I’m gonna take you to some uncharted
territories where both we haven’t been
and it’s changing and the more we can
understand now
well maybe get a little handle on what
might happen in the future and I want to
start by just telling you that I I
vividly remember the first time I
actually slept on a glacier
I was climbing my Rainier fresh out of
college it was before glaciers and
climate change were a cocktail party
conversation and the climb was great the
view from the summit was beautiful but
my favorite part was definitely sleeping
on the glacier because when we all
quieted down when everybody all the
tents got quiet and we laid down just
lying on that glacier you can actually
feel it and hear it just thundering and
cracking underneath me and this was when
I really realized that ice really is
alive it’s the stuff that it flows on
our landscape it moves suddenly through
the landscape sometimes sometimes you’ll
get a big calving event or something but
most the time it’s the subtle movement
across our landscape as it creeps
through valleys down mountains and that
was what really inspired me to look into
this further I really wanted to
understand what was going on with the
glaciers I’ve learned as much about
myself and about the way we go about
observing the world as I have about the
ice itself and that’s because of that
subtlety this this subtle movement on
the landscape
the changes that are happening sometimes
changes you might if you’re lucky you
can see a change in a glacier in a day
it’s pretty hard even to see changes in
glaciers over the course of a year and
sometimes it’s even hard to see changes
in some places over the course of your
lifetime so the subtle these subtle
changes this subtle movement on our
landscape that’s actually quite
important has made me think about how we
really need to be careful observation
Asst we need to be creative about how we
approach observing these landscapes in
order to really understand the behavior
of these glaciers
so why does the ice matter you guys have
probably heard little bits from all
different aspects it is beautiful it’s
stunning it’s a very emotional landscape
to be in when you’re surrounded by it as
this painting by my friend Maria shows
but it does impact all of us so the
melting ice that’s going on every day
now that’s been melting quite a bit over
the last century and that is causing sea
level rise everywhere and it might seem
like a little bit of sea level rise when
you hear it in terms of numbers but a
little bit of sea level rise actually
does change the wave action and the way
storms hit any coast you get a more
erosion you get just all sorts of
changes weird deposition and erosion
along the landscapes and along the
coastlines you get farm lands being
inundated by saltwater this is happening
and it’s affecting everything from New
York to Bangladesh and a little bit a
little bit does have a big impact but
the other reason that ice matters is
that they’re actually a lot of local
effects there are people in Norway and
Iceland for example use hydro power from
glaciers there’s water resources around
the world many places around the world
come from glaciers so Peru the Himalaya
Norway Alaska there’s communities all
over the world that really rely on the
glaciers to provide their water
resources but the ecosystem themselves
also need those water resources their
salmon that need that cold water coming
in the middle of summer to give them the
river that’s more comfortable that they
want to swim up if they just have the
water that’s been heated by the Sun all
summer then that’s much more challenging
environment for them so but a whole
downstream ecosystem really relies on
the amount and the timing of the water
that comes down from the glaciers the
same is true where the glaciers hit the
ocean the glaciers affect the salinity
of the water and the fjords it affects
the circulation of the water in the
fjords it gives seals places to get up
out of the water so they can avoid their
predators and relax for a while so
ice although it’s not nearby us all the
time it actually does affect us in many
different ways but I’m going to talk a
bit more today about Antarctica
Antarctica is really interesting because
here it’s cold enough down here that ice
on land is flowing off the continent and
when it hits the water it actually
doesn’t immediately break up or melt and
float away so the ice on the land and
then Arctica in many places around the
continent flows down off and turns into
floating ice shelves these ice shelves
are hundreds to a thousand meters thick
of ice floating on the ocean surface
this is much different than sea ice
which is a few meters a few meters thick
of frozen seawater these ice shelves are
pretty critical they surround all of
Antarctica all around the edges they’re
actually critical for moderating the
amount of ice that flows off the
continent and into the ocean and it’s
that moderation role that it plays that
means that these ice shelves are what
are kind of holding the dam back on
allowing parts of Antarctica to really
flood and create and generate sea level
rise the internet Peninsula is where
most of the action is happening right
now in the last 50 years our estimates
are that the temperatures in the entire
peninsula are increasing five times
