Cloud makers: How Alaska's seasons paint the sky

My name is Elizabeth Maize and I'm part of the education engagement and early career development team that brings NSF ENCAR's worldclass research to you all through this series. Each lecture highlights one part of the pivotal earth system science research that happens here and supports priorities such as protecting lives and property, strengthening our economy, and safeguarding national security. In tonight's lecture, Cloud Makers: How Alaska's Seasons Paint the Sky, we will hear results from the first year of a collaboration with HX Expeditions, which is an adventure cruise ship operator. This collaboration was born out of the relationship developed by NSF Encar Eddie and HX Expeditions through a traveling science exhibit called Resilient Earth Resilient Communities. This traveling exhibit was created by NSF Encar Eddie and the UKAR Center for Science Education. And the exhibit first sailed through the Alaskan Inside Passage aboard HX's MS Rolled Ammedudson in 2025. Partnerships like this drive NSF Encar's mission to better understand the Earth system by allowing researchers to gather data from diverse platforms. In this case, the researchers we will hear from tonight have collected plankton and air samples from Alaska's subpolar region. thanks to the access provided by HX's cruise ships. Tonight, we will hear from them why this research is so important. Um, but this is a prime example of how such relationships enhance our ability to predict environmental extremes and build a more resilient nation. Um, so for some housekeeping for those joining us in person, you will have a chance to ask questions at the end of the presentation. So you'll just raise your hand and I'll come around with microphone. If you are online, um, please just scroll to the bottom of the web page you're viewing this on. There's a slido window and if you have not already, please click on the green join event button where you can then add your questions on the Q&A tab. So, our speakers tonight also have a few questions for us. So, for both the inperson and virtual audiences, these questions can be found in Slido. Um, so if you were able to scan the QR code that was on the screen, um, you might have followed that link to do so. Um, or you can navigate to slido.com, slido.com, and enter the codeexplorer series. And this event is also being recorded and will be available on the explorer series website. So with that, I would like to formally introduce our speakers. Um, Dr. Ing Xiao Jang is an advanced studies program post-dctoral fellow in the atmospheric chemistry observations and modeling laboratory at ENCAR at NSF ENCAR. She studies how aerosols, clouds, and ecosystems interact with field observations and Earth system models. Dr. Wendy Graham is a community ecologist with over 30 years of experience bridging science and public engagement and now serves as the deputy director of the comet program within the university corporation for atmospheric research community programs. Dr. Christina Black is a postdoctoral fellow in the CGD laboratory and studies how marine wildlife respond to environmental change by combining genomic information with earth system model output. Her work currently focuses on Alaska and indigenous community collaborations. Um though she is not with us tonight, her work is featured in this talk. And with that, I would like to pass it off to our speakers. >> Welcome everyone in the room. Great to see so many of you and everyone online. I can't see you, but welcome. My name is Wendy and um I'm excited to kick this off um and tell you a little bit about our project and some of our results. So this was the first slido question that I asked you. So as we're looking at the results um we basically wondered how many of you have had an opportunity to visit a polar or subpolar region. And so it looks like a lot of you have and I wonder if that's maybe why you're here. Maybe not. Or maybe you're here the 29% so that we can help inspire you about why you might want to visit one of those areas. So, how many of you have actually had the opportunity to visit Alaska? Great. And I bet those of you online are raising some of you are raising your hands as well and I can't see you, but it looks like a lot of you. Next question that we asked you is, what kinds of organisms, plants, animals, algaes, other things do you think are part of the Alaska ecosystem? And let's see what we thought. Moose. Man, interesting. Puffins, the lots of people, plankton, polar bears. Excellent. I don't know about Well, maybe at the very very tippy top of Alaska, but not sure about the polar bears. Is we definitely did not We were not in the polar bear region for sure. Awesome. Okay. Well, let's go on and I'm going to introduce you to a little bit of what we did experience. And from that, um, again, we I want to keep everyone awake. So, I'm going to ask you questions as we go through this whole beginning part. So, how many of you have ever seen something like this? Who knows what it is? A lot of you. It's a whale. Any idea what kind, all you Alaska viewers? A humpback whale. Good. I think I heard that in there, right? How about this? How many people have seen one of these? What is it? >> Bald eagle. You don't even have to go to Alaska to see that. You can see that right here. Right in Boulder. Right outside of Boulder in the winter especially. Great. How about this? Any idea what that is? >> A fox. Yeah, an arctic fox. How many people have seen an Arctic fox before? Oh, now we