is
harvesting that much energy in two short
of the time you have to have huge super
conductors and a capacitor effectively
to take the charge in that instant brief
a time brief amount of time
unfortunately we’re just not there yet
we’re doing a great job of harvesting
power from the wind we’re doing a great
job of higher singh power from the Sun
lightning and tornadoes we’re a little
ways off and although i’d love to see if
my lifetime I just don’t think it’s
going to be possible right but that
brings us to another piece I think that
brings us in the next point in our
discussion quite nicely because we’re
trying to get a scale of what we have
learned so far before we get that far I
mean Richard when you’re looking at the
images that you get from your research
in Catlin what do you think is the most
resonating image and why I mean one of
the big picture implications and and how
does it affect the man in the street if
it affects him
yeah I growing up on the Great Barrier
Reef son I’ve been watching it literally
on my life and definitely I’ve seen
changes caring and not only the great
barrier reef but of course Allah in the
world we are seeing a decline in quality
of hooves particularly those associated
with him a presence on the mainland yeah
where you got runoff from agriculture
urban industry so as humans we are
definitely having an effect on coral
reefs Shh and we’re really at a critical
point in time where the decisions were
making now well basically determine what
quality of reef we are going to have in
the future they can run the Taurus will
always be around yeah they’re the
ultimate survivors have been around
hundreds of millions of years through
sea level changes shame major climatic
effects through history Shh but what the
roofs are facing now is an unprecedented
it’s the rate of change of the issue Shh
and if we want to have resilience and
fire diverse race we need to be
protecting them now having some time set
aside as protected areas and other areas
that can be used Shh but it change is
definitely happening but the amount of
change is going to be totally up to us
right exactly we’re working on a similar
project here at National Geographic
which is very exciting for that too
called pristine seas we have the other
Richard from Catlin online to I think
Richard is safe on dry land and letting
other it to do all the hard work today
but at least he’s up for a 2 a.m. in the
morning as well we’ve got a question
here from from the team how much of the
work that we need to do to save reefs
happens underwater versus above the
waves Oh Richard oh no this is a mole
and drop this is the dry land Richard up
there
are you there itches hello Richard babes
can you can you talk to that got me okay
well we’ll just put it back to you
Richard can you talk about it for sure
thank you when people think of it Mon
biologists are they doing the job that
we spent all our time out in the ocean
unfortunately this is far from the truth
so you know just an hour surveilling
underwater can literally lead two days
of data processing processing the images
you know of quantifying what in those
images so a lot of the work is done dry
side and file much much larger team of
people and that’s one of the ideas we
have the sea view though you have a very
small teams go out do rapid assessment
of the roofs and bring that data back to
a whole team of scientists not only just
tear in Australia but all over in the
world then pull the data from those and
regions so Shh it’s a lot of dry side
work out also almost sort of ten percent
work not even so dry right exactly and
Christy what about you what’s your sense
of scale of where you are in in NASA’s
rich history what do you think’s the big
picture yeah well my observation so far
has been that you know we are definitely
in a period of change I think um you
look at what’s happening to the climate
and again ice bridge is just collecting
data but looking at the trends changes
are happening and they’re happening
faster than they ever have in the past
so one thing that we can say with
certainty from my project is that uh
we’re losing ice the polar regions are
losing ice t i6 then is less than it was
I can say from first hand knowledge
flying over the Arctic oceans we flew
out of Fairbanks it was for totally Air
Force Base in Greenland
able to see immediately that the ice
cover from previous years looked up
thinner there were warm water open leads
that chemical ever seen in the past so I
think change is happening right before
our eyes so that’s one thing that we can
kind of say with confidence we’re not
here to say what’s causing it
necessarily but we’re saying we’re these
trends each year that something is
happening to our polar ice um and
characterizing those changes yeah and
it’s fantastic to have no service part
of that huge global conversation it
really is Tim I was we have one for me
from killing ashore in North Carolina
who asks on Google+ to this same theme
are we getting better at detecting
understanding and predicting lightning
writ large we are definitely improving
that in fact a large government agency
has launched a pretty exhaustive program
to study lightning the original
lightning like i have discussed how the
lightning strike it involves inside of a
thunderstorm or a cloud that’s a process
we still don’t quite understand we
developed a lot of technology out to
detect lightning and actually provide
what we call a 3d mapping of a lightning
strike as the lightning strike emerges
out of the cloud we have these radio
receivers located all around the
thunderstorm that actually provide a 3d
