Ice, ice baby - with Dr. David Lilien
Hi, folks, and welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining me today is Doctor. David Lilien. David, thanks for joining us.
David:Thanks for having me, Shelby.
Shelby:So, David, as we get to know you today, what would be your drink of choice?
David:So I'm gonna more than the drink, I'm gonna go with what's in the drink. So I'm gonna say bourbon. But in it, I want ice from in a glacier, which we often call party ice because it fizzes and kind of makes a popping noise as it melts because of the little air bubbles that are trapped inside. So it's a it's a pretty fun drink because it gives you some noise as it goes along.
Shelby:So you sound like you're speaking from experience here.
David:Yeah. I am. Not often. It's kind of hard to get ice from from deep in a glacier that's, you know, clean enough that you're willing to put it in your in your beverage. So
Shelby:Yeah. I have I actually have lots of questions about that now that you mentioned it. But first, maybe can you tell us if someone were to ask you what you do, how would you answer that question? Because I think that's a good segue from what you just mentioned.
David:Yeah. So I'm a glaciologist. So I study glaciers and ice sheets. And specifically, I would call myself an ice dynamicist. So my interest is in how the ice moves and how that movement changes in response to things like climate.
Shelby:So that's probably a strange concept for some people, thinking of ice moving. So can you elaborate on that a little bit?
David:Yeah. So ice is a fluid, but it's a really slow moving fluid. So if you imagine how honey moves more slowly than water, similarly, ice moves more slowly than honey much, much more slowly to the point that we get terms like glacial pace and things like that. But a lot of glaciers and ice sheets or parts of the ice sheets move a lot faster than what you probably think of as a glacier. So there are places in Greenland where the ice is moving 20 kilometers a year.
David:And then if you do the math and break that down, that gets to something like three feet an hour. So you can't quite just see it, but it's just on the cusp of being visible motion. So more dynamic than you might think for what a glacier
Shelby:Yeah. That's that's very different from what I would have imagined. And so you mentioned earlier having bourbon with us from a glacier. So first of all, Kentucky, big supporter of the bourbon aspect of that. Are there how do you get ice from a glacier that you know you can drink or eat?
Shelby:Because that you know, there's all these sort of science fiction horror stories of someone unlocking a very old piece of ice and things going terribly wrong.
David:Yeah. So as it turns out, the the water in most glaciers is extremely clean. You would have to be a little bit careful on a mountain glacier. I actually have some story of regrets in that regard. But if you go to the ice sheets, the ice is pretty clean.
David:It's some of the cleanest water on Earth, more than you could even really purify water to in a lot of cases. So you can basically just pull it out and drink it. And then the tricky part is that you need to get down if you want that nice bubbly effect, you have to get down to where the snow has compacted to solid ice. And so that can be pretty deep. That might be 300 feet down in the glacier.
David:So you need to to drill down and get to that or find a spot in the ice sheet where the the top bit has melted away, and then you can get down to the pure ice instead of the snow.
Shelby:And this sort of bubbling effect, is it akin to carbonation? Like, can you imagine it's the same as if you opened a pop, or is it very different from that?
David:It's it's you feel it less on your mouth. So it doesn't have the same carbonation feel, but the popping is louder than the bubbles that you get from carbonation because they they really kind of burst because they were under pressure in the glacier. And then so when they're released, it can be kind of forceful and and as they fizz.
Shelby:This you're gonna be the first guest that I've ever requested homework from. The next time that you do this, I would love if you can record audio of it that we could then put on the show at some point.
David:Okay. Yeah. I'll I'll try and make that happen.
Shelby:That would be amazing. So you you work with glaciers, which I think is probably a concept a lot of folks have never really thought about. So what what are you interested in with them? What are your questions you're trying to answer when you think about them?
David:Yeah. So I guess I'll start with motivation. And so the motivation for glaciology these days is mostly sea level rise. So currently, sea level is rising at a rate that's pretty slow in an absolute sense. Know, We're not talking like an inch a year or anything like that.