don't have near as many hands. That's a definitely more rare one. And obviously this is the Arctic fox in its summer plumage, right? Its summer colors, its summer coat. Um, with a little bit of its tail left there trying to be white. So, how about these puffins? >> Puffins. Now, you can see puffins in a lot of places, but you can see a few of those species. I can see a lot of hands going up. Anyone know which ones these are? Think big beak. Horned puffins. Exactly. So, saw a lot of these things. How about these >> bears? Are they brown bears or black bears, do you think? >> Brown. Is that because they're brown? >> Yeah. sometimes. Right. Actually, it has a lot to do with the hump on their back. So, but yes, these are brown bears. Sometimes known as grizzly bears, right? How about these? Kind of cheated because you have what they are. But these are the five species of salmon that are found in um in the waters around Alaska. And how many of you have seen salmon besides on your plate? A few of you. a few of you. Okay, that's fair enough. How about these? I've given you some hints there. Anyone know what the sort of big name for these really think tiny things? I'll give you a hint. You're these pictures are looking through a microscope. >> Plankton. Zop plankton. Phytolankton. Excellent. I don't even have to do the rest of the talk. At least that part. You guys already know everything. Awesome. All right. How many people saw clouds when they've been in the polar regions or subpolar regions? How many people saw the rainbow actually when you were coming in today under those clouds if you looked east? Exactly. So, what do clouds have to do with all those other animals that I just showed you and plants and algae >> for life? >> Might be necessary for life. All right. Well, that is actually what we're going to talk about as you probably guessed from the from the title of this talk. So, this is showing you a combination of clouds in the white here. See if my little pointer works. Um, and plankton or algae in this case, right? Mostly phytolanton um looking from way way way high up in space. Um and so this is a time where in often the one wave that we can easily with our eyes um at least looking at this satellite image be able to see sort of plankton and clouds at the same time. Often that's hard to ask. So sometimes I ask the question of like how many of you saw plankton and clouds together? And I usually get a really inquisit look like what are you talking about? How could I possibly do that? That is difficult without some advanced technology. So, just to review, you all can help me um since it sounds like we're very knowledgeable about plankton already. What are plankton? Any ideas? >> Sing single cell things. That works. That works perfectly. Any other any other ideas? There's no wrong answers here. So, >> aquatic. >> Aquatic. Excellent. Exactly. You guys have you've hit two of them right on the right on the nose there. But plankton are actually interesting because they're actually defined by the way they live as opposed to a taxonomic group like a lot of the other pictures we saw, whales, birds, whatever those groups are. Um, and they're tiny, which we heard about. They're um they're marine in this case, the ones we're focused on, they're plankton, they're not marine, but they're all aquatic, right? And so they're these tiny organisms. They're often carried along by tides and currents, right? They're usually microscopic, sometimes some of the bigger ones, and there are some stages you can see a little bit with a naked eye if you've got a good light looking at them. Um, and the word plankton comes from the Greek for drifter or wanderer, which was something that I actually learned. So, um, and just to be clear here at this point, I know I don't look anything like Christina, but I am challenging I am channeling her expertise here. So, she was really she is our marine ecologist that designed the part of the um our sampling and the plankton collection that we did along this cruise which we'll talk about in a little bit. All right. So, we know what plankton are. So, what do you imagine phytolanton might be? >> It's nutritious. >> That it is nutritious. That's right. >> Plants. >> They're they're some kind of plant. In fact, they're an algae. So, they're microscopic um algae or marine algae that we're looking at in this case. Um, and these are an organism that is autorophic. Any ideas what that might mean? >> They hang out together. >> That's a good guess. They do hang out together. So that's not necessarily the definition of that word, but that is a true statement. Like we said, no wrong answers. So auto often means, you know, single. So these are organisms that actually can produce their own food. So like plants, they often photosynthesize, right? And so say again, >> they have >> they do some of them. Yep. They have other means of being able to photosynthesize, which is why you see them on the top of the water and why they look green often, right? Um so they're microscopic. They float in the upper part of the ocean. Um and you know, for our purposes here, it's good to know they're actually food for a lot of different organisms, right? Exactly. Okay. Zup plankton. You know what my question's going to be, right? What are the what are zup plankton animals? A good that's a great way to think about them. Um these are sort of the heterotrophic part of this community which again you can guess that that means they eat something else right so they don't they can't produce their own um sort