a mapping of how that lightning strike
emerges out of the thunderstorm you know
why and how then where lightning strike
that’s a tough one and that’s something
that we’re currently digging into I feel
like although we know quite a bit about
lightning and the hows and whys and it’s
generation we’re still kind of
scratching the surface and a lot of
research is still being conducted on you
know the effects of lightning and even
perhaps prediction of lightning so we
still have a little ways to go fantastic
and then our participants do any of you
want to ask delve deeper into that
question and ask a specific you know
from something that you’re interested in
on you know what what what is the scale
of what’s happened in a particular
subject I don’t know if actually wants
to jump in if there’s something that you
want to you really want to know where
we’re up to no well then yeah one
question that I have is you know I think
Richard touched on this a little bit
about how he’s using the panoramas to
engage the public in the research is
there Chris for Christian 10 is there a
public participation portion of the
kinds of work that you’re doing that can
even broaden the scope to sort of bring
meaning to to the general public
absolutely um it I was just going to
jump in here unless somebody else wanted
to okay we have a very successful and
large public outreach and education
outreach program with operation
IceBridge we um so we’re trying to
engage the public we’re trying to engage
classrooms as much as we can I think
we’ve really gotten to be very
successful this year so some ways that
we’re doing it our social media we have
a new Facebook page so we’re exposing
more people the ice bridge we have a
Twitter account we also what we do is we
bring teachers into the field with us so
literally just this campaign in
Greenland we had three teachers with us
we had a an American teacher a
Greenlandic teacher and a Danish teacher
so we flew them on our aircraft and in
real time they SAT with our instrument
operators developed lesson plans and
they expose those real-time lesson plans
so their kids back in the classroom
we’re able to even chat with with
classrooms while flying at 1,500 feet
over the Greenland ice sheet we were
chatting with um schools all over the
United States and even in different
parts of the country I’m getting kids
engaged in why do you fly over polarize
what does that mean how can I get
involved in that so I feel like we’re
starting to now touch all different
parts of humanity from teachers students
the general public friends and family
and I I just continue to hear a great
feedback from these these teachers who
say today their students said it was the
best day of the year because they got to
talk to the NASA scientist while they
were flying as I feel like we do have a
a really great we have videos out there
on our on our website that show what
it’s like we have a forward camera that
flies in the cop
the p3 so you can actually watching that
video you can feel like you’re taking
ride with us on our p3 we post all that
on our Facebook page you can mess up you
through the show in there yeah that is
absolutely wild I’m Tim quickly I mean
what’s your public outreach with the
work you do with Geographic well
certainly we bring back first off the
course so we bring back incredible
imagery from the field although the
research that we’re doing is certainly
important for our understanding
tornadoes lightning the imagery that we
bring back and the knowledge that we
bring back to the public I also provide
a lot of educational outreach to
calculate classrooms along with the
society and a lot of them my images that
I thought I’ve collected a lot of the
data that I’ve collected I actually
appear in small textbooks believe it or
not and it to help kids to understand
the weather the weather processes and
and show how scientists engage
themselves in research what are the
research processes and that to me is
really the important part of a lot of
the mission that we go out there is to
get kids engaged in that and so they can
actually see scientists at work in the
field and there are also a lot of other
things that the public does participate
and with certainly with the weather as
an example for those of you who enjoy
watching thunderstorms you can actually
contact your local National Weather
Service and become what they call storms
fire and I lost them yeah you can
actually go out and help spot storms and
report your findings directly to the
National Weather Service and they in
turn based on your report will actually
induce a trader warning of the severe
thunderstorm warning so that’s a way
that the public can get engaged and
there’s some other amateur scientists
that have personally personally have
taken on cameras to actually go out and
photographs sprites and they are very
good at it and that’s a perfect the
citizen science piece of that is a
perfect move into our lightning round
which is only going to be a few seconds
each for each view so just the first
thing that comes into your head but you
know a lot of people are out
going on social media how do I get
involved Jessica Metzger is one how do I
get involved just as an enthusiast
without a science degree in the sorts of
work that you’re doing but I think even
bigger than that we’re asking you know
how did how did you guys before you had
science degrees get involved in the work
that you’re doing today so just very
quickly what what were the key pieces
Christie go go yes um I ever since I can
remember when I was little I I always
loved science I lungs of space and
interested in um I’d read any book I