David:But over the course of hundreds of years, that can be a substantial amount of sea level rise from the melting of glaciers combined with the expansion of water as it gets warmer. And so as we go and look into the future, what we think is likely to happen is that the Antarctic ice sheet will be the primary contributor to sea level rise from melting ice by the year February. So really not that far in the future, we're gonna start to see what we used to think of as this really slow flowing, boring piece of ice that was really far from all humans and not affecting anyone is going to start to affect people who live in low lying areas. So that's kind of the motivation for the work that I do, is trying to understand how that's gonna happen. And the types of questions I'm interested in is that Antarctica is just so cold that it doesn't really directly melt from the surface.
David:So there's there's tiny pockets. But mostly, the reason that Antarctica loses ice is because it transports that ice to the ocean more quickly than it accumulates snow. And then in balance, it loses ice. So if the ice flow speeds up, then the continent loses mass and sea levels globally rise. And so it's whether that velocity of the ice is going to change that is the kind of question that I work on in using a mix of things like numerical models where we try and have our computers mimic what's happening in the ice using measurements of the ice from space.
David:So we can measure the speed of the ice flow and the surface of the ice from space. And then I also do work looking at the thickness of the ice, which we have to measure on the ground in the field or from an airplane.
Shelby:So you're essentially curious about and trying to quantify how quickly this ice is flowing and how that's changing in response to sort of climate conditions and then using that to evaluate what that means for sea level rise in the future?
David:Yeah. Exactly. And I guess I'm most excited about kind of the fundamental ice flow question. So a lot of times, my work is one step removed from directly thinking about how much the ice flow is changing at present and thinking about what are the little the physical processes of the individual little blocks of ice that affect how they flow, and then with the long term goal of getting to that sea level rise question.
Shelby:So sometimes I'll hear people say things like, if I have a glass of ice water and all of my ice in that ice water melts, my water level doesn't rise. So why should we be worried about sort of glaciation and and glacier melt? And so how would you sort of respond to those sorts of ideas?
David:Yeah. So there's two, like, main types of ice in the natural world. And one of those is sea ice. And so that is frozen seawater that follows the principle that you just laid out. So if sea ice melts, it might have implications for things like shipping in the Northwest Passage, but it doesn't have implications for global sea level.
David:And the second type of ice, the type of ice that I study, is what we would call meteoric ice. So meteoric like meteorology. So it accumulated as snow that fell from the sky, and it generally falls on land. And so as you can imagine, if you take the ice off the land and put it in the water, it's the same as taking an ice cube out of your tray in the freezer and putting that in your glass. And we all know that you can overflow your glass by piling in ice cubes from from the freezer.
David:Even if once they melt, once they're already in the glass, that doesn't change sea level. And it gets actually kind of really interesting in parts of Antarctica because there are parts of Antarctica where the ground is actually below sea level. So we would call it a marine based ice sheet in West Antarctica. And so in that case, we have to work out what percentage of the melting ice affects sea level and what percentage follows this, what we call it, the Archimedes principle, that the amount of water that's displaced is just the weight of the ice. So no change in sea level from things that are already floating.
David:But that's a calculation that we can make, and we can figure out what the effect on sea level is from West Antarctica. And it's substantial also.
Shelby:And so Antarctica, I think, is an area that people would resonate with in terms of thinking about glaciation? Where are some other areas on the globe that we would have these sort of glaciers on land that would impact sea level that you could be interested in?
David:Yeah. So the fastest changing glaciers right now are not really in the polar regions. It's in the more mid latitudes or even in there are some glaciers close to the tropics at really high elevations and close to the Equator. And those are changing really rapidly because they were on this cusp of being kind of viable glaciers where they have cold enough temperatures that snow can survive through the summer, and then the the glacier can persist. And so currently, the the most rapidly changing ice is places like that, places like glaciers in the Lower 48, glaciers in tropical regions.
David:And so I don't study those in particular because the the processes that control their melting are more directly thermodynamic, I guess. They're mainly controlled by the temperature and the amount of snowfall. And so to understand how they're changing, it's, in a lot of ways, an atmospheric science question to figure out what they're going to do. And then you can sort of ignore how the ice is moving. And then as we move to bigger and bigger chunks of ice in colder and colder places, that's when the dynamics become more and more important for the fate of the glaciers.
David:And that's kind of why I study those regions in particular.
Shelby:So you you said earlier that one of the things that you do when in sort of this spectrum of ways that you observe and analyze and measure these glaciers is that you use satellites to sort of track their movement. So how how does that work? Because I would imagine it would be difficult to sort of pinpoint areas in a glacier and be able to keep visual track of them. I would think they'd be pretty similar. I don't know.