faster than the global average
temperature is changing there’s some
stations in the peninsula that are that
are changing ten times faster then the
global average temperature has been
changing in for the last 50 years so
there’s been a lot of warming there and
a lot of changes and in that time in
just the last couple decades we’ve had
eight ice shelves around the peninsula
disintegrate into nothing and the
glaciers that fed those ice shelves are
now moving faster the ice is thinning
and that ice is going straight into the
ocean and contributing to sea level rise
the largest of these events happen in
2002 and made national news
international news the Larsen B Ice
Shelf disintegrated in a matter of a
couple of weeks the Larsen B Ice Shelf
is an area the size of Rhode Island and
the picture on your left with taken in
Jay on January 31st and the picture on
the right
eight was taken on March 5th and most of
the actual action happened couple of
weeks before March 5th there was nobody
on the ground to see this there were no
instruments installed to get here
because this is a really difficult part
of Antarctica to get to even though just
on the other side of the peninsula is
where a lot of the cruise ships do go
but getting to this side this eastern
side of the peninsula is quite a bit
harder so there’s no there there are no
instruments there so that means that in
the last sense then we’ve sort of said
you know what we need to get on the
ground and see what’s going on there and
be ready to under try to understand what
happened here and also be ready for when
the next the next ice shelf goes so this
got a lot of us a number of I’m working
now with about 15 different scientists
from all different fields we have
biologists ecologists marine geologists
oceanographers atmospheric sciences
glaciologists we’ve all gotten together
for this nsf-funded project it’s called
the Larissa project where we’ve taken
over this is the Nathaniel B Palmer
research vessel and we’ve National
Geographic Plus played a role in this in
this project as well we’ve been down
there a couple of times trying to get in
there trying to get some instruments on
the ground to make some measurements to
understand what has happened since that
ice shelf disintegrated because we went
from an ocean Bay that had ice cover no
sunlight for thousands of years and
suddenly we’ve now uncovered it and
there’s there’s photosynthesis able to
happen and organisms are moving and the
entire ecosystem is changing the ocean
circulation are changing the title
structure is changing there the glaciers
here have have definitely accelerated
and our best estimate right now is that
over the last ten years since this
happened it’s contributed about a
quarter of a millimeter sea level rise
globally but that’s just this is just
one event and it that’s only what it’s
done so far the glaciers are still
accelerating still contributing to sea
level rise so some of a lot of these
processes are actually normal for
glaciers they calve they they they melt
but the problem is when what is it that
triggers them to go through this runaway
process and completely disintegrate and
cause these bigger issues in this case
we think it was mostly atmospheric
warming with a little bit of ocean
warming that gradually thinned this ice
shelf until it was just teetering on the
edge and then one warm summer in 2002
caused it to just break apart into a
million pieces but not all ice shelves
work exactly like that the trick here is
that we need to figure out how to ask
the right questions in order to get
these answers it’s a really difficult
environment to work in
glaciers conceptually I should say it is
physically as well but glaciers have
processes happening from millimeter
scale to tens of kilometers scale they
also have processes going on on this on
the scale of seconds to the scale of
hundreds of thousands of years and being
able to capture all of that and these
processes are interacting on all of
these scales you can’t just ignore one
scale and focus only on the other so
it’s this this process of trying to
understand trying to make these
observations that got me thinking trying
to think a little bit outside of the box
well a lot outside of the box but being
creative and in doing that I’ve looked
for a lot of help from a lot of people
and things and in this case a whale this
is a McBride glacier in Alaska where it
had the experience one night of camping
on a spit here and all night long the
glacier was calving and a whale would
respond to that calving event by
breaching out on the other side so all
night long we had a glacier calves a
whale breached the glacier calves the
whale breached was a pretty profound
experience for me and I started thinking
about what the whale actually hears
under the water so I went and recorded
it
so you’re going to hear a calving event
here in a minute
and what I’d like you to get out of that
is that there’s stuff happening at all
frequencies did you hear the rumble that
started at all before the actual calving
event and then we have this higher
frequency stuff going on at the end this
is information we don’t get from
listening in the air with our ears we
have to get under the water and really
see it as the whale hears it so looking
at the whole system from a different