of their own energy. So these are thought of as sort of these microscopic marine animals and many of them eat the phytolankton, the algae that we were just talking about and they are a very important food source for a great many of those marine um animals, many of which we saw, particularly some of the whales, things like that. So food web, how many people have heard of a food web before? It's kind of an old term. Um any idea what a food web is trying like a diagram like this is trying to communicate to us? who eat too, right? How does sort of that system work? It's a great way to put it. So, plankton, it turns out, are actually the foundation for these ocean ecosystems, particularly in Alaska. And climate shift is really something that can lead to changes in those plankton communities, which then might also lead to other changes. And so, thinking and understanding these food webs is really important. But what's super exciting is that there's also a relationship between the plankton and the things in this picture. So what are we looking at here? >> Clouds. Right. Clouds. Marine fog. We're still in Alaska. Exactly. And so with that, I am excited to introduce my colleague Ingia and she is going to tell you about clouds. >> Uh nice to meet you. My name is Inia. I'm very fortunate to be selected to participate in the first year of this cool collaboration and today I'm going to walk you through the cloud. So what is cloud? There is a very cute video from anchor education. So I'm going to play it. What is cloud? Ah clouds. So sweet and puffy. So dark and scary. Whoa. Sorry. Where was I? Right. Clouds. Clouds are made of water droplets or ice crystals that are so small and light they stay afloat in the air. But how does the water and ice get into the sky? And how do they form a cloud? Clouds form when water from oceans, lakes, and rivers evaporates, becoming water vapor. Warm air containing water vapor rises. If it rises high in the atmosphere, the air cools down, and some of the water vapor condenses into liquid water. The condensation process is easier when the droplets have a particle to condense upon. Oh, hey there. These particles like dust or pollen are called condensation nuclei. When enough water vapor condenses upon many condensation nuclei, that forms a cloud. Clouds can form in many places where air is rising, at weather fronts, where air is heated at the Earth's surface, where air is forced to rise at areas of low pressure, or when wind encounters a mountain range and has nowhere to go but up. >> Hello. >> As you can see, there's a lot more to clouds than meets the eye. Okay, I hope you love this video. I I really like how cute the cartoon are. So, if you remember the tiny cute guy over there, uh they're called aerosol in scientific language. Generally, they're the small particles floating in the air. They can be from natural salt such as sea salt, dust, pollen, fungal spores, bacteria. uh they can also be from burning like a black cabin like you all see a lot of them during the wildfire season. So what happens when this tiny guys in enter the cloud uh because they can make the water or ice condense on them they can help the cloud to form bigger and have more ice and water so the cloud becomes more dense. This would make cloud easier to reflect the solar radiation. So the more droplet the cloud has the more radiation it can send back to the space which means it would give us cool feelings have like less radiation enter the surface but in the real life it's always more complicated because all these particles generally it's very easy to see over a hund thousands of them per meter cube in the air and now generally for all of the clouds we see they basically all contained these small particles and based on the abundance of them as well as what are their type we're seeing different impacts on the cloud. So now we are going back to Alaska. Alaska compared to here is actually much more clean and uh because of that in the summertime biological sourc compound actually drive the cloud formation. So for example in the ocean there can be uh various bacteria or phytolanton and through this bubble bursting system when the vent lifts the bubbles from the ocean they can be carried as well and come to the air and eventually in scientific language we call them ice nucleating particles or cloation nuclear and make that to impact our weather system. So our Alaska or not our everyone's Alaska is changing. Here is the plot showing the temperature annual air temperature changing. The baseline is actually in the past three decades from 1991 to 2020. So before that we can see the temperature is always lower compared to the current time and we are also seeing a quick shift of temperature. We actually experiencing uh some of the hottest years in Alaska in the past decade and Alaska ecosystem is very sensitive to the changings. So for example 20 hours more sunlight can dry marine plankton bloom and these are all the green and uh purple no that's blue colors you are seeing there means that's a lot of density of plankton. So uh it's very important for us but generally it's really hard for us to understand this region because if you want to collect the samples in this region you at least need a boat or cruise or you need to build a station there all the time to collect the samples but it's going to be really expensive but fortunately we made a friend and uh with our partnership with XH expedition we are able to do that. So this is the uh cruise track for the HX expedition. They basically are running