David:Yeah. So it's, it's pretty cool. So to do it visually, that has only really become possible, I'd say, in about the last ten years that we've started to get these satellites that have, enough, like, enough resolution, so are able to distinguish different shades of white, essentially, so that you can track features on the surface. But we've actually been able to measure the speed of glaciers from space for longer than that, and we just have done it not using visual satellites, so satellites that look at the light that we can see, but using radar satellites. So these satellites are putting out energy from the satellite rather than taking what's reflected from the sun.
David:So they put out this energy from the satellite, and then they look at the reflection back up to the satellite. And then there are two ways we can kind of use that information. And the one that we use in fast flowing areas is really just kind of what you would imagine for an optical satellite. So you take this we call it a speckle. So it's kind of just like the modeled surface of how it appears in radar.
David:And we can look at how that gets offset by the next time that the satellite passes over that spot, which might be a week or a month later. And we can look at how much change in position there was and work out a flow speed from that. And glaciers are actually pretty speckly in in radar wavelengths, so they they don't look just flat white to the radar satellites, and so they're able to track this displacement in that way.
Shelby:I love the the sort of official terminology of of speckle. Yeah. So when you all are collecting these data or or getting these data that have been collected from satellites, then how do you go about processing them? Is this something that you're doing manually, or is this something that you're sort of having computers help you with?
David:Yeah. So it's it's done by computers. And so I don't really do this. My my PhD supervisor was one of the people who really developed the methodology to make these measurements from space and has really kind of I would say the the two people who developed those methods have really opened up a a whole world of glaciology that didn't exist before because we can map out all the fast flowing areas on Earth. We came to understand that these fast flowing areas, not only do they quickly, but also their flow speeds can change.
David:Because before the early to mid nineties, the the way that you had to go and measure flow speeds, we didn't have GPS, or GPS was kind of in its infancy. And so you were often doing this manually with something called a theodolite, where you would try and find a stable position where you could put up a tripod and kind of like a telescope with degree measurements on it, and you would track motion using your little telescope and the stake you put out on the glacier. And as you can imagine, you're not gonna be able to measure all the glaciers on Earth in that way. You'd need an army to
Shelby:do Yeah.
David:So it's really one of the exciting things that happened in glaciology in the nineties was that we became able to make these measurements. And then a lot of the the work that has done since has really been enabled by the putting up of these satellites, the computer processing to get extract this information in a reliable way from these satellites.
Shelby:And then you also are are going into the field to collect data. Right?
David:Yeah. So I have been to Antarctica a few times. I've worked in Greenland, Northern Canada as well, which is a a really fun part of my job.
Shelby:And this is something I have no familiarity with, and I would imagine a lot of people that are listening to this have no familiarity with. So what is the process like of getting to some of these areas, especially Antarctica? Because I can't imagine there's a large percentage of the global population that ever makes it there. So what is sort of the logistical process behind that? And then what happens once you're there?
David:Yeah. So for logistics, we The US program has three bases in Antarctica. They have Palmer Station, which is kind of more biology focused. It's on the Antarctic Peninsula, where it's slightly warmer, slightly lower latitude, and it's accessed by ship. So I haven't worked out of there.
David:The main US base is in McMurdo, which is the point that Scott set off from basically for the pole when he was trying to be the first to reach the South Pole. So it's the southernmost point where there is open ocean in the world is where the the main US base is. And so we access that from New Zealand. So going to work in Antarctica with The US, you fly from wherever in The US to Christchurch, New Zealand, which is a larger large ish airport on the South Island Of New Zealand. And from there, you meet a US military plane.
David:And so some of these are actually owned by the National Science Foundation. They own four they're called LC one hundred thirty Hercules. So the C 130 is a very common military plane, but then the National Science Foundation owns four or five of them that are LCs, which means that they are ski equipped. So in addition to their sets of wheels, they have these gigantic skis, so think more like a sled, that they can lower below the wheels. And so you can fly on those, or sometimes it's cold enough you can fly on a wheeled plane, and you fly on those to across the Southern Ocean to Antarctica, to McMurdo, which has a couple runways at it.