perspective really like thinking what
what other ways can we see the system
looking just forgetting what I’ve known
about systems before and just looking at
that new perspective I think is a really
important part of just approaching any
of these systems any of the landscape
that we have any of our environment and
exploring and the girls on girls on ice
have really taught me that a lot they
come from inner-city New York they come
from San Diego they come from rural
Kansas they come without preconceived
notions of what this mountain
environment is supposed to give them and
they’ve helped me see the way that the
colors of the inside of a crevasse can
actually be really interesting and
useful in ways that I hadn’t thought of
them they’ve just helped me see that we
can look at the this landscape from so
many different perspectives and it’s
when we allow ourselves to really look
at it from those different perspectives
that we learn so much so in the end I
really wanted to just share with you
some of the things that Isis taught me
I’ve also worked with artists out on the
ice and that’s been really fun because
they’ve taught me things like you have
to turn the world upside down to really
see it for what it is
they’ve also taught me that if you
squint you can kind of get rid of all
the detail and you can see the big
picture a lot more easily so it’s been
really fun working with all of these
people and seeing the different
perspectives that the whale gives me
that the artist gives me that the girls
give me that other scientists working
with oceanographers biologists that
everybody has given me and kind of to
bring it all together I realize that the
best discoveries that we make in life
really come when we step out of our
comfort zone and I think that’s one of
the things that all of these explorers
that I’ve met this week have been able
to do
that whether that’s your physical
comfort zone where you do spend a week
sitting in a blind waiting for the tiger
and getting frustrated and tired or your
intellectual comfort zone where you are
allowed to let go of what you were
taught in high school or middle school
and really see the environment or the
data from a new perspective and there’s
also your social or leadership comfort
zone where you know like me pretty shy
and quiet growing up and it’s taken a
lot to really push outside of that
comfort zone and step up and talk in
front of 400 people so so I just want to
leave you with that thought I think what
we all can do is think about when and
where and how can we step out of our
comfort zones and start to see the world
from a different perspective thank
you
territories where both we haven’t been
and it’s changing and the more we can
understand now
well maybe get a little handle on what
might happen in the future and I want to
start by just telling you that I I
vividly remember the first time I
actually slept on a glacier
I was climbing my Rainier fresh out of
college it was before glaciers and
climate change were a cocktail party
conversation and the climb was great the
view from the summit was beautiful but
my favorite part was definitely sleeping
on the glacier because when we all
quieted down when everybody all the
tents got quiet and we laid down just
lying on that glacier you can actually
feel it and hear it just thundering and
cracking underneath me and this was when
I really realized that ice really is
alive it’s the stuff that it flows on
our landscape it moves suddenly through
the landscape sometimes sometimes you’ll
get a big calving event or something but
most the time it’s the subtle movement
across our landscape as it creeps
through valleys down mountains and that
was what really inspired me to look into
this further I really wanted to
understand what was going on with the
glaciers I’ve learned as much about
myself and about the way we go about
observing the world as I have about the
ice itself and that’s because of that
subtlety this this subtle movement on
the landscape
the changes that are happening sometimes
changes you might if you’re lucky you
can see a change in a glacier in a day
it’s pretty hard even to see changes in
glaciers over the course of a year and
sometimes it’s even hard to see changes
in some places over the course of your
lifetime so the subtle these subtle
changes this subtle movement on our
landscape that’s actually quite
important has made me think about how we
really need to be careful observation
Asst we need to be creative about how we
approach observing these landscapes in
order to really understand the behavior
of these glaciers
so why does the ice matter you guys have
probably heard little bits from all
different aspects it is beautiful it’s
stunning it’s a very emotional landscape
to be in when you’re surrounded by it as
this painting by my friend Maria shows
but it does impact all of us so the
melting ice that’s going on every day
now that’s been melting quite a bit over
the last century and that is causing sea
level rise everywhere and it might seem
like a little bit of sea level rise when
you hear it in terms of numbers but a
little bit of sea level rise actually
does change the wave action and the way
storms hit any coast you get a more
erosion you get just all sorts of
changes weird deposition and erosion