commercial cruise over Alaska region every year from late spring till summer and it's going to be uh continuous. This track can vary a bit but uh it's generally uh they're running it all the time. So they're happy to bring a scientist on board and to collect our samples. And in the first year it was three of us. And I was very uh excited for this. I was actually the first one on board the cruise. And uh uh here is how it looks during the cruise. The glacia was melting at that time because it's already end of May. And the small boat is a science boat we have that we use that to collect the samples and that's the cruise I was on and the mini one is the boat we are taking to explore around. Yeah. So I was first when I was firstly selected by this program. I was talking to Rebecca who was uh the one in charge. She told me this is not a Disney cruise, so get ready. But actually, it's cooler than a Disney cruise to say all of the glacier. Um, let me go to the next page. A bit stuck. Okay, it works. So, these are the some photo taken on the cruise. We are doing a lot of sit and science means as scientists we'll gather all of the passengers on the cruise to do the science with us. The first one is that we are looking at the microscopic uh creatures we collected in the ocean together and the second one is how we collect them and Wendy would give you a better idea. So what we are trying to understand is a seasonal change in plankton community and what is the role of them in cloud forming how we design this project. So when we were firstly selected, Wendy, I and Christina, we all gathered together and to have lunch and we were thinking what kind of a cool research can we do for this first collaboration. And u I'm an atmospheric scientist. I look at what is floating in the atmosphere. Uh and Wendy is ecologist and Christina, she's marine ec biologist. I actually think Christina is really cool because she can actually swim inside the marine uh ocean to collect the samples which is uh my limitation. My partner said when I'm swimming I look like a dying horse. So I really it was really cool for me to meet them and what connects all of our expertise it's plankton. It actually both in the ocean and we saw a lot of them in the air. So uh together they designed this project. So before I give the mic back to Wendy I want to do some quick self introduction uh at they have introduced me. I'm a postto fellow at uh national center for atmospheric research in atmospheric chemistry observation and modeling laboratory. I grow up in a small state in China. It has a lot of mountain. It has high altitude. It's very sunning and dry all the time. Sounds familiar. It's just like a boulder. Maybe that's why I enjoying my time in Boulder here so much. I came to the United States for my PhD degree at the University of Michigan. And my interest is basically all the small particles in the air. Oh, I saw someone was clapping for me with a Michigan shirt. Go blue. uh and uh what uh I'm working here at NSF Enchar is to develop numerical models to understand the real world process. So basically I'll develop some uh digital twin of what real things are happening in the earth system and trying to look at what is uh how everything is connected to each other. So Lindy it's time to bring you back. So, I think Elizabeth did a great job introducing us already. So, for me, I'll just add that I've um had the great fortune of being here at UKAR for about uh the past seven years. Um and prior to that, I worked with a different NSF funded acronym. And um but really what weaves all of my experience together is that I've really had the opportunity to work kind of in academia, in zoos, in museums. And that interface between doing research and communicating research and involving people in doing citizen science and participating in science is really as I look through my 35 plus year career at this point, that's really the thread for me that's really exciting. So for me, what was super exciting about this opportunity was actually getting to work with Christina and Ingcha and together design this project and then the component that I was really excited about was thinking about how do we now engage the passengers on this ship with the research we were doing. So and then qu quickly Christina can't be with us tonight but um like I said the plankton slides and everything were hers. So she's made a lot of contributions and she's really kind of the marine ecologist in the group who brings both the modeling as as Ingcha pointed out really brings the modeling and the marine ecologist and the project she's working on now is a really interesting one looking at Alaska marine species um that are important for subsistence in these indigenous communities in Alaska. So she was the most relevant research for sure um in terms of what her day job is. So, so I'm going to now shift us quickly to how did we collect these data and so we are going to talk about the plankton data first. So, as you might guess, I'm going to ask you how do you think we collected plankton data? Water sampling other ideas? >> Nets. >> Nets. I'll give you a hint. Nets in water though. So, those were both correct answers. Yes. Exactly. So these are our two different nets. Why do you suppose we needed two different nets? >> Sizes. >> Sizes. Exactly. So the zup plankton tend to be bigger than the phytolanin. So one net focuses more on just the zup plankton and the phytolankton flow through. The other one that's smaller obviously collects the zup plankton as well as the