could on on house what things were in
space human spaceflight um what’s going
on in earth science what’s going on in
astronomy so I just had this this born
natural desire to understand how things
worked and I definitely have a lot of
determination and drive so I I pretty
much I couldn’t be stopped how did this
work I look it up or I want to do this
and somebody might say no you can’t do
that and I never listened to them so I
just continue to press with my passion
and was able to get your eyes their
determination so that’s fantastic okay
Richard tell me the funniest thing
that’s happened to you at work
preferably under water my hair was funny
is the funniest notice carious something
is our scariest um I got dragged off the
back of a boat once by a five made a
great white shark oh and i had a special
know him and I stupidly had the camera
on a harness so in the shower curved and
swallowed the camera and swam off with
it I was attached to the plumber pole
and got dragged into the water with it
readers and scariest virtual sort of
shark attack that have had it mean to be
I grew up on the Great Barrier Reef as a
kid I had marine t-shirts and being a
boy I had white sharks and stone fish
and sea snake and I loved other venomous
dangerous animals and I like taking
photos of them so my whole career been
bouncing between science and Phil
I can and I just love it underwater it’s
more about I prefer it under here than
on the top side to me this is home at
the moment it’s wonderful that’s
wonderful what about you Tim what’s the
scariest cuz you must have had a few
close shaves by now oh excuse yeah pops
into your head oh boy I can go on this
all day long no you’re not hard you
calling a lot time it’s a lightning
round it’s your round it’s lightning
that’s why Kid well you know the
scariest time probably for me was about
15 years ago we were actually chasing a
tornado at night and of course a tornado
at night you can’t see you go in south
central Kansas it gets so dark out there
you put your hand in front of your face
you can’t see your hand the only way to
see tornadoes is with lightning we were
actually chasing a tornado at night the
Lightning was pretty infrequent and the
tornado was going at us is 1030 and we
were trying to deploy our estimate and
finally we just said you know what this
tornado is getting too close he drove
out of the path that tornado crust right
where we were park about 45 seconds
later oh wow that’s not funny ya know
that was 15 years ago and I since then
I’ve never chased nighttime tornadoes
ever again good lesson learned I
remember that one for me as well okay
we’ve got the kids now the students at
mussel shells they’re going to ask I
think their last question go for it hi
for Christy crazy yes with the data you
are collecting how can we help to desert
to preserve the ice that’s a very very
good question right so um right now with
the data were collecting that anybody
could look up you can look it up we can
show how everything is changing right so
what does that mean like we can say
there’s less sea ice the we’re losing a
lot of high school a sures are calving
into the ocean and in each year it looks
like it might be more and more right so
those are things that we know that are
happy to happen so we can take that
information and try and educate the
public we can try and educate Congress
on the people who make decisions above
our heads
and say hey you know what something is
happening here and it’s happening faster
than it ever did in our earliest records
you know we can look and see what what
happened in the past and we can try and
point out that hey these changes with
the ice melting faster than then average
may be influenced by things that human
beings are doing on the planet right now
so you take a look why are these changes
happening is it something that human
beings are doing on the planet are we is
it because we’re burning fossil fuels
right is that what is dumping more
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that
might be contributing to this heating of
the planet and subsequently melting the
ice so I think the best that we can do
on our project is just educate people
say something is happening and then what
we need is help from the public in the
Congress to take a look at that and say
you know what mom we are convinced we do
believe that human beings are
influencing this melting and from there
maybe take steps to try and reduce the
burning of fossil fuels leg being
smarter with our transportation using
smart fuels things like that so those
are things that you know we hope to
eventually come out here by um getting
everybody on the same page and everyone
understanding what’s going on so we can
kind of move forward as a community to
make the right decisions and be smart
about protecting our planet one day at a
time yeah that’s great is that does that
help you guys muscle shoals yeah great
great thank you so we’re going to move
on to what’s next you know what um what
are we going to see in the future I know
actually you have a question about what
we can do in the future over for
lightning but I think I wanted to just
put maybe to Richard first what issues
you think we’ll be measuring and facing
in sort of 20 years or 50 years what
will your colleagues be studying when we
think that sort of agree way I think a
lot of the issues will be what we’re
looking at now where we’re monitoring
climate change and the effects on the
car race themselves these corals and
this is an anatomy leave of hot side
beat this brown color actually trans
from
I it fills that live inside the car dr.