along the landscapes and along the
coastlines you get farm lands being
inundated by saltwater this is happening
and it’s affecting everything from New
York to Bangladesh and a little bit a
little bit does have a big impact but
the other reason that ice matters is
that they’re actually a lot of local
effects there are people in Norway and
Iceland for example use hydro power from
glaciers there’s water resources around
the world many places around the world
come from glaciers so Peru the Himalaya
Norway Alaska there’s communities all
over the world that really rely on the
glaciers to provide their water
resources but the ecosystem themselves
also need those water resources their
salmon that need that cold water coming
in the middle of summer to give them the
river that’s more comfortable that they
want to swim up if they just have the
water that’s been heated by the Sun all
summer then that’s much more challenging
environment for them so but a whole
downstream ecosystem really relies on
the amount and the timing of the water
that comes down from the glaciers the
same is true where the glaciers hit the
ocean the glaciers affect the salinity
of the water and the fjords it affects
the circulation of the water in the
fjords it gives seals places to get up
out of the water so they can avoid their
predators and relax for a while so
ice although it’s not nearby us all the
time it actually does affect us in many
different ways but I’m going to talk a
bit more today about Antarctica
Antarctica is really interesting because
here it’s cold enough down here that ice
on land is flowing off the continent and
when it hits the water it actually
doesn’t immediately break up or melt and
float away so the ice on the land and
then Arctica in many places around the
continent flows down off and turns into
floating ice shelves these ice shelves
are hundreds to a thousand meters thick
of ice floating on the ocean surface
this is much different than sea ice
which is a few meters a few meters thick
of frozen seawater these ice shelves are
pretty critical they surround all of
Antarctica all around the edges they’re
actually critical for moderating the
amount of ice that flows off the
continent and into the ocean and it’s
that moderation role that it plays that
means that these ice shelves are what
are kind of holding the dam back on
allowing parts of Antarctica to really
flood and create and generate sea level
rise the internet Peninsula is where
most of the action is happening right
now in the last 50 years our estimates
are that the temperatures in the entire
peninsula are increasing five times
faster than the global average
temperature is changing there’s some
stations in the peninsula that are that
are changing ten times faster then the
global average temperature has been
changing in for the last 50 years so
there’s been a lot of warming there and
a lot of changes and in that time in
just the last couple decades we’ve had
eight ice shelves around the peninsula
disintegrate into nothing and the
glaciers that fed those ice shelves are
now moving faster the ice is thinning
and that ice is going straight into the
ocean and contributing to sea level rise
the largest of these events happen in
2002 and made national news
international news the Larsen B Ice
Shelf disintegrated in a matter of a
couple of weeks the Larsen B Ice Shelf
is an area the size of Rhode Island and
the picture on your left with taken in
Jay on January 31st and the picture on
the right
eight was taken on March 5th and most of
the actual action happened couple of
weeks before March 5th there was nobody
on the ground to see this there were no
instruments installed to get here
because this is a really difficult part
of Antarctica to get to even though just
on the other side of the peninsula is
where a lot of the cruise ships do go
but getting to this side this eastern
side of the peninsula is quite a bit
harder so there’s no there there are no
instruments there so that means that in
the last sense then we’ve sort of said
you know what we need to get on the
ground and see what’s going on there and
be ready to under try to understand what
happened here and also be ready for when
the next the next ice shelf goes so this
got a lot of us a number of I’m working
now with about 15 different scientists
from all different fields we have
biologists ecologists marine geologists
oceanographers atmospheric sciences
glaciologists we’ve all gotten together
for this nsf-funded project it’s called
the Larissa project where we’ve taken
over this is the Nathaniel B Palmer
research vessel and we’ve National
Geographic Plus played a role in this in
this project as well we’ve been down
there a couple of times trying to get in
there trying to get some instruments on
the ground to make some measurements to
understand what has happened since that
ice shelf disintegrated because we went
from an ocean Bay that had ice cover no
sunlight for thousands of years and
suddenly we’ve now uncovered it and
there’s there’s photosynthesis able to
happen and organisms are moving and the
entire ecosystem is changing the ocean
circulation are changing the title
structure is changing there the glaciers
here have have definitely accelerated
and our best estimate right now is that