David:And so that's a long flight. So on an LC one thirty, that's an eight or nine hour flight. And the worst part about it is that you pass what's called the point of no return, or they call it the point of safe return. So about five hours into that flight, you are committed to either landing in Antarctica or, I guess, not landing. And so at around five hours in, they will make a decision of, are we going to turn around and go back to New Zealand?
David:So sometimes I've been on flights where we were trying to get to Antarctica, and we flew five hours in, and the weather had shifted in McMurdo, and we turned around and flew back to New Zealand, and then got on the plane and did the same thing the next day, and again failed to get to Antarctica. But then assuming that you make it, you don't We call that a boomerang when you turn around. And so if it yeah. Assuming you make it to Antarctica, then you have to get from McMurdo to wherever you're trying to work. So in Antarctica, I've worked mostly in interior areas.
David:So it's another flight from McMurdo to say so I've worked out of the South Pole Station, and so that's another flight on these ski equipped Hercules aircraft where we go up to the South Pole Station, which, holds about a hundred people, mix of scientists and people helping with logistics. And so I've worked out of there, where sometimes we fly on smaller planes, also on skis to to other parts of the continent.
Shelby:Just the idea of of a plane with skis is is pretty wild, I would think, for a lot of folks. And I think it probably was good PR to change the phrase to point of safe return instead of point of no return, although it probably feels the same when you're on the plane. What are these planes like? Like, are they cushy? Are they, you know, like first class accommodations, or are they completely different from commercial aircraft?
David:Yeah. So it's it's like a military flight. So you're on, like, a webbing seat. And, you know, the there is usually, like, a bucket toilet, but but, like, it can fill on a flight that long, and then then there's no more toilet. So it's not cushy.
David:And I think the strangest part is that there aren't a lot of windows. There's maybe four it's, like, largely a cargo aircraft. So, you know, you have a line of people getting the people who, it's their first time going down to Antarctica, really want to see the continent as you start to get there. And the flight, a lot of it goes along the Transatlantic Mountain, so it's pretty spectacular. But you only have a couple windows to go look out.
David:The flip side is that they let you into the cockpit. So one at a time, you get a pretty amazing view through this really glass shell looking out at the the continent light out in front of you.
Shelby:That's incredible. Yeah. When when was the first time that you went to Antarctica? Do you it was is that a very vivid memory for you? I would imagine that would be sort of wild.
David:Yeah. So it was maybe three years into my PhD, think, was the first time that I went. And so it was yeah. It was about ten years ago. And it yeah.
David:It was it was really wild. It's also the longest trip I've been on to Antarctica. We were there for over two months, a lot of it camping 50 kilometers from South Pole, so about an hour and a half snowmobile ride from South Pole. So it's a it's a pretty crazy place to be. And it it's actually more pleasant than you would imagine, but it is really a different experience than than what you'd normally get to have.
Shelby:So you mentioned that that was the longest trip you've been on. What what's sort of the typical length of your trips to Antarctica?
David:Yeah. So the best case scenario is that it takes close to a week to get to your field site probably and a week or five days to get back. So these trips are at least a month to make that travel worth it. The the shortest period I've had, like, actually working was a week, and that was originally intended to be more like two and a half weeks. And then by the time we had all of our weather delays, we were scrambling to to get things done.
David:But so I would say typical length is at least a month and often more.
Shelby:And and so when you're there on Antarctica, sort of what's the infrastructure like? So you mentioned that a lot of your field work, you would leave this base and be camping. But, you know, like, at the base itself, what is that like whenever you're out in the field? How do you handle supplies and things like that? I feel like it would be pretty remote.
David:Yeah. So it's it's really remote, but you have the advantage of being able to take pretty heavy equipment to get what you need in there. So when you're at the bases, it's kind of dormitory style living. There's cafeterias where you can get food cooked for you. And so it's yeah.
David:It it it's like dorm life, basically. And then as we go out to more remote areas, to a lot of the places that I've worked, camping can be literally intense a lot of times. Sometimes we'll have things like more like an RV on skis that you pull out with you so that you save the setup and breakdown time and really can focus on the work. And then in those small camps, we're generally cooking for ourselves. Compared to, like, food while camping, the nice thing is that you have, like, the world's largest freezer around you.
David:So you actually get you know, you can bring frozen vegetables, frozen meat, other non perishable goods. So you can actually eat reasonably well with the exception of getting fresh stuff. It's obviously a challenge.
Shelby:Yeah. And when you're out in the field, what are you doing? What sort of work are you doing?
David:Yeah. So I've done primarily radar work. So we take our radar and we kind of turn it upside down and point it down into the ice, and we can measure properties internal to the ice, and we can measure the interface between the ice and the rock beneath it. And so that gives us the thickness of the ice, which is important to know just how much sea level equivalent is there. But then also, can figure out some things about how the ice is moving based on the properties that we observe.
Shelby:And by sea level equivalent, you mean if all that ice were to melt, how much would that raise sea level?
David:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So that's the main thing that I do in the field. I've also like, when you're going this far, it's also important to try and work with other people and to get all the all the data that you can while you're there, while you're investing resources and time to to get a person to these remote locations.
David:So I've done things like collect shallow ice cores where we drill cores that then get used for more, like, geochemical analyses or paleoclimate analyses, figuring out what the climate was like in the past to really take full advantage of being at the location. And so we can do that. In a couple hours, we can get something that's maybe not not the world's greatest paleoclimate measurement, but something that can be useful for people working on other questions.
Shelby:Yeah. And if the core is not useful for paleoclimate, then it goes into drinks, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Shelby:So you mentioned that some of the radar work is looking at different properties of the ice. Like, what sort of things are you all trying to evaluate?
David:Yeah. So I think the easiest thing to imagine is that the ice gets laid down equal layers in time. We can see these kind we call them horizons in the ice that represent a particular time in the past. And so if we look back to that horizon in the past and look at the shape of that horizon, we see something that's a combination of how the ice has moved since that time and the amount of snow that has fallen since that time. And so figuring out what the ice flow in the past is one of the things that we can do from those kind of internal properties.
David:The other one that I've been working on a lot recently is that we can look at the actual individual orientation of the little grains that compose the ice. So if you imagine snow falling and then getting kind of compacted down and forming into a solid block of ice, there's still individual properties of something like the individual snow grains in there. So it's it's composed of little the the big block of ice is composed of all these little blocks of ice. And so we can look at how those little blocks of ice are oriented because that affects the radar returns, and that also actually affects how the ice flows, kind of like a deck of cards. So the ice crystals can shear really easily in certain directions and not in others.
David:And so what I've been working on in recent years is how do we get that information about how that orientation of those crystals affects flow, how do we measure that with radar, and figure out the implications for ice flow.
Shelby:That's pretty interesting work. And to be able to get to go there and do that would just be, yeah, pretty memorable, I would think.
David:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's not a frequent part of my job, but it's a really, really cool part of my job.
Shelby:When you go into the field or when anyone else from The US goes into the field like this, is it always through the National Science Foundation? Is that how it has to sort of work out logistically?
David:Yeah. So sometimes you can collaborate with other countries and kind of do shared projects in that way. And sometimes NASA will fund projects, but then NASA will still use the National Science Foundation's logistics. So they will I don't know exactly how the cost sharing works, but but you still use the National Science Foundation logistics almost exclusively when you're working on a US project.
Shelby:And you'd mentioned earlier at least having some other experience with with other areas and and glaciers. So outside of Antarctica, you've been to Greenland?
David:Greenland. I've worked in the Canadian Arctic.
Shelby:Okay.
David:And then during grad school, I would help out sometimes with people doing work on local glaciers near Seattle. So we would go up to Mount Rainier or Mount Baker and make some measurements, on the glaciers there as well.
Shelby:And so how how do those sorts of field experiences compare to to some of these field excursions into Antarctica?
David:So Greenland to Antarctica, I think, are really similar in a lot of ways in the type of work that I do. Like, once you're to the middle of the ice sheet, you wouldn't be able to tell which continent you are on. Working in Northern Canada was really fun because we were in an area that was much closer to the coast. So I was on top of a relatively small ice cap that was maybe 25 miles across. And so you could see mountains from our campsite, and you could, like, see the rolling topography of of the ice cap that we were on instead of it being just perfectly flat and white.
David:So that was that was really cool. And I think the other really interesting thing about working in the Northern Hemisphere, even if things look the same once you get there in Greenland, there there are people who live in Greenland, which really changes kind of what you have to think about when you're designing your work thinking about the implications of your work, it's not just what are these far field effects on sea level, but also how do we do science in a way that is is respectful of the people who have lived in this location for for such a long time. And, generally, they don't live in the interior parts of the ice sheet, but a lot of the more dynamic areas have people living close by. So people so as you think about work near the coast of Greenland, you really are talking about working near places where people live and who have an interest in what's happening at these locations.
Shelby:And so for for places like that, are you when you're getting to the glacier, are you hiking to it from these areas where there are more people? Are you, like, helicoptering in?
David:So where I've worked in Greenland, the same ski equipped planes that the NSF uses in Antarctica fly up seasonally to Greenland. And so there's a couple runways that The US built in kind of Cold War times in Greenland. And so one of those is where these ski equipped aircraft get staged, then you fly on those same aircraft to the interior of the ice sheet. Nearer the coast, people do often work with via helicopter onto the ice. It's they're in places where the ice is moving quickly, it's rarely safe to to walk across that transition.
David:So you're sort of forced to do it by air
Shelby:most And early in this recording, you mentioned you had some mountain glacier horror stories. Are there any of those you would want to share?
David:Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it was just you think that water from a glacier is going to be clean, and I think I had fallen into thinking that that was how it always would be from working in these really remote places. And then I was, just for fun, I was climbing Mount Baker in the Washington Cascades, and we were camped right next to one of the glaciers on the mountain. And I drank some meltwater directly out of that glacier. And then the next week, I had giardia and was in bed for a week.
Shelby:So lesson learned.
David:Lesson learned.
Shelby:Yeah. Maybe be a little more careful with the fizzy water.
David:Yeah. Yeah. If you're near people, it's maybe not advisable drink So how
Shelby:did you end up being interested in glaciology? What brought you into the field? Was this something that happened in undergrad or not until you were thinking about grad school?
David:Yeah. So it wasn't until I was thinking about grad school. So as an undergraduate, I majored in math and physics. And as I did more physics, I came to understand that a career in physics these days, in research physics, a lot of times means being part of these really, really large collaborations. So these experiments with hundreds of scientists where you, in some ways, have to fight to carve out your little tiny piece of this really large project.
David:And I really love the collaborative aspect of science, but that just seemed too big for me, and I didn't want to get into that type of physics. And I also was starting to feel like the type of physics I was learning was too abstract. And it's really interesting, but I was struggling to always see the connection to the real world. And so it was really my junior and senior year as an undergraduate that I started looking into applied physics, and so starting to think about ways to look at more tangible questions using physics. And then I kind of just stumbled on glaciology as one of the the most math and physics heavy aspects of Earth science.
David:And I think there are there are other things that are fall in that category too, like seismology also fits that kind of thing. But I just didn't grow up somewhere that has earthquakes, and so I wasn't excited about earthquakes. I also didn't grow up somewhere with glaciers, but I thought, wow, glaciers are really cool. I think it would be really fun to work on this. And then as it turns out, I've really liked it and decided to stick with it for a while now.
Shelby:So once you sort of decided on that track, did you end up mostly living in areas with glaciers or near glaciers or at least cold weather after that?
David:No. I really haven't. I so I did my PhD in Seattle where you do have access to glaciers within a couple hours. But after that, I was a postdoc in Denmark, which is I think the highest elevation in Denmark is about 600 feet above sea level. So and and it's coastal.
David:So there there's no there's rarely snow, let alone the glacier. And then I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba for a couple years. So that's in Canada, but it's in the in the Prairies. So it's it's bitterly cold, But there are no glaciers in the province of Manitoba. So, you know, it's been a mix.
David:And now I'm here, and we're near the southern edge of where the Laurentide Ice Sheet got to, so maybe you can say we have an ice sheet connection in this location. But certainly no glaciers these days.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. And and so is it something that you really look forward to when you have the opportunity to go out into the field?
David:Yeah. It is. I think there's there's a a problem with understanding the scale of the kind of glaciers that I work on. Like, they're almost unimaginably large. And then seeing them, particularly from the air, actually, or being on the ground and where all you can see is flat white in every direction, that really can start to bring home, like, this is how these systems can have global implications is that they're just they're so large.
David:And the the kind of forces moving the ice, there's so much there's so much ice to have gravity weighing down on it to pull it down towards the ocean. You can start to imagine how these things are dynamic and and moving around and doing cool things.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. I would I would imagine it would be, like, almost overwhelming to see that much expansion of of just watt in every direction.
David:Yeah. It's a you certainly need to rely on your GPS or or have some old school navigation techniques because you're not you're not gonna do it visually in these places. It's it's really quite disorienting.
Shelby:Yeah. Did did you have any experience before you got into this field with things like traversing on us or snowmobiling on us or anything like camping on us? Was all of that new when you first went to some of these field locations?
David:Yeah. It was. And I've done some, like, recreationally since. I some camping on glaciers. But I've only ever snowmobiled for work.
David:I've never snowmobiled for fun. And so I was comfortable camping and being in remote locations, which I think was an advantage, although not a necessity for this type of work. Like, it is possible to to learn if you're motivated by other reasons and wanna go into glaciology. But I do think it made it more comfortable to start out with to at least have some outdoor experience.
Shelby:Yeah. If you if you were gonna give advice to to students who, when they hear this, think they have never thought about glaciology before, but now that sounds like something that would be pretty interesting, what would that advice be?
David:I think that my advice would be that we we need more people working in glaciology, and they don't need to be people who get into it for this motivation of being, like, an explorer or an outdoors person. I think particularly, like, my generation of glaciologists and particularly generations older than mine really got into it from this kind of heroic explorer mindset. And I don't think that that's what we need right now. We need people who care more about what the effect is of glaciers on humans. So people who are more motivated by climate change and who are, willing to attack glaciology from remote data.
David:More and more, we're able to do the important work from the comfort of our offices. And so you can have a really exciting and successful career in glaciology these days without going to the field. And so if that's something that's appealing to you, that can be a perk of the job, but it's not a requirement, and a lot of the important work is not being done in the field setting. It's being done with numerical models or with remote sensing from satellites or even still with pencil and paper and thinking theoretically about what glaciers should do.
Shelby:Yeah. And and just from what you said over the course of this episode, this field is so important for our climate and how our Earth responds to these changes and what this looks like moving forward, that there are so many tangible applications and implications of this work that I would think that that could be pretty motivational for people that interested in those areas.
David:Yeah. And I think we're seeing that in the young glaciologists who are students right now is that more and more that that is why they are getting into the field. And I think that that that's great to see. And, you know, if they want to look at scientific questions that also require going to these locations, and it's not something that they have experience with, we're working on developing programs. There are multiple organizations developing programs to help students learn those skills so that they can still access all these interesting scientific questions, even if they're coming from a background where they're they're concerned about low lying populations and sea level rise, not not thinking about how exciting it is to go to go skiing or something that.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, David, thanks for for coming on and telling us quite a bit about glaciers, which is a totally new aspect for the show. And so that sort of brings us to our last segment, which is our yes, please segment, where we each get a minute to talk passionately about something that us in the moment.
Shelby:I'm happy to go first or you can go first if you want, whichever you prefer.
David:I can go.
Shelby:Okay. Then I will time you and give you sort of a notification when you have thirty, fifteen, and five seconds left.
David:Okay.
Shelby:And this is doctor David Lilien's yes, please.
David:Okay. So the thing that I've been thinking about recently is that I'm excited for mushroom season. So one thing that has been in common for all the places that I've lived recently is that they have chanterelle mushrooms that come up near them. And one really interesting thing about these mushrooms is that they come up at different seasons at different places. So it's kind of a really fun place based aspect of the different locations that I've moved.
David:So while I was in Seattle, the mushrooms would come kind of after the first rain in the So that would be, like, maybe October, you'd go out and look for chanterelles. The same was kind of true in Denmark. We could go to Southern Sweden and look for look for mushrooms. And then in Manitoba and in Indiana, these mushrooms come in the summer. And so it's it's cool to see these cropping cropping up at all these different locations, but at different times of year and getting to enjoy them at all these spots.
Shelby:Excellent. Are are you just interested in that type of mushroom, or or have you sort of foraged for other mushroom types too?
David:I'm a little timid. I feel very comfortable knowing that a chanterelle is a chanterelle and that I'm not going to be sick from eating it. And so when I've been with other people with more experience, I've foraged other types of mushrooms. But if if I'm the most experienced person there or if I'm alone, then I'll I'll only take chanterelles to make sure that I'm staying safe.
Shelby:So for whatever reason, Kentucky as a state is really, really big on every county having some strange festival. And so the county I'm from every April has the Mountain Mushroom Festival, which celebrates the Morel mushroom.
David:Okay.
Shelby:And there are like booths at the festival of people selling Morels and also doing cooking demos with Morels. But then there's also just other events like performers that come and people selling arts and crafts. So it's a very interesting mix of people. If folks are interested, the Mushroom Festival happens every year in Irvine, Kentucky. It's a fun experience.
Shelby:But yeah. So lots of people in that area are big Morel fans, and I've gone Morel hunting a few times with people. I'm not a big fan of the flavor of them, but I do enjoy sort of the the appeal of going out and trying to find them.
David:Yeah. And I think there are Morels around Bloomington Yep. As well. And I I'm hoping to to learn a little bit about harvesting them and hopefully in the future get into get into Morels as well.
Shelby:Very interesting. Yeah. You'll have to keep us posted. Okay. If you're ready to tell me, then I will do my yes, please segment.
Shelby:Yes, please. Let's bring back hobbies and not just social media consumption, but like actual hobbies like mushroom hunting or gardening or board games, like things that people are excited about and sort of get into the nitty gritty details from. When I was a grad student, I got to this point where I just really wanted to do something outside of work that felt like I was making something or like had physical or tangible progress. And so I took a few classes in metalsmithing and have loved that. I did it a lot when I lived in Arizona because they had the facilities I could go to and do it there.
Shelby:I've sort of got out of the habit of metalsmithing whenever I had moved because it's really hard to, I don't know, get your landlord when you're renting to approve the use of a giant torch. But now that I have my own place here in Bloomington, I'm starting to get back into the process of metalsmithing. And there's just something so enjoyable about having a hobby that you can go to and have a lot of fun with. So I think that we should certainly bring those back.
David:Perfectly timed. When you say metalsmithing, is this like a blacksmith or is this like cutting out shapes out of
Shelby:sheet Yeah. So a lot of folks will think of the form of metalsmithing I had done as akin to jewelry smithing. And at least at the program where I'd taken some of these courses, jewelry smithing was metal forming for jewelry making, but very little to any soldering. So like physical manipulation other than shaping. And so the metalsmithing I took was mostly towards jewelry making, but also you could make atoms, so like cups or bowls or things where you're like forming and heating and molding and and manipulating metals and stones and things.
Shelby:And so when I was doing this in Arizona, it was in Tucson, which also has the gem and mineral shows. There's this big influx of folks that are into gemology. And so really great opportunities to get gemstones that you could then turn into cabochons and put into your jewelry. So it was a lot of fun. I had a total blast doing it.
Shelby:And the instructor for that class is probably one of the most interesting people that I've ever interacted with. So it was a lot of fun to get to work with him. And, yeah, I'm trying to get back into it now.
David:Cool.
Shelby:Do you have any any hobbies? I heard that you are are a fairly prolific potter.
David:Yeah. I haven't done any pottery recently, but I would try and find pottery studios near where I was living for a long time. And I I, like, I really enjoy throwing on the wheel, but at some point, just had so many plates and bowls and things that and, you know, I'd given away so many plates and bowls that I think it seemed like I needed to tone that back or start selling. And I'm not good enough to to be selling that stuff.
Shelby:Well, and pottery's heavy too. So to move that when you're you're going from place to place probably isn't easy.
David:Yeah. And fragile.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, now you're sort of settled in an area. You have a whole new department that you haven't given pottery to yet. Sounds like a good time.
David:Might be time to get started again.
Shelby:Yeah.
David:Yeah. It's like it's it's nice to have a hobby that is not brain focused and is more lets you lets you work with your hands and be creative in a way that doesn't doesn't require the same type of thought that we have to do to do our jobs.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. That's part of why I enjoy getting to do some of those things. Yeah. David, thank you again for coming on.
Shelby:This has been a lot of fun.
David:Yeah. Thanks.
Shelby:And for folks listening, hopefully, we'll see you back next week. Earth on the rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR dash 2422824.
