Speaker 1: Okay, it's that guy on the train who fell asleep
Speaker 1: eating a sandwich. Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 1: So I'm working on this episode while I'm in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and most of the research for asides was done while
Speaker 1: staring out a window into one degree weather a degree
Speaker 1: a degree one, and I learned just how close you
Speaker 1: can get to an ancient radiator without getting hospital grape burns.
Speaker 1: So for this episode, we're going cold so glacier quakes.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into them. Okay, but first we'll
Speaker 1: thank the folks who just melt my heart. All the
Speaker 1: people on patreon dot com slash ologies who are submitting
Speaker 1: questions and supporting the show, All the folks out there
Speaker 1: who are wearing Ologies March from ologiesmarch dot com, everyone
Speaker 1: who boosts the show by texting links to friends and
Speaker 1: tweeting and gramming and brading and subscribing, and of course
Speaker 1: for leaving reviews for me to just savor, like leftover
Speaker 1: potstickers that you forgot were in the fridge and I
Speaker 1: read you a fresh one each week. So thank you
Speaker 1: to Elizabeth Anna for this one. They said, I think
Speaker 1: this podcast got me to med school storytime. I recently
Speaker 1: interviewed for med school and got a little too excited
Speaker 1: while talking about this podcast in the interview, and I
Speaker 1: saw my interviewer write down ology SPoD. A few days later,
Speaker 1: I got an email saying they couldn't offer me a
Speaker 1: spot in the school. But then a few days after that,
Speaker 1: I got an email offering me a spot on the
Speaker 1: wait list. And I like to pretend it's because you
Speaker 1: got a chance to listen to the podcast and decided
Speaker 1: to give me a chance. Either way, I managed to
Speaker 1: plug this podcast in my med school interview, and I'd
Speaker 1: say that's a win. Elizabeth Anna. I hope he hears
Speaker 1: this and you get in. What a day maker. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get right into it. Cryo seismology. This is the
Speaker 1: study of the shaking of glaciers ice quakes, y'all. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to skip the etymology. You'll find out in
Speaker 1: a minute why. But just know this is not a
Speaker 1: seismology episode. An episode on earthquakes, A big one, if
Speaker 1: you will, will happen sometime in the future, but just
Speaker 1: like a shaker, I cannot tell you when, but just
Speaker 1: know it will be imminent. Now this one, this is
Speaker 1: ice quakes, So hold on to your snowpants. So this
Speaker 1: ologists got her bachelor's in physics and geology from the
Speaker 1: University of Nebraska Lincoln and is currently working towards her
Speaker 1: PhD in geophysics at Caltech in Pasadena, California. And I've
Speaker 1: been following her on Twitter after approximately one million of
Speaker 1: you just jammed on your caps lock and we're like
Speaker 1: word find her ask her questions, and so I gleefully did,
Speaker 1: and last July she snapped a photo of herself on
Speaker 1: a glacier wearing snow pants and a helmet and field gear.
Speaker 1: Was just one small addition, which was a gauzy blue
Speaker 1: cape like that worn by Elsa and frozen, and she
Speaker 1: wrote alongside it, I firmly believe that kids should not
Speaker 1: be taught that gurly things and science ye things are
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive. Therefore I backed a cape with my field work,
Speaker 1: just to show what a glaciologist Princess Elsa would look like.
Speaker 1: Hashtag the cold never bothered me anyway, and it started
Speaker 1: a great global discussion about glaciers and women in science
Speaker 1: and how pop culture can help people see them. So
Speaker 1: empowered roles. So I navigated the rough terrain of LA
Speaker 1: freeways and met up with her at Caltech's famed seismology
Speaker 1: lab up to the press room where you see all
Speaker 1: the news footage after an earthquake, and we talked about
Speaker 1: what a glacier is, why it quakes, how she measures it,
Speaker 1: why it's important the biggest glaciers the prettiest blue in
Speaker 1: the universe, and how we can feel a little more
Speaker 1: hopeful in the face of a warming climate. So cozy
Speaker 1: up to the work and the wisdom of cryo seismologist
Speaker 1: Celeste Lebeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's strange, even like being there, I
Speaker 2: have a hard time believing that, like there's mountain peaks
Speaker 2: early there. Yeah, and that's not just because I'm from
Speaker 2: Nebraska and I think all mounts are fake. That was
Speaker 2: gonna be one of my first quests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so now you are a cryo seismologist.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am a cryo seismologist. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: So the way that I explained it to people is
Speaker 2: I tell them to take apart the word. Okay, so
Speaker 2: a seismologist is something you might have heard of on
Speaker 2: TV after an earthquake, they say, and now we're going
Speaker 2: live to talk with some seismologists about this. So that
Speaker 2: I looked up the etymology once and seismos or something
Speaker 2: is actually Greek for earthquake. It doesn't have a different meaning,
Speaker 2: it's just earthquake alone got its own Greek word. And
Speaker 2: so seismology is the study of earthquakes. And then cryo
Speaker 2: in front. You may have heard of, like you know,
Speaker 2: cryogenically cooled or something. Cryo means cold, So when we
Speaker 2: put those together we get cold stuff and seismology. Okay,
Speaker 2: So yeah, instead of studying earthquakes and a there are
Speaker 2: ground motions in the solid ground, I am studying ice
Speaker 2: quakes and other motions in the ice.
Speaker 1: Is an icequake? Is that a real thing? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Icequakes are real things. They're basically just like earthquakes. So
Speaker 2: in an earthquake, you have sliding some kind of motion.
Speaker 2: You can picture tectonic plates that you may have seen
Speaker 2: in like seventh grade science, moving past each other, and
Speaker 2: that motion, when it's a little fast, can cause seismic
Speaker 2: waves that you feel. So that's an earthquake. An ice
Speaker 2: quake can be caused by a similar thing. You can
Speaker 2: have little faults inside of a glacier or an ice
Speaker 2: sheets or any kind of big mass of ice, and
Speaker 2: you can slide along those faults within the glacier. A
Speaker 2: glacier can slide against the rock that it's on top of.
Speaker 2: But you can also get cracks that open up in
Speaker 2: the ice. Those make ice quakes too, And then there's
Speaker 2: other sources of not ice quakes, but other vibrations in
Speaker 2: the ice. So, like, my research is on the signals
Speaker 2: that come from flowing water inside of a glacier, because
Speaker 2: you know, if you stand next to a rushing river,
Speaker 2: it's loud. Yeah, you can imagine the ground vibrating a
Speaker 2: little bit next to a rushing river.
Speaker 1: Celeste says that the same thing happens inside of glaciers.
Speaker 2: Meltwater moves through them, and when it moved, it's loud.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Okay, So now ice quakes are not
Speaker 1: a thing that I knew about before. Literally right now,
Speaker 1: how long have you known about ice quakes?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I was interested in seismology since high school. I was
Speaker 2: in the Science Olympiad competitions that high schoolers can do
Speaker 2: young ambacious, So I was on Yeah, I was on
Speaker 2: my high school science team and there was an event
Speaker 2: that was about earthquakes and volcanoes, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is the coolest. I'm going to do this, This
Speaker 2: is great, And then I didn't get into the ice
Speaker 2: quakes side of it. I didn't start looking at cryo
Speaker 2: seismology until I got to grad school. Actually, I was
Speaker 2: going to be a non cryo seismologist, a regular seismologist.
Speaker 2: But then a project was brought to my attention that
Speaker 2: could take me to a glacier and teach me about
Speaker 2: motions inside of ice instead of inside of and I was.
Speaker 1: All, in, dang, now you are from Nebraska. Yes, they
Speaker 1: got a lot of quakes or ice over there.
Speaker 2: No, okay there, Well there's we get snow every year
Speaker 2: and it's lovely. But yeah, there is every once in
Speaker 2: a while really tiny earthquakes in Nebraska. But yeah, No,
Speaker 2: I did not gain interest from experience in seismology. Wasn't
Speaker 2: feeling earthquakes as a kid or anything.
Speaker 1: Did you like earth science growing up at all?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: I always tell people that the explanation for why I
Speaker 2: am like I am is that I grew up in
Speaker 2: a science museum. Yeah, my dad works for the University
Speaker 2: of Nebraska State Museum and he's the collections manager for
Speaker 2: zoology and botany. So he's just in charge of like
Speaker 2: so many dead animals.
Speaker 3: You know, Texa Jermy.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I kind of. I kind of grew up
Speaker 2: in a natural history museum, which leads to a nice,
Speaker 2: nice introduction to science. So I'm really really happy and
Speaker 2: definitely privileged that I had that opportunity growing up. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of our family friends were other scientists
Speaker 2: working for the museum and stuff. So yeah, I grew
Speaker 2: up with entomologists and paleontologists and parasitologists kind of all around,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, well, these of course I
Speaker 2: am one of these people, and that's very nice. I'm
Speaker 2: very very lucky to have had that experience. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I liked geology a lot. My dad took me outside
Speaker 2: a lot. You'll find that with many geoscientists all around
Speaker 2: and geology, geophysics, geochemistry, everything, a lot of folks got
Speaker 2: into it because they loved being outside.
Speaker 1: Oh you know that makes sense. I mean the more
Speaker 1: that you're out camping or hiking you see striations and
Speaker 1: rock and you see some shiny and it's a quartz
Speaker 1: or something, did that happen with you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, getting outside and seeing seeing geology in place is
Speaker 2: definitely a way to spark an interest in the geosciences.
Speaker 1: Okay, quick aside. I wondered what other jobs a geoscientist
Speaker 1: might do. And if you're into earth science, you can
Speaker 1: study soils or wells or earthquakes or oil or space rocks.
Speaker 1: And the median salary is like eighty to ninety GeSe.
Speaker 1: So if you're like, how can I be outside more?
Speaker 1: That way bonus, Not all of the jobs involve mittens.
Speaker 1: And now, when you got this opportunity to start studying
Speaker 1: on a glacier, had you you'd never been on a
Speaker 1: glacier before, right.
Speaker 2: I'd never had. I grew up comfortable with snow. There's
Speaker 2: lots of snow in Nebraska in the winters. I grew
Speaker 2: up cross country skiing. I just didn't know it was
Speaker 2: going to be a job skill later. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'd never I had seen glaciers on like a
Speaker 2: family vacation, but i'd never like been on one really.
Speaker 1: And this is such a stupid question, but what exactly
Speaker 1: is a glacier?
Speaker 2: So a glacier is basically a big pile of ice,
Speaker 2: and how they form is year after year snowfalls in
Speaker 2: places like you know, high latitudes or high altitudes if
Speaker 2: you get enough snowfalling that it doesn't melt between years,
Speaker 2: then it just starts stacking up and stacking up.
Speaker 1: Okay, by the bye, sea ice is fro in seawater
Speaker 1: and it's not a glacier. Glaciers only originate on land.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. And they're on every continent except
Speaker 1: for you, Australia. I'm sorry, but you do have really
Speaker 1: good coffee, I'm told, and you have koalas. Now, what
Speaker 1: is the smallest glacier? There's no set rule, but glacier
Speaker 1: scientists are like maybe twenty five acres, which is about
Speaker 1: the size of Adele's estate.
Speaker 2: I just got here, and I think communising signal already.
Speaker 1: In case sets of any help context wise, And yes,
Speaker 1: how are they formed? So imagine layers and layers of
Speaker 1: snow falling on land, kind of like a crape cake.
Speaker 2: And then the pressure from just the snow above it
Speaker 2: will squish that snow down into nice, clear solid ice.
Speaker 2: So after many, many, many years of a lot of
Speaker 2: snow falling and not all the snow melting, you can
Speaker 2: end up with a huge pile of ice. So yeah,
Speaker 2: if you have a more localized, massive ice, that's just
Speaker 2: a regular glacier. If you have a lot of glaciers
Speaker 2: that sort of connect together among mountains, that's often called
Speaker 2: an ice field. And you get even bigger and you're
Speaker 2: covering up whatever it's on top of completely, then that's
Speaker 2: an ice sheet. So like Greenland and Antarctica are ice sheets.
Speaker 2: Then over time, under its own weight, that ice moves,
Speaker 2: glaciers will flow downhill or outward. They're just they're squishing
Speaker 2: under their own weight and they're trying to go somewhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to recap, glaciers connecting become ice fields, and
Speaker 1: ice fields connecting become ice sheets. And when they crawl
Speaker 1: and lurch and quake, they can boop to do through
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. So glaciers are just out there,
Speaker 1: they're doing their thing. And like that's how half dome
Speaker 1: became a half dome, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So as glaciers are moving, they will carve out
Speaker 2: the landscape around them, which is really cool because it
Speaker 2: leaves some really stunning places, like your somebody was carved
Speaker 2: by glaciers and it's just it's stunning, of course. And yeah,
Speaker 2: they leave very characteristic shapes. Glaciers will leave nice U
Speaker 2: shaped valleys, So if you're looking at a valley, if
Speaker 2: it's shaped like a V, then a river carved it,
Speaker 2: shaped like a view, then a glacier carved it. WHOA, Yes,
Speaker 2: they leave these very characteristic landscapes. They'll have these kind
Speaker 2: of sinuous U shaped valleys with peaks in between. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so you can tell when a place was glaciated in
Speaker 2: the past.
Speaker 1: And what was it like the first time you saw
Speaker 1: a glacier you were going to work on.
Speaker 2: So it was a little bit hectic because I had
Speaker 2: gone to Juno, Alaska with my collaborators because the closest
Speaker 2: to city to where we were going to work. Then
Speaker 2: we were waiting for the weather to clear to get
Speaker 2: a helicopter flight up to this glacier, because that's how
Speaker 2: you get to a glacier, So you get yourselves and
Speaker 2: a lot of equipment up to a glacier. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we had to wait for the weather to clear, and
Speaker 2: then once it did, they were like, we got to go, go,
Speaker 2: go in case the clouds come back. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: hauled all of our gear into a helicopter and then
Speaker 2: we got in the helicopter too, and then they flew
Speaker 2: us up to the glacier. And then we got up
Speaker 2: and we had to get all the gear out, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't able to stop and appreciate it because there
Speaker 2: were so there was so much to do. So then
Speaker 2: once we got all of our gear out and the
Speaker 2: helicopter left, I remember it left, and then it just
Speaker 2: got really, really really quiet, and then I was actually
Speaker 2: able to look around and appreciate, like, holy moly, I
Speaker 2: am on the ice and there is so much of it.
Speaker 1: How tall was that glacier? Like in what kind of elevation?
Speaker 2: So the glaciers I've worked on are actually not that
Speaker 2: high up, so they are only about like one thousand
Speaker 2: meters elevation. You can actually the one of the glaciers
Speaker 2: I've worked out, you can hike there from Juno in
Speaker 2: a day, just uphill from like Juno Airport, you can
Speaker 2: hike up there. So the glacier that I worked on
Speaker 2: for the first time was a smallish mountain glacier. So
Speaker 2: it's about a kilometer and a half wide, like six
Speaker 2: kilometers long, and about two hundred meters thick at its thickest.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if you like are standing in the middle
Speaker 2: of it and look down, you can imagine that there's
Speaker 2: you know, like two football fields worth of ice, like
Speaker 2: straight down. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for scale, this glacier near Juno is bigger
Speaker 1: than Central Park. It's actually closer inside to Golden Gate
Speaker 1: Park in San Francisco, but there are probably fewer people
Speaker 1: smoking drugs and make it out on it. San Francisco
Speaker 1: my birthplace. I love you, I love your vibe, But
Speaker 1: what is the vibe of working on a glacier? Can
Speaker 1: you walk me through a little bit of what your
Speaker 1: field work is like? Like how how long are you
Speaker 1: there and what time are you getting up? Is there coffee?
Speaker 1: And how many things are you measuring?
Speaker 2: So I have been very lucky that my field work
Speaker 2: has been in an area with a little bit of infrastructure.
Speaker 2: So the Juno Ice Field Research Program is an organization
Speaker 2: that's been monitoring glaciers outside of Juno and running a
Speaker 2: field school for students interested in glaciology. They've been monitoring
Speaker 2: the area for about seventy years and they have some
Speaker 2: infrastructure there, so they have camps on the rock ridges
Speaker 2: between glaciers, so we get to stay there. So it's
Speaker 2: actually pretty plush living for glacier on those we will yeah,
Speaker 2: get up right and early and there is coffee breakfast.
Speaker 2: They do a lot of the just add water pancakes,
Speaker 2: very good field food and yeah, then we go out
Speaker 2: and do whatever we are doing that day. So we
Speaker 2: take our seismometers, which are basically very sensitive motion detectors
Speaker 2: and yeah, so they can detect really really tiny motions
Speaker 2: that a human could never feel on their own. So
Speaker 2: we have to take those out from our camp and
Speaker 2: deploy them on the glacier in strategic spots. Usually burying
Speaker 2: seismometers is best because then it's very nice and quiet,
Speaker 2: not as much like wind and rain hitting them, and
Speaker 2: they can just get all the vibrations that they need
Speaker 2: to get. Then as the as our experiment wraps up,
Speaker 2: then I have to go back out and pick up
Speaker 2: the seismometers again. Son of going out and you know,
Speaker 2: dropping all these seismometers in particular spots that I'm on
Speaker 2: the easter egg hunt to go pick them back up again.
Speaker 2: That part's a little bit less fun because that involves
Speaker 2: hauling some seismometers uphill, which is a little bit less fun.
Speaker 2: You gotta do, you gotta do it. Sometimes we are
Speaker 2: also making some seismic waves. So on my second round
Speaker 2: field work, we did some active source seismic surveying, which
Speaker 2: is making your own seismic waves, which is as fun
Speaker 2: as it sounds, it is. There are two methods. The
Speaker 2: quieter method is hitting a steel plate with a hammer,
Speaker 2: oh my god. And the louder method is essentially setting
Speaker 2: off a small controlled safe explosion.
Speaker 1: What what kind of explosions?
Speaker 2: So we have basically they look like very They look
Speaker 2: like large shotgun shells, so they're like a little bit
Speaker 2: bigger than a shotgun shell that you could like buy
Speaker 2: for a hunting rifle. Those shotgun shells are blanks. They
Speaker 2: just have gunpowder in them, no projectiles, and we put
Speaker 2: them in It looks kind of like a sketchy gun,
Speaker 2: but we bury end in the snow or if you're
Speaker 2: you know, doing in the desert or something, then you
Speaker 2: bury it in the ground and yeah, then you fire
Speaker 2: it and it makes a little noise because it's underground,
Speaker 2: and then that generates some seismic waves that will move
Speaker 2: through whatever you've put it into, so the ice for me,
Speaker 2: or the rock if you're out in the desert doing
Speaker 2: it at looking for faults or something, and then it'll
Speaker 2: those seismic waves will bounce off of say the base
Speaker 2: of the glacier or a fault in the ground or
Speaker 2: something they can bounce off and then be picked up
Speaker 2: by your seismometers.
Speaker 1: So they're shooting things in the ground. They're creating explosions
Speaker 1: to see how the glacier will react and where fault
Speaker 1: lines might be. In some cases, Celeste and her colleagues
Speaker 1: are looking at data coming in day by day and
Speaker 1: seeing how much water is rushing through the glacier, and
Speaker 1: then with other seismometers, all the data is stored in
Speaker 1: a memory chip for later.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it depends on the kind of using. But
Speaker 2: some of them you can can life feed them back,
Speaker 2: and some of them you just got to wait and
Speaker 2: be surprised.
Speaker 1: Oh it's like opening up a time capsule.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And now I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: but the Earth's temperature is getting a little bit warmer
Speaker 1: and I'm yeah, I don't amazing. Yeah, it's bend on
Speaker 1: the news a little bit. But what is going on
Speaker 1: with glaciers and with cryosismology, are you able to track
Speaker 1: anything based on what's melting, what's moving, what's shaken.
Speaker 2: So examining what's happening with glaciers under climate change is
Speaker 2: One of the big reasons I want to be doing
Speaker 2: cryo seismology is it's another tool that we have to
Speaker 2: check out what's happening inside of a glacier, and what's
Speaker 2: happening inside of a glacier really matters for what the
Speaker 2: future of a glacier might be like. So all around
Speaker 2: worldwide we are losing ice. There are some glaciers that
Speaker 2: are getting a little bit larger due to changes in
Speaker 2: weather patterns in their area. But like net we are
Speaker 2: losing ice and we're losing a lot of ice, and yeah,
Speaker 2: that means a lot of potential changes for the world,
Speaker 2: and it'd be nice if we could help head off
Speaker 2: some of those changes with knowledge about what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: So things like as we're losing ice, how much ice
Speaker 2: so we're going to lose? How much is sea level
Speaker 2: going to rise? And you can keep track of you know,
Speaker 2: how much meltwater is moving through a glacier or how
Speaker 2: much it's cracking off the end and just breaking off
Speaker 2: into icebergs. You can track those things with seismology. That's
Speaker 2: one tool you can use to check it out. Glaciers
Speaker 2: are also a really important water resource for a lot
Speaker 2: of people around the world. So a lot of people
Speaker 2: who live downhill of glacier and mountain ranges, like for example,
Speaker 2: the Himalayas, a lot of people are relying on the
Speaker 2: glaciers there to provide steady water resources for all of
Speaker 2: their water needs, for their agriculture, for their drinking water,
Speaker 2: for their water for hygiene. Getting an idea of what
Speaker 2: those glaciers might be doing in the future is really
Speaker 2: important for making sure those people have those water resources.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's really important to be keeping an eye
Speaker 2: on glaciers and understanding exactly what's going on on the
Speaker 2: inside and out so that way we can get better
Speaker 2: ideas of what they might be doing in the future.
Speaker 1: So her work helps us gauge how much ice we
Speaker 1: may be loose, and how much sea water we may
Speaker 1: be gaining, and what a toast to your earth might
Speaker 1: mean for people who rely on glaciers for their water.
Speaker 1: And another reason to keep tabs on glacier quakes and
Speaker 1: ice hunks is because they can surprise you. Which spoiler,
Speaker 1: These surprises do not involve a glacier popping out from
Speaker 1: a couch with your name on a cake.
Speaker 2: Some glaciers can have what's called glacial outburst floods, which
Speaker 2: are very scary also pretty amazing. So you can get
Speaker 2: dams of ice, so like meltwater will be entering an area,
Speaker 2: but then the ice is actually blocking it, and then
Speaker 2: when the ice breaks, all that water is free to go,
Speaker 2: and those can be really big floods that are super sudden.
Speaker 2: And since you can detect moving water with seismometers, this
Speaker 2: is potentially a way to check out how can we
Speaker 2: get people downstream early warning before a flood comes through
Speaker 2: and washes away their home or something.
Speaker 1: And how big are ice quakes? Do they conform to
Speaker 1: the same Richter scale, like as a seven point zero
Speaker 1: ice quake like a crazy huge shaker, Like how big
Speaker 1: do these things get?
Speaker 2: So ice quakes you can measure them with similar similar tools,
Speaker 2: like magnitude scales for earthquake, but they usually end up
Speaker 2: looking a little bit different. Really big icequakes happen when
Speaker 2: iceberg's calve off the front of a glacier, and sometimes
Speaker 2: you can get series where it's just iceberg after iceberg
Speaker 2: is tumbling and rumbling off the end, and they're all
Speaker 2: like going into the bay. So really big ones of
Speaker 2: those happen in places like Greenland, and a huge event
Speaker 2: like that that can be as much energy put out
Speaker 2: as a magnitude five earthquake. Oof, but if you're standing
Speaker 2: right next to it, it doesn't feel like a magnitude
Speaker 2: five earthquake because it's happening over a longer period of time.
Speaker 2: So whereas you know an earthquake might be happening in
Speaker 2: a second or so, it's going to take several minutes
Speaker 2: for all of those icebergs to do all of their tumbling,
Speaker 2: so you can measure them on the same magnitude scales,
Speaker 2: but it's not necessarily a helpful way for humans to
Speaker 2: imagine like how big they are.
Speaker 1: Yes, the seismology lab at Caltech is the actual birthplace
Speaker 1: of the Richter scale, and we'll definitely get into that
Speaker 1: when we do seismology. But in general, these ice quakes
Speaker 1: or cryosizems, which apparently they're known, are low frequency shakers,
Speaker 1: big but mellow, kind of like the Bernese Mountain dogs
Speaker 1: of seismic events, but less hairy. Also, if you've ever
Speaker 1: during a winter cold snap, heard loud booms and thought
Speaker 1: someone was attacking you with like an old school pirate cannon,
Speaker 1: you may have heard a frost quake, which is when
Speaker 1: rain seeps into the ground and that temperatures drop and
Speaker 1: then the water in the earth expands and snaps, and
Speaker 1: you'll know if there has been a frost quake by
Speaker 1: simply turning on the television to see breathless coverage of
Speaker 1: news anchors assuring you that the explosions were not the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: I know, what about movies, how do they get glaciers
Speaker 1: or glacier quakes right or wrong? Are there any orcy
Speaker 1: or any that you're like, good job?
Speaker 2: Okay, So though, I was trying to think if there
Speaker 2: was any movies that have ice quakes at all, and
Speaker 2: the closest I could come up with was in the
Speaker 2: beginning of the Day after Tomorrow when the ice shelf
Speaker 2: is like breaking off right under their station where they're
Speaker 2: drilling for ice cores.
Speaker 1: What's happening, Oh, that solves creaking off. That's where it's happening.
Speaker 2: And that, Uh, that was pretty wild. And maybe if
Speaker 2: they would have had some seismometers they could have had
Speaker 2: a little bit more warning that that was coming. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you really do get like huge crevasses in glaciers, especially
Speaker 2: on big ice shelves like in Antarctica. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: There hasn't been too many too many ice quakes in movies.
Speaker 1: And I know that you have a history with Frozen.
Speaker 1: When you watched Frozen, did you love it because you're like,
Speaker 1: that's me, that's my jam.
Speaker 2: So Frozen came out before I was studying glacier at all,
Speaker 2: So I just liked it because I love kids movies.
Speaker 2: But now I just saw the stage musical version of
Speaker 2: Frozen in La right now. And I saw a couple
Speaker 2: weeks ago with my friend and it was super awesome
Speaker 2: as a glacier person. And I saw Frozen too recently
Speaker 2: with another friend and also like actually went in a
Speaker 2: glacier and it was really cool and oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I was like, my little glacier heart was just founding.
Speaker 2: It was great. It was great.
Speaker 1: It melted your ice Horten.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now you took a cape with you. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was a Halloween costume. Yes, and you bundled it up
Speaker 1: in a tiny, tiny little bundle, put it in your knapsack,
Speaker 1: and the glacier cape photo also around the world. What
Speaker 1: was your motivation for that?
Speaker 2: So it was actually a silly idea that I think
Speaker 2: it was my mom's idea. Originally after my first round
Speaker 2: of field work. She saw some of the photos I
Speaker 2: did and she was like, hey, you should take the
Speaker 2: cape we made for your Halloween costume a few years ago.
Speaker 2: Next time we go to a glacier and then like
Speaker 2: take some photos because wouldn't that be fun? And I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that would be fun. There's a lot of cool ways
Speaker 2: to you know, appreciate ice in media and movies and
Speaker 2: fun stuff through things like Frozen, but there's also a
Speaker 2: way to scientifically appreciate them. And it's kind of cool
Speaker 2: that all those different all those experiences in ice can
Speaker 2: can go together in fun ways. And it's also a
Speaker 2: cool way to think about, like who is a scientist.
Speaker 2: A scientist for this is a person who's interested in ice,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that's both me and Princess Elsa. It was
Speaker 2: a fun way to make a little statement about what
Speaker 2: a scientist might look like. And also just a fun
Speaker 2: reason to wear a cape, because you know, yeah, I
Speaker 2: always need more reasons to wear cape.
Speaker 1: You're wearing right now, she was not wearing a cape,
Speaker 1: but I was wearing a sweatshirt. I think I slept
Speaker 1: in just to be real with you, But the point
Speaker 1: is don't judge, and that was a really good statement
Speaker 1: to that. To be a scientist, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you have to issue certain aspects of femininity or gender. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to your outreach, I know you do
Speaker 1: a lot of it. What is like the most infuriating
Speaker 1: flint flam that you would like to debunk?
Speaker 2: So I get a lot of flum flam from the
Speaker 2: seismology side of my work rather than the glacier side
Speaker 2: of my work, because lots of people have lots of
Speaker 2: myths about earthquakes, and a lot of those myths aren't
Speaker 2: intentionally trying to be harmful there a lot of them
Speaker 2: are from our human brains trying to make patterns. So
Speaker 2: there are a lot of folks out there who think
Speaker 2: you can predict earthquakes, and nobody can actually reliably predict earthquakes.
Speaker 2: And some people think there's things like earthquake weather that
Speaker 2: will tell you whether it's more likely to have an earthquake,
Speaker 2: and those don't actually make much of a difference. So
Speaker 2: I usually have lots of myth busting to do earthquake wise.
Speaker 2: The main one that I have to do with glacier
Speaker 2: stuff is just like yes, climate change is rail. We
Speaker 2: are losing ice. We are losing a lot of ice,
Speaker 2: and we should do something about that.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you patroon questions? Please do Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh boy? Okay? Before your questions, a few words from
Speaker 1: some sponsors who make it possible for us to donate
Speaker 1: to a charity of the ologies choosing each week, and
Speaker 1: this week's let's chose The Traditional Association for Geoscience Diversity
Speaker 1: and The IAGD is a nonprofit dedicated to creating access
Speaker 1: and inclusion for persons with disabilities in the geosciences. They
Speaker 1: celebrate the diverse abilities of all geoscience students, faculty, and
Speaker 1: working professionals by fostering student engagement in geoscience career pathways.
Speaker 1: And they're doing awesome stuff. So thank you so less
Speaker 1: for choosing them, And thanks to some sponsors of the
Speaker 1: show who I may talk about right now. All right,
Speaker 1: onto your burning ice quake questions. Carl Ntzer more of
Speaker 1: a comment than a question, just says love her.
Speaker 2: I'm honored, so Carl, Thanks Carl.
Speaker 1: Duly noted. Jesse Dragon wants to know will there still
Speaker 1: be quakes when the glaciers disappear? Are the glaciers ever
Speaker 1: going to fully disappear.
Speaker 2: So that's a big question, okay, And that's one reason
Speaker 2: why folks are interested in, like, you know, why should
Speaker 2: we be investigator or glaciers right now? Is? Yeah, what's
Speaker 2: going to happen to them in the future. So we
Speaker 2: are definitely losing ice. We are definitely losing a lot
Speaker 2: of ice. It will take a long time for especially
Speaker 2: our larger piles of ice like green Land and an
Speaker 2: art Our cut those. There is ice loss there, but
Speaker 2: it's going to take a while for those to be like,
Speaker 2: you know, gone gone. So hopefully that's not a case
Speaker 2: that we are facing. There are definitely there are glaciers
Speaker 2: with projected death dates already. Really, yeah, there's project If
Speaker 2: you go on Wikipedia articles for small glaciers that are
Speaker 2: well known, like for example, in Glacier National Park, the
Speaker 2: Wikipedia articles will say, you know, this glacier is estimated
Speaker 2: just to disappear by twenty fifty or something. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of the glaciers. Do they have projected disappearance
Speaker 2: days dates? Okay?
Speaker 1: Side note, I went to look up a graphic representation
Speaker 1: and found out that glacier mass balance is the term
Speaker 1: for how much ice a glacier is putting on versus
Speaker 1: how much it's losing, taking on a little snow, some
Speaker 1: is melting. Let's just say that the graphs for that
Speaker 1: show a definite global trend downward.
Speaker 2: But essentially I would say overall it's going to be
Speaker 2: following sort of the same kind of global temperature curve,
Speaker 2: which is yeah, really really taking it up tick since
Speaker 2: that good old Industrial revolution. Yeah, so it'd be nice
Speaker 2: if that could take a little downturn soon. That way,
Speaker 2: we have a chance of preserving some of these glaciers,
Speaker 2: so we don't have to call Glacier National Park the
Speaker 2: park formerly known as Glacier Gosh.
Speaker 1: Okay. There are roughly one hundred and ninety eight thousand
Speaker 1: glaciers in the world, remember, larger than Adele's twenty five
Speaker 1: acre country estate, and Iceland, by the bye is expected
Speaker 1: to lose all of theirs in the next two hundred years.
Speaker 1: And last summer, in a move that was starkly emotional,
Speaker 1: they were the first nation to hold a funeral for
Speaker 1: one of their deceased glaciers, which was once called ok
Speaker 1: Kikeol I think, but since Jakol means glacier, they just
Speaker 1: changed the name to Olk. It hurts. They put up
Speaker 1: a memorial on what's now a rocky mountain inside with
Speaker 1: a plaque that read, this monument is to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: we know what is happening and what needs to be done.
Speaker 1: Only you know if we did it. They addressed future visitors.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that black will be buried in ice one day,
Speaker 1: but kudos Iceland. A glacier funeral. That's a power move.
Speaker 1: It's also god as hell if you ask me a
Speaker 1: person who has held a funeral for a bug. Now
Speaker 1: speaking of the forces that shape.
Speaker 2: Us topography, so like, you can still look at it,
Speaker 2: and if you know a thing or two about you know,
Speaker 2: you can look for those U shaped valleys that glaciers
Speaker 2: leave behind. You can still say, ah, yes, glaciers were here,
Speaker 2: and some of the glaciers there are going to be
Speaker 2: gone in the next couple decades. Some of the larger
Speaker 2: ones might take a little longer, but yeah, we could
Speaker 2: see some of those glaciers go away. And other small
Speaker 2: mountain glaciers too are really at risk.
Speaker 1: Right God, I hope they don't have to rebrand. It's
Speaker 1: just it's for many reasons. This next question was asked
Speaker 1: by first time question asker Alexis Delgado plus Annie, Sophie
Speaker 1: Karen At, Stephanie Bertese McNee and May Mara wants to
Speaker 1: know how do wildlife react to glacier quakes.
Speaker 2: Oh. Interesting, I haven't really thought too much about this.
Speaker 2: So there's actually not much wildlife on like the middle
Speaker 2: of a glacier because it's not it's not a place
Speaker 2: with very much food. So when I've done work on glaciers,
Speaker 2: like I was out in the middle of the Juno
Speaker 2: ice Field this last summer, and yeah, we would very
Speaker 2: rarely see any animals. Occasionally a bird would fly over.
Speaker 2: We would occasionally find dead birds on the glacier because
Speaker 2: they would get in and not be able to get out.
Speaker 2: I get in or out of a glacier, they would
Speaker 2: like start flying onto the glacier and then run out
Speaker 2: of food out there and then end up dying out there.
Speaker 2: It's kind of sad, but that's the circle of life
Speaker 2: for those birds.
Speaker 1: No pancakes for them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so yeah, there's there's not a ton of
Speaker 2: wildlife on the glacier. There is. Oh, one of the
Speaker 2: coolest things out there is there's a kind of l
Speaker 2: that lives in snow but it's commonly known as watermelon
Speaker 2: snow because it's bright pink. Really. Yeah, So if you
Speaker 2: like go out to glacier and there's like a patch
Speaker 2: that looks kind of like a murder scene, like there's
Speaker 2: like like a red, reddish like pinkish splotch, it probably
Speaker 2: wasn't a murder scene. It's probably just watermelon snow. So
Speaker 2: it's a kind of like little algae. And then there's
Speaker 2: these little tiny worms, like smaller than a penny like
Speaker 2: worms that feed on that algae.
Speaker 1: Ps I look this up and it's also called pink
Speaker 1: snow and blood snow. And yes, there are inch long
Speaker 1: black worms in it. You can eat it, but too
Speaker 1: much might cause gastro intestinal issues, just in case you
Speaker 1: need one more reason not to eat blood snow peppered
Speaker 1: with worms.
Speaker 2: So there is stuff living in the snow. Those little
Speaker 2: worms are probably like concerned when the ice shakes a
Speaker 2: little bit, but for the most part, it wouldn't disturb
Speaker 2: too much wildlife. Maybe they would maybe a nearby if
Speaker 2: it was if it was a glacier on the edge
Speaker 2: of an ice field and had a larger ice quake,
Speaker 2: maybe a nearby deer or something would look up from
Speaker 2: its and wonder what was going on. But yeah, no
Speaker 2: ice ice quakes don't affect wildlife too terribly much.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good to know. Just keep thinking about these
Speaker 1: little disturbed worms, like I've tried a much mamell it
Speaker 1: over here.
Speaker 2: Ew, what's going on? What's going on down there?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Maria Hancocks wants to know where did she get that cape?
Speaker 1: I want one.
Speaker 2: I just went to the craft store and bought some
Speaker 2: glitter tool fabric. It's like what a twotu is made
Speaker 2: out of. But you can just like buy a couple
Speaker 2: of yards of it. Yeah, my mom bought it for me,
Speaker 2: Thanks mom.
Speaker 1: Okay. Megan McLean wants to know have glacier quakes resulted
Speaker 1: in the discovery of anything significant in terms of new
Speaker 1: life forms or fossils, anything ever pop out of a
Speaker 1: glacier for you're what was that doing there?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if glacier quakes have helped, but
Speaker 2: you can get things can be preserved pretty well in ice.
Speaker 2: So occasionally there have been lost hikers on glaciers in
Speaker 2: the Alps from you know, one hundred years previously, have
Speaker 2: gotten buried in the ice and then appeared lower on
Speaker 2: the glacier from the motion of the glacier. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred years after they disappeared. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's super wild, a little.
Speaker 2: A little grim, but yeah. So glaciers can preserve things
Speaker 2: really well. But yeah, since there's not not much life
Speaker 2: on a glacier other than adventurous humans, there's not much
Speaker 2: in the way of fossils or anything good to know.
Speaker 1: Patrons Pandora too, Shay Sarah Amish, Granulation and Rot also
Speaker 1: asked about things found in a glacier and I just
Speaker 1: have to pipe in that. I looked it up and
Speaker 1: there have been Mount Everest hikers mummified by the ice
Speaker 1: and then later revealed when it melted and fallen, prehistoric
Speaker 1: warriors from thousands of years ago, and war planes with
Speaker 1: entire crews, soldiers with unmailed love letters, sacrifice victims, lost
Speaker 1: lovers in the Alps, and more. Just in case melting
Speaker 1: glaciers just weren't sad enough for you. dB nervous and
Speaker 1: wants to know where are the largest glaciers, like by
Speaker 1: service area, those would be Greenland and Antarctica. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Greenland and Antarctica are both ice sheets. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like one big glacier as in as just
Speaker 2: like one huge, huge pile of ice. But then there's
Speaker 2: like glaciers coming off the side where the ice is
Speaker 2: like oozing out from the edge of the ice sheet.
Speaker 2: I don't know about what the largest one of those
Speaker 2: officially is. I know the fastest glacier is called yakapsov
Speaker 2: In Isbri It's it's in Greenland, And yeah, it's the fastest.
Speaker 2: It's moving about thirty meters a day. Why whereas like
Speaker 2: smaller glaciers like the ones that I work on, are
Speaker 2: moving half a meter a day.
Speaker 1: That's still pretty fast. Yeah, something so big, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: By all means move at a glacial pace. You know
Speaker 2: how that thrills me?
Speaker 1: Hey, Meryl Streep from Devilwar's product, You move something that
Speaker 1: weighs billions and billions of tons sixty to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty feet a day and tell me that's not
Speaker 1: impressive and terrifying and heart wrenching. Is it like weird
Speaker 1: emotionally to see ice kind of break off and splinter
Speaker 1: off from a huge glacier. On one hand, you've got
Speaker 1: some great data, but on another, like, oh, that's more
Speaker 1: ice smell thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so icebergs breaking off the end of a glacier
Speaker 2: is a natural thing. Even healthy glaciers are doing that. Okay,
Speaker 2: So it is something that you can you can happily
Speaker 2: enjoy and just enjoy it for the like, you know,
Speaker 2: powerful sort of a gunshot kind of sound. Yeah, one
Speaker 2: of it cracking off the ice. You can actually hear it,
Speaker 2: and then you know it'll tumble into the water if
Speaker 2: it's emptying into the ocean or something. So yeah, you
Speaker 2: can still enjoy that. But then, yeah, it does remind
Speaker 2: you that, oh, this is happening a little bit more
Speaker 2: than it used to. So yeah, it's it's a weird.
Speaker 2: It's a weird emotional thing to like be up close
Speaker 2: with glaciers, like knowing that they are going away.
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything like that? Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: like a huge tumble off? Have you been a present
Speaker 1: for that?
Speaker 2: I wish well. On vacation with my family before I
Speaker 2: knew I was going to be studying glacier someday, we
Speaker 2: got to see some icebergs tumble off the edge glacier
Speaker 2: in Alaska, and like that was pretty cool, But it
Speaker 2: wasn't like one of the really huge ones. There are
Speaker 2: great videos online of like glacier calving events that are
Speaker 2: really spectacular.
Speaker 1: So that calving event you heard earlier was audio from
Speaker 1: the documentary Chasing Ice and Dang. If you like watching
Speaker 1: glaciers crumble like scones, very loud, rumbling scones, this is
Speaker 1: the documentary for you future glaciologists. Simiie Thompson says, I'm
Speaker 1: a glaciology student, so I have so many questions. Oh right,
Speaker 1: fellow glaciologist. All right, what is the deal with the
Speaker 1: meteorite impact craters recently found under the Greenland ice sheet
Speaker 1: through seismic studies?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is a really rad case. There's a
Speaker 2: spot in Greenland that I think somebody was originally just like, hey,
Speaker 2: the topography here looks a little bit funny, let's check
Speaker 2: it out. And then they figured out that part of
Speaker 2: the it's in like northwestern Greenland, that there was actually
Speaker 2: a crater blow there. And yeah, they figured it out.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they figured it out from seismic
Speaker 2: or from radar to one of the other good ways
Speaker 2: to check out what's going on inside a glacier like
Speaker 2: structure wise, is to shoot radar beams in there. And
Speaker 2: then they'll bounce off the bottom and come back. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of the same concept as sizic wave moving,
Speaker 2: it's just that they're radio It's yeah, it's radar waves instead.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't know if that was discovered via
Speaker 2: seismic or radar, but yeah, it's pretty rat And they
Speaker 2: just saw the nice characteristic crater shape at the blow
Speaker 2: of the edge of the Greenland ice sheet. You can
Speaker 2: kind of if you zoom into that area on Google
Speaker 2: Earth you can kind of see and I like, it's
Speaker 2: like right on the edge of the ice sheet and
Speaker 2: the crater is all full of ice, so you can
Speaker 2: see kind of like a little rounded, little little bump
Speaker 2: on the edge where it's filling up the crater.
Speaker 1: It is bananas. Side note that you can just use
Speaker 1: Google Earth to look at glaciers. I just had just surreal,
Speaker 1: like how does technology even exist? Moment doing that. Also
Speaker 1: some fun trivia, This Hiawatha impact crater and another subsequently
Speaker 1: found pretty close to it, was discovered by some NASA scientists.
Speaker 1: They were doing a flyby and just testing their equipment
Speaker 1: on the way to the Arctic. Imagine making the discovery
Speaker 1: of a lifetime seeing a nineteen mile wide geological divot
Speaker 1: in the earth when you just meant to be like
Speaker 1: as a thing. On testing oh Rex, sand Parker asked,
Speaker 1: what's the most valuable or useful piece of technology that
Speaker 1: you use to conduct your work.
Speaker 2: So, a new piece of technology that I just used
Speaker 2: on my last round of field work, and other cryo
Speaker 2: seismologists are starting to check out too, is called distributed
Speaker 2: acoustic sensing. Okay, which acoustic sensing makes it sound like
Speaker 2: a microphone, but it's actually it's really cool. So it's
Speaker 2: essentially tricking a fiber optic cable into thinking it's a
Speaker 2: bunch of seismometers.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you shoot a laser pulse in and then little
Speaker 2: inhomogeneities in the cable will bounce that laser pulse back.
Speaker 2: And then if you stretch or smush any bit of
Speaker 2: the cable from, for example, a seismic wave passing by,
Speaker 2: then the return times of all of those little bounce
Speaker 2: backs will change. Timing sends pulse after pulse after pulse
Speaker 2: and looks for changes in the reflection.
Speaker 1: That comes back.
Speaker 2: So that's some wild new technology that. Yeah, instead of
Speaker 2: deploying a lot of seismometers, you can just roll out
Speaker 2: one cable. Yeah, so a lot of seismologists in general
Speaker 2: are really interested in how do we use this tech?
Speaker 2: Looking at seismology in urban areas is probably where that's
Speaker 2: going to be coolest, because you can use fiber optic
Speaker 2: cables that are already installed for just like telecom purposes
Speaker 2: you to plug your box in and then check it out.
Speaker 1: Oh, when it comes to seismometers, Michelle Lee asked about them.
Speaker 1: The thing that draws the wavy lines is called a
Speaker 1: seismic graph, and the paper with the wavy lines drawn
Speaker 1: on it is a seismic gram, which means instagram should
Speaker 1: really be called instagraph. None of this matters. One thing
Speaker 1: that does matter, how big is a seismometer.
Speaker 2: But yeah, seismometers in the modern day can be really tiny.
Speaker 2: You can even you can buy your own tiny seismometer
Speaker 2: with it that's powered by Raspberry pie the little microcomputers.
Speaker 2: I'll have seismometers called Raspberry shakes. Get it, and so
Speaker 2: if anybody wants to, they can go buy a Raspberry
Speaker 2: shake and you can plug it in and you can
Speaker 2: feed it into there's a network of Raspberry shakes. They're
Speaker 2: great for like education, Like teachers will get them for
Speaker 2: their classrooms and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, do I why say?
Speaker 2: Smile? Yes, it's super cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have no idea what this question means, so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna ask it, and if you don't either
Speaker 1: of them, we're gonna skip it. No idea what this means.
Speaker 1: Robert Robin Helton wants to know. Was the bloop a
Speaker 1: glacier quake? Please tell me it was, because I'm terrified
Speaker 1: of the ocean as is. What is the bloop?
Speaker 2: I don't know what the bluep o.
Speaker 1: Allison Bee, or rather Allison Bee's girlfriend, also asked this
Speaker 1: question and we had no idea, no idea what the
Speaker 1: bloop they were talking about. But Celeste emailed me right
Speaker 1: after the interview later that night with a link. And
Speaker 1: apparently in nineteen ninety seven, oceanographers recorded the loudest noise
Speaker 1: ever heard under the sea, a bloop, A sound like
Speaker 1: a wall rist gently farting in a bathtub, but so loud. Noah.
Speaker 1: The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration says on their site
Speaker 1: quote was the bloop from secret underwater military exercises, ship engines, fishing,
Speaker 1: boat winches, giant squids, whales, or some sea creature. Unknown
Speaker 1: to science. For years and years until two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: all these conspiracy theories about the bloop swirled around. No
Speaker 1: one knew what the bloop was. People were losing their minds.
Speaker 1: What is this bloop? Turns out it's the sound of
Speaker 1: an ice quake and a chunk calving off into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Bloop like an ice cube in your lemonade, and Noah
Speaker 1: also mentioned that we can expect more and more future bloops. Oh,
Speaker 1: hollis great question. What causes glaciers to be so blue?
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a great question. And if you have
Speaker 2: not seen how blue a glacier is, you need to
Speaker 2: like Google image search like glacier ice especially oh search
Speaker 2: for glacier ice caves, because that gets you the blue
Speaker 2: really good. So glaciers are blue for the same reason
Speaker 2: that like the ocean is what happened, And it's not
Speaker 2: the same reason as the sky is blue. So the
Speaker 2: sky is blue because of really scattering of light. Large
Speaker 2: quantities of water and large quantities of ice are blue
Speaker 2: because water molecules, they're like a bond stretch in there
Speaker 2: can absorb light, but it gets absorbed on the red
Speaker 2: end of the spectrum as light is coming into there,
Speaker 2: the red just gets kind of absorbed out, and so
Speaker 2: all you're left with is the blues, and they're very,
Speaker 2: very lovely. My favorite, my favorite color in the world
Speaker 2: is like looking down a glacier crevass and just seeing
Speaker 2: it is so so so it's the bluest blue.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got to ask someone at Pantone what chip color
Speaker 1: that is, what number that is? Okay, so side note,
Speaker 1: of course, I looked up ice caves, which are surreal
Speaker 1: and gorgeous caverns of shimmering surfaces in these deep, moody
Speaker 1: blue tones. And then I went to pant Tone and
Speaker 1: I typed in glacier and they have a color called Glacier,
Speaker 1: but it was like kind of minty green. They have
Speaker 1: a color called Arctic, but that was just kind of
Speaker 1: a straight vintage army color. They also had an iceberg green,
Speaker 1: but that was again like a powdery olive. And I'm
Speaker 1: looking at these swatches and the closest I could find
Speaker 1: to the color of ice caves was this sadly unnamed
Speaker 1: chip known only as twenty nine eighty five C, and
Speaker 1: it kind of captured that cool aqua of an ice crevass.
Speaker 1: And then I was like maybe they have a color
Speaker 1: called ice cravas. They do not have a color called
Speaker 1: ice cravas. Then I realized that the twenty twenty Pantone
Speaker 1: color for the year is you ready for this? Classic blue?
Speaker 1: Just straight up blue, which I will say, if you
Speaker 1: compare it to those dim ice caves, is pretty spot on.
Speaker 1: So that's magic. Jennifer Tran wants to know. Are there
Speaker 1: ice canoes like an icy volcano? Oh?
Speaker 2: So, there are a lot of places where there are
Speaker 2: volcanoes with glaciers on them on Earth and also potentially
Speaker 2: on other planets. There is what's called cryovolcanism, So places
Speaker 2: like you know, like icy moons of our outer planet,
Speaker 2: So places like Enceladus in Europe and maybe have cryovolcanism,
Speaker 2: which is just like a volcano, but it's it's solid
Speaker 2: and liquid water instead of solid and liquid rock. No way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So when it spouts out of there, is
Speaker 1: that cold? Is it hot? What's like? Is it like
Speaker 1: a dome full of ice and then water is shooting
Speaker 1: out of the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then it only freeze pretty quickly because
Speaker 2: it's cold out there in the outer Solar System. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just it's a volcano. But it's just yes, ice
Speaker 2: and water, and just like you know, lava shoots out
Speaker 2: of a volcano and then rapidly freezes into rock, so
Speaker 2: water would shoot out of a cryovolcano and then rapidly
Speaker 2: freeze back in dice. Oh my god, what is life?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That is so bananas. Charlotte Hunter, first time question asker
Speaker 1: all right, says Native traditions in Alaska and elsewhere possess
Speaker 1: rich mythologies regarding geological events. Do you know of any
Speaker 1: that focus on glacier quakes?
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure. I do know that one interesting
Speaker 2: bit of indigenous knowledge and seismology is the fact that
Speaker 2: the Pacific Northwest can potentially have very large earthquakes that
Speaker 2: can cause tsunamis. When Westerners started interacting with indigenous peoples
Speaker 2: in what is, yeah, the Pacific Northwest, they heard in
Speaker 2: those people's oral traditions about stories of the ground shaking
Speaker 2: and then a giant wave coming, and they thought, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, look at their silly creation myths. But that
Speaker 2: was actually just real oral history of past earthquakes and
Speaker 2: tsunamis happening. So that's kind of one thing that folks
Speaker 2: are trying to do in geoscience is making sure that
Speaker 2: we're not doing our geoscientists from a colonialist perspective of
Speaker 2: so I don't know specifically. I do know that glacier
Speaker 2: myths feature in a lot of in a lot of
Speaker 2: cultures native to areas like southeast Alaska where I work.
Speaker 1: I read up on this a little, and there is
Speaker 1: a First nation's idea of sentient forms of nature, and
Speaker 1: glaciers in some indigenous accounts are depicted as powerful but
Speaker 1: a little caddy seeking some chilly revenge for human offenses.
Speaker 1: And there are adages of not frying anything with grease
Speaker 1: on a glacier because the noise of crackling bacon or
Speaker 1: simmering oil is thought to mimic or even mock a
Speaker 1: glacier quake, possibly causing an outburst flood, which is pretty
Speaker 1: bitchy and very dangerous. So tread lightly if you do
Speaker 1: tread at all. Amber Lee Noel, first time question asker,
Speaker 1: asks why on earth are we still allowing people to
Speaker 1: commercially visit glaciers? Is it as bad for them as
Speaker 1: I think it is? And Amberley lives close to Jasper
Speaker 1: National Park and that has a beautiful ice field Parkway
Speaker 1: and gets really sad when they notice how far it's
Speaker 1: receded in the last ten years. Should tourism on glaciers
Speaker 1: be allowed? Why do you feel a bad?
Speaker 2: Well, So it is really cool that people can go
Speaker 2: experience a glacier because as someone who has worked on glacier,
Speaker 2: like experiencing them physically, being there is something that's so cool.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I understand the reservations about that since it
Speaker 2: is a little bit of a delicate landscape, but a
Speaker 2: lot of the like when glaciers recede, it's because of
Speaker 2: sort of larger scale climate effects rather than individual actions
Speaker 2: like local to that area generally. So maybe less tourism
Speaker 2: because that's less of a carbon footprint, but as far
Speaker 2: as like you know, going to a national park and
Speaker 2: admiring the glaciers that they have there, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And if you can do that in a low carbon way,
Speaker 2: then I highly encourage you to because there's a lot
Speaker 2: you can learn and it makes you it makes you
Speaker 2: value those environments more. So that way you are maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit more motivated to help create a world
Speaker 2: where our climate is a little bit safer in the future.
Speaker 1: So just some people breathing on a glacier is not
Speaker 1: what is causing glacier recession?
Speaker 2: Yeah, ok, yeah, yeah, the glacier is receding because of larger,
Speaker 2: larger scale changes, right. You know that's good people at
Speaker 2: the Natural Park visitor center.
Speaker 1: So Amber Lenoel, you can read a little easier on that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. We're all concerned about glaciers. I get it,
Speaker 1: and so does a patron named Rot, who simply commented
Speaker 1: f in the chat for all the melting or melting
Speaker 1: glaciers sadface. Christina Delayer asked, is there any way to
Speaker 1: reduce the pace at which glaciers are melting? Or are
Speaker 1: we screwed because we've passed some kind of tipping point.
Speaker 2: I do know that there is some kind of wild
Speaker 2: geoengineering happening to try to preserve glaciers. So I think
Speaker 2: there's a spot in the Alps where a glacier has
Speaker 2: been melting, and that melts out, for example, dirt and
Speaker 2: debris on the surface, and that's darker color than the ice.
Speaker 2: It sucks up more heats than it melts faster, so
Speaker 2: they are essentially part of the time covering it with
Speaker 2: like a white tarp, like a giant like white blanket
Speaker 2: to help keep it cooler. Yeah, there is some radical
Speaker 2: geoengineering that people are trying to do to protect glaciers
Speaker 2: that are currently being impacted by climate change.
Speaker 1: One example side note is an ice stupa, which is
Speaker 1: this conical artificial mini glacier formed by spouting water up
Speaker 1: in the air and having it freeze into like a
Speaker 1: big ice cream cone or stupa, which is a temple shape,
Speaker 1: and then as it melts in the spring, the water
Speaker 1: can be used by the communities. And this was invented
Speaker 1: by Indian engineer and genius Sonom Wingchuk who first implemented
Speaker 1: this in twenty fourteen. And just as aside, he also
Speaker 1: suggests starting your day with a cold shower because it
Speaker 1: makes everything else in your day seem comparatively easy and
Speaker 1: it also saves a lot of energy. So someone else
Speaker 1: please do this for a week and report back. Just
Speaker 1: the thought of this makes my butt WinCE. A few
Speaker 1: people asked about things that are hiding in the ice
Speaker 1: as they melt. Ruby Ostrich asked, how screwed are we
Speaker 1: by all of those bugs hiding in the ice as
Speaker 1: they melt, Like, are there bacteria that are going to
Speaker 1: pop out and me like surprise.
Speaker 2: So you probably don't have a ton to worry about
Speaker 2: with like glacier ice. But permafrost stuff melting out of permafrost,
Speaker 2: which is frozen soil. Just like when the near surface
Speaker 2: ground is totally frozen year round, some funky, funky stuff
Speaker 2: can freeze into that, I know, and so I do
Speaker 2: think there's some concerns about, you know, what kind of
Speaker 2: bacteria or viruses might be in that. But yeah, so
Speaker 2: permafrost melting might release some funky things, probably not from
Speaker 2: just like straight glacier ice.
Speaker 1: Okay. Hailey Vanderwah has a really scientific question wants to
Speaker 1: know what you do about dry skin and cold hands,
Speaker 1: asking from Pennsylvania in February.
Speaker 2: So, where I am for my field work in southeast Alaska,
Speaker 2: We're pretty lucky because I'm there in the summers and
Speaker 2: so it's surprisingly pleasant out there. Okay, sometimes it's a
Speaker 2: little too pleasant and makes me a little bit concerned
Speaker 2: about climate change. So where I am, luckily, it's quite pleasant.
Speaker 2: But I know when people are going to even cold
Speaker 2: or colder places like Greenland and Antarca, they do take very
Speaker 2: seriously bundling up and yeah, making sure that everybody is
Speaker 2: staying safe and healthy in very cold conditions is serious
Speaker 2: business for folks working in any any outdoor environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what kind of moisturizer? What kind of hand creamy?
Speaker 2: I definitely bring a vasaline kay lips because I guess
Speaker 2: super dry lips, but just regular old drugstore lotion. It
Speaker 2: gets me in the summers in Alaska, so my moll could.
Speaker 1: Several people asked if you have a favorite glacier.
Speaker 2: I think my favorite glacier is the first glacier that
Speaker 2: I did fieldwork on, which is Lemon Creek Glacier in
Speaker 2: southeast Alaska. It's just outside of you now, but then yeah,
Speaker 2: I've also done work on Tacu Glacier, So Tacu Glacier
Speaker 2: has my heart as well.
Speaker 1: Taco Glacier side note is a thirty six mile long
Speaker 1: boy in Alaska. What's the shittiest thing about being a cryossismologist?
Speaker 2: So I thought about this because I know you asked,
Speaker 2: like what's the best and what was yeah, and I
Speaker 2: kind of came up with like they're sort of like
Speaker 2: the same thing is both the best and the worst.
Speaker 2: So like work is kind of the best and the
Speaker 2: worst because it's the best because it's like really just
Speaker 2: amazing to be out in such a cool environment, Like
Speaker 2: it's phenomenal, but also like it kind of sucks because
Speaker 2: it's a high pressure situation. In some ways, you have
Speaker 2: to really make sure that you're getting everything done exactly
Speaker 2: right because there's not really take backs in the field
Speaker 2: because it costs a lot to get you there and
Speaker 2: you're trying to do everything, like you know, you're doing
Speaker 2: it live. We'll do it live. And yeah, it's also remote,
Speaker 2: so if like you know, if something breaks, then you
Speaker 2: are you don't have the exact size of screwdriver to
Speaker 2: fix it, then you just got to figure it out.
Speaker 2: So it's really cool, but it's also like it's stressful
Speaker 2: in some ways. You really have to make sure you
Speaker 2: get it right. So that's kind of the best and
Speaker 2: the worst. The best is just existing in those environments,
Speaker 2: and then the worst is the kind of pressure that.
Speaker 1: Goes with that. What do you love the most about seismology?
Speaker 2: So the thing that I love most about seismology in
Speaker 2: general is that people are very interested in it. So
Speaker 2: when people find out I'm a seismologist, want to tell
Speaker 2: me about an earthquake they felt, And I love hearing
Speaker 2: those stories. It's like really cool to hear the ways
Speaker 2: that different people have experienced earthquakes. You know, they told
Speaker 2: me about the one that they felt when they were
Speaker 2: a kid. They'll tell me about the one they felt,
Speaker 2: you know, a couple months ago or something. It's cool
Speaker 2: to hear people stories. And it's also cool to like
Speaker 2: help bust some myths about seismology. Remind people that know,
Speaker 2: nobody can be predicting earthquakes. No, there's no such thing
Speaker 2: as earthquake weather. No, we don't know when the next
Speaker 2: one will be, and we're hiding it like there's there's
Speaker 2: there's all kinds of there's all kinds of myths about seismology.
Speaker 2: So I really like just that it's a science that
Speaker 2: a lot of people are interested in just in general.
Speaker 1: Oh and what is the best gear to have? Is
Speaker 1: it ear muffs, a ski mask, a cape?
Speaker 2: The important thing is the waterproof pants, I think really
Speaker 2: the essential field item. Without waterproof pants, you are suck.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a good jacket and the waterproof pants are
Speaker 2: are are the real game change our latch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So ask smart people your stupidest questions. I swear I
Speaker 1: have done this thousands of times. No one has thrown
Speaker 1: a shoe at me yet. It's glorious. So to learn
Speaker 1: more about Celeste Lebed's work, you can follow her on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Instagram at Celeste Labed's l A B E DZ.
Speaker 1: And we are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. Please
Speaker 1: do befriend us. I'm on both at Ali Ward with
Speaker 1: one L. We have an Ologies podcast Facebook group full
Speaker 1: of very cool human people sharing weird science stories. Thank
Speaker 1: you Aaron Talbert for admiting that and for hats and
Speaker 1: pins and tots and such. Hit upologiesmerch dot com, which
Speaker 1: is admined by Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch of the
Speaker 1: podcast You Are That, and assistant editing was done by
Speaker 1: Jarrett Sleeper of the podcast Make Good, Bad Brain. And
Speaker 1: thank you to the rock that is Stephen Ray Morris,
Speaker 1: who hosts a Dinosaur Slash, Laura durn podcast, c Jurassic Wright,
Speaker 1: and a kiddie podcast The per Cast. Nick Thorburn of
Speaker 1: band Islands wrote and performed the theme song. And if
Speaker 1: you listen to the end, you know that I reward
Speaker 1: and burden you with a secret for my soul. And
Speaker 1: this week's secret is that I'm in Chicago. It's very cold,
Speaker 1: and I'm here for Cherit's grandfather's memorial service, and we
Speaker 1: were celebrating his life by gathering in his favorite local
Speaker 1: watering hole, and I was offered a shot of Jepson's Malort,
Speaker 1: which if you are from Chicago, you know this is
Speaker 1: a local tonic that uh Chicagoans muster through with pride.
Speaker 1: And we had a shot of malort in his honor,
Speaker 1: and it tasted kind of like herbs and vanilla going down,
Speaker 1: and then it had this after taste, like a bitter
Speaker 1: after taste, and I was trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: it was, like grapefruit or something, and then I realized
Speaker 1: what it reminded me of, and it was bile. Anyway
Speaker 1: to Chicago, I also ate a hot dog and I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, but I did put ketchup on it. I
Speaker 1: record this under a desk in an Airbnb because I
Speaker 1: want to get it to you asap. Okay, bye bye.
Speaker 3: Pacodermatology, hobiology or do zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, pedatology, nathology, seriology, elidology.
Speaker 1: What killed the dinosaurs?
Speaker 3: They is a