over the last ten years since this
happened it’s contributed about a
quarter of a millimeter sea level rise
globally but that’s just this is just
one event and it that’s only what it’s
done so far the glaciers are still
accelerating still contributing to sea
level rise so some of a lot of these
processes are actually normal for
glaciers they calve they they they melt
but the problem is when what is it that
triggers them to go through this runaway
process and completely disintegrate and
cause these bigger issues in this case
we think it was mostly atmospheric
warming with a little bit of ocean
warming that gradually thinned this ice
shelf until it was just teetering on the
edge and then one warm summer in 2002
caused it to just break apart into a
million pieces but not all ice shelves
work exactly like that the trick here is
that we need to figure out how to ask
the right questions in order to get
these answers it’s a really difficult
environment to work in
glaciers conceptually I should say it is
physically as well but glaciers have
processes happening from millimeter
scale to tens of kilometers scale they
also have processes going on on this on
the scale of seconds to the scale of
hundreds of thousands of years and being
able to capture all of that and these
processes are interacting on all of
these scales you can’t just ignore one
scale and focus only on the other so
it’s this this process of trying to
understand trying to make these
observations that got me thinking trying
to think a little bit outside of the box
well a lot outside of the box but being
creative and in doing that I’ve looked
for a lot of help from a lot of people
and things and in this case a whale this
is a McBride glacier in Alaska where it
had the experience one night of camping
on a spit here and all night long the
glacier was calving and a whale would
respond to that calving event by
breaching out on the other side so all
night long we had a glacier calves a
whale breached the glacier calves the
whale breached was a pretty profound
experience for me and I started thinking
about what the whale actually hears
under the water so I went and recorded
it
so you’re going to hear a calving event
here in a minute
and what I’d like you to get out of that
is that there’s stuff happening at all
frequencies did you hear the rumble that
started at all before the actual calving
event and then we have this higher
frequency stuff going on at the end this
is information we don’t get from
listening in the air with our ears we
have to get under the water and really
see it as the whale hears it so looking
at the whole system from a different
perspective really like thinking what
what other ways can we see the system
looking just forgetting what I’ve known
about systems before and just looking at
that new perspective I think is a really
important part of just approaching any
of these systems any of the landscape
that we have any of our environment and
exploring and the girls on girls on ice
have really taught me that a lot they
come from inner-city New York they come
from San Diego they come from rural
Kansas they come without preconceived
notions of what this mountain
environment is supposed to give them and
they’ve helped me see the way that the
colors of the inside of a crevasse can
actually be really interesting and
useful in ways that I hadn’t thought of
them they’ve just helped me see that we
can look at the this landscape from so
many different perspectives and it’s
when we allow ourselves to really look
at it from those different perspectives
that we learn so much so in the end I
really wanted to just share with you
some of the things that Isis taught me
I’ve also worked with artists out on the
ice and that’s been really fun because
they’ve taught me things like you have
to turn the world upside down to really
see it for what it is
they’ve also taught me that if you
squint you can kind of get rid of all
the detail and you can see the big
picture a lot more easily so it’s been
really fun working with all of these
people and seeing the different
perspectives that the whale gives me
that the artist gives me that the girls
give me that other scientists working
with oceanographers biologists that
everybody has given me and kind of to
bring it all together I realize that the
best discoveries that we make in life
really come when we step out of our
comfort zone and I think that’s one of
the things that all of these explorers
that I’ve met this week have been able
to do
that whether that’s your physical
comfort zone where you do spend a week
sitting in a blind waiting for the tiger
and getting frustrated and tired or your
intellectual comfort zone where you are
allowed to let go of what you were
taught in high school or middle school
and really see the environment or the
data from a new perspective and there’s
also your social or leadership comfort
zone where you know like me pretty shy
and quiet growing up and it’s taken a
lot to really push outside of that
comfort zone and step up and talk in
front of 400 people so so I just want to
leave you with that thought I think what
we all can do is think about when and
where and how can we step out of our
comfort zones and start to see the world
from a different perspective thank
you
Please follow and like us: