Researchers of the Cryosphere

Recorded interviews with researchers studying glaciers, sea ice, and policy to communicate the current state and future of the earth’s cryosphere. While the cryosphere continues to undergo major changes, these researchers discuss the role of climate change in their work as well as the importance of adding adaptation into the scope of conversation.

Joanna Young

Joanna Young is a post-doctoral researcher at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She specializes in studying the long-term effects of how glacial meltwater is changing rivers and streams.

Young spends much of her time on land glaciers. “When you go out there you hear them.” She said, “You hear cracks, you hear rocks tumbling over each other, you certainly hear meltwater rushing into moulins. There are all these dramatic, visible, tangible, and audible changes happening in real time.” Some of these changes are natural as the environment is in a constant state of change. Although, as climate change warms temperatures, these changes are happening more frequently.

I sat down with Young at her home in northern Alaska where we discussed how rapid changing glaciers are affecting the landscape as well as local and global ecosystems.

As a primary producer of the aquatic food web glaciers feed critical nutrients to rivers that are essential to the absolute bottom of the chain, such as phytoplankton. Currently, in Alaska they are experiencing pre-peak water as the temperatures rise and deliver a higher rate of meltwater. This, as she mentioned, can only last so long as the ice melts and changes. Young has seen these visible changes in the local landscape as the state warms two to three times quicker than the rest of the world. On a global scale by the year 2100 there might be about a billion people having to relocate because of sea level rise.

Young mentions that, “We’ve seen migration events happen related to famine or war, but we’ve never seen something on a scale of a billion people in such a short amount of time.” In her work Young recognizes the depressing nature of the data but feels like she needs to be a relentless optimist. “The message isn’t meant to be all doom and gloom. The idea is to depict a sense of urgency, but to also point out what we need to set ourselves up for success here on out.”

Full interview below-

Aleah Sommers

Aleah Sommers is a post-doctoral associate at Dartmouth College specializing in subglacial hydrology. Her current work has her researching the Helheim Glacier on the Greenland Icesheet.

After graduating with an engineering degree, she volunteered for the Peace Corps where she lived in Panama sleeping in a bamboo hut for two years. “Living here I felt very connected to the land.” Sommers said.

Coming back, she worked in water resource management and decided she wanted to combine her interest in mathematics with her love of being outdoors in very austere places. She went back to school and expanded her interest to glaciers where she could understand the aesthetics of the environment through mathematical equations by taking “Complex elegant equations to capture beautiful flow patterns of the natural world.”

I caught up with Sommers in McCarthy Alaska where she was teaching a group of University of Alaska students at an annual two-week summer glaciology course. Following COVID protocols we conducted our interviews outdoor while a heavy storm, quite literally, rained on our parade.

Sommers studies the hidden mechanisms of glacial systems, what’s happening under the glacier. The drainage system of sea ice producing different energy outputs of meltwater affecting glacial melt rate.

We then moved to her past research on the vegetation feedback loop caused by climate change. Looking at the data from the warming climate and the respective feedback loops she makes connections between unexpected and complex natural systems. “Things we do today will certainly influence the planet’s trajectory and humanities trajectory over the next 100 years.” She said, “I think the focus on more resiliency and adaptation in policy and in research is from the very clear evidence that things are changing very quickly on many fronts.”

Full interview below-

Eric Peterson

Eric Petersen is a glaciologist, planetary scientist and geophysicist researching debris covered glaciers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Peterson says debris covered glaciers aren’t necessarily critical to sea level rise, but they are very important for different regions. In areas like the Himalaya, the debris covered glaciers form what Petersen calls a, “high mountain water tower.” These foundations are essential in providing millions of people and vital ecosystems with fresh water through its glacial melt.

As the world has moved into a warming climate, there is an increased flow of fresh water in the short term, but as the glaciers retreat into the mountains the flow from the “High Mountain Water Towers” are going to be depleted. “This is a major concern for places such as India,” Peterson said. He is investigating the characteristics and melt rate of the ice underneath the surface debris to better understand why some of these debris covered glaciers are melting at a similar rate to “clean” glaciers.

I followed Peterson as he took a group of PhD student to conduct field research on Kennecott Glacier where I then sat down with him at the terminus.

In our interview we covered the importance and characteristics of debris covered glaciers as well as the unique melt patterns that create “ice cliffs” in the landscape. It is thought that these ice cliffs are contributing to the significant retreat of debris covered glaciers.

“If we look at high mountain glaciers that are covered in debris you would expect they wouldn’t be retreating as fast (as clean glaciers), but that’s not always the case. In many cases we see similar magnitudes of ice loss.” He said, “It’s hard to image what these places are going to look like in 10 years.”

Full interview below-

Amy Lovecraft

Amy Lovecraft is a political science professor and director at the center for arctic policy studies housed in the International Arctic Research Center.

As far as stopping climate change Lovecraft believes we are beyond the tipping point. Research around climate change has proven why it’s happening, but human beings seem not as “interested or capable” of addressing climate change.

“The Ozone hole had a similar dynamic, it required global action and sacrifice, but the issue was a relatively technical one that could be solved.” She said, “With climate change you are asking the world to do something similar in terms of global actions, but the way in which climate change is perpetuated isn’t just through greenhouse gases. It’s land fragmentation, operational practices and behavior patterns that human beings loath to get rid of.”

I sat down with Lovecraft at her office in the University of Alaska where we discussed the public perception of climate change, its effects on infrastructure, and the future of cryosphere related policy. “In the future as climate change continues to warm the planet, we may see glacial policy and other cryosphere policy.” She said, “Policy based around sea ice, or permafrost because we are going to recognize more viscerally how important that cryosphere is to human well-being.”

Full interview below-