chase food for the falls from the sound
anything it’s a wonderful symbiotic
relationship but what happens during our
warm water oven Shh but it’s really
really hot it’s that the symbiotic
relationship goes out of whack and the
car is expelled the brown microscopic
algal cells healthy weight pearls right
now I want they those a healthy the ones
that we’re seeing you with right now Deb
totally these are healthy some
brown coal it’s healthy Carl don’t
believe what you see on TV because the
term of people only trick the really
pretty curls most of the curls are
actually just brawn yes but then these
bleaching events and he first started
about 20 years ago Shh and we’re going
to see the more and more frequently so
in the future in another 20 30 40 50
years I think it’s marine scientist who
every monitoring more and more bleaching
events and unfortunately that the
frequency of these placing event allah
khair more and more often to be
unfortunate but if the conditions return
to normal quickly the cars can recover
Shh but if that is they starve too long
from a bleaching hope they can’t die and
that’s one of the main ways of the
corals roost why we’re losing them
around the world it’s from these plates
immigrants got it Tim Tim what do you
think you’re going to be seeing in 50
years time or you think your buddies are
gonna be saying well you know we only
have a minute because we’re getting
we’re just so starting to wrap up in a
second I understand I think you know the
the things that Christie was studying
you know up in Greenland or certainly
changes in our planet and I think what
we’re going to be faced with the next
20-30 years is trying to understand how
the weather is going to be changing
along with the changes we see in the ice
pack we don’t really
no and it’s very very difficult because
of the tone you know the oscillations of
the the jet stream and so forth could be
very difficult but I think in a long
term 20 years from now we should better
understand how that’s going to affect
our weather some of the micro
measurements that I’ve taken
thunderstorms and lightning may provide
a little bit of a clue but the global
aspect is going to be studying on
average how many of these super storms
are going to happen right Susan anything
to add to that as a final question from
you and actually get ready if you have
one more question too I would just ask
like how given how fragile everything
you guys are examining is how optimistic
are you that we’ll be able to turn this
around given that it’s Earth Day like
Duke yeah from everything you’ve seen I
know Chris you touched a little bit on
this place like how optimistic are you
yeah yeah you can talk about the Technic
technology changes in the next 20 years
that would be great Christy thank you
thanks Susan yeah well I was going to
hit just briefly on I think a lot it is
a you know we’re advertising we’re
showing these trends that we’re taking I
mean satellite data is contributing to
it we have airborne science so we have a
lot of different platforms collecting
data on the changing planet like folks
were talking about weather changes but
um I think we’re observing a pretty
consistent message are the data that
icebridge collects in measuring the
changes in the ice sheet we’re looking
in our data sets right and then we’re
looking at new satellites like i SAT two
is about to launch in 2016 it’s a polar
orbiting satellite so they’re going to
start collecting data in so we’re going
to compare our datasets to make sure
that they match and it’s called
calibration and validation so we’re I
feel like from a scientific standpoint
we’re a team going forward from the plan
I mean we have international partners
with European Space Agency we work with
we’re working with other NASA centers
multiple satellite programs even now my
team is still in Greenland I’m here
we’re talking with the program managers
of the cryo SAT satellite which is at
another polar orbiting satellite from
isa and through those relationships were
kind of validating that we’re all
collecting the same information so we’re
coming forward with the same
you know we’re not measuring different
things than the satellites measuring so
I feel like the best we can do is show
our trends back up all of our data and
say something is happening here it’s
happening now it’s probably going to
even speed up more in the future so what
can we do from there so it’s really now
helping to convince the the entire
planet that maybe we do need to do
something about it I think that is the
hardest part not the technology I don’t
think the technology is that hard it’s
not convincing our population that we
need to take steps to try and reduce
that right you heard it here first it’s
not the technology that’s difficult it’s
the outreach and communication because
that is always persuading people rather
than things is the hardest part I’m
actually we are about to wrap up but i
think you have one final question oh no
I guess can I no no no no I guess I I
got the answer ok ok no problem well I
think that we’re coming to the end of
our time now so I’d like to thank
everybody here our production team and
pics i have been working their socks off
to get you hooked up seamlessly and
thanks to all of you for joining Google
Plus hangout we hope that you can join
us for the rest of the earth day series
where we’ll be talking about clean water
nature and nature’s engineers are beg
your pardon I’m recycling and oceans so
there’s a lot of topics to get into
there and check out national Geographics
google+ page for connecting and remember
everyone’s an explorer and you can
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Geographic calm for one thing so thank
you again all of you especially from all
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and we look forward to seeing you again
right
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