phytolankton, but it gives us a a chance to look at the difference between those. And then this is one of the ways the water sampling part that um we used mostly which these are the small Kodiak boats that the video that Yingchow showed you um with people on these go out as a science boat where passengers can sign up to go out and help collect a variety of science data including our data while we were on this ship. So that's one way that those uh plankton data were collected. And then sometimes we didn't have the opportunity to go out on the boat and collect data because we were in port somewhere. So we tried to collect data just off docks. Turned out this didn't work out as well. But you know, we didn't know till we got back with our with our samples. So then we have to sort of process that because as you can imagine um as we're flying home on our airplanes from from somewhere in Alaska, we did not bring big things of water. So we actually had a process um for for processing those data. So this is the end of that net that you saw. These are so we had these water samples that have a bunch of stuff in it. Often we'd look at them under the microscope to get a sense of what was there. But then we would actually use see my pointer is here. Oh, there it is. We'd use this nice filtering system that Christina came up with to then with these very small filters, again, two different sizes when we were focusing on our zup plankton versus our phytolankton. And then we would run the wa we would sort of use a pump to basically force water through that filter. And that filter would collect all of those plankton which we would then take that filter, fold it up and put it into a little cryo vial. those things with the orange lid um with some ethanol and put it in the freezer until we got home. And the analysis then that Christina and the team did was then looking at the DNA which enabled them to then identify what kinds of plankton we had collected. So this is kind of what it looked like with the three of us on our various different cruises. Um in the picture on the far right with me, I decided that it was a lot of work to do all that pumping and so I hire hired the passengers. they were all very excited to sit there and pump for me. So that worked out as a great engagement activity um along the way and so we did that every time we had the opportunity to collect those data. So the second kind of data we had to collect is I'm going to introduce this and then pass to uh Yingchow to show you the results but that was the aerosol sampling. So as you remember the aerosols are the particles in the air. So, we're collecting the plankton to get a sense of what is the community, what is even in the water where we are, right? But now, we need to collect things from the air. And so, we do that with a type of aerosol monitor that kind of looks like this. So, this is kind of me looking down. It's a big Pelican case basically. And there's four different um places for filters. Those three of them are those blue um parts of the picture that you see, and there's one you can't really see up in the top. Um, but we had to process data as well for that. And so this is what I this is all the like equipment I get out to um do my processing each day when we were looking at these filters. So what do you see in that picture? >> Yeah. Lower. Okay. Some binoculars. I'll get to those last. What about the things? What do you think might be in those cases up there? >> Filters. >> Filters. Exactly. So in this case, we needed four different kinds of filters. So there's actually two square cases, a round case, and it turns on that black thing with two things on the end is a very special kind of filter. So we needed filters. We needed to make sure we didn't touch everything with our hands. So we needed some gloves. There's those cryovials that we're going to store our filters in after we process them. Some uh forceps and some cleaner. And then the binoculars. So what do you think we need the binoculars for? >> Looking for puffins. >> Looking for puffins. She na she nailed it. So, exactly while you're changing these filters, you're on you're still on your expedition ship. So, you need to make sure that you're prepared in case a whale or the puffins or the bears or anything else comes by. Exactly. Good job. You got A+. A+. Most people have not I've done this talk a couple times now and nobody else has gotten that. though. So, this one um that I just popped up there on the on your right um there is just a closer look at where the filter goes between these two blue things. And then basically, again, it was a lot of work being on this ship, so I needed to engage passengers in doing the work for me. And so, we, you know, I I kind of let them take turns once they got to be experts at changing filters. So, that's sort of what the setup would look like. we'd bring it down and we'd bring the instrument into the science lab and um let people take a look and then again once we've processed these filters they all get labeled and stored and um are brought back uh for analysis. So with that I'm going to pass back to wow long time no see I'm back again. So when I talk about what we find firstly I want to show you how dramatic Alaska landscape can be changing. This is from the NASA satellite image. The left one is uh when you look at it during the summer time and the right one is when you look at it during the winter time. So in the winter is basically ice ice. Everything is covered with white. But in the summer uh I don't know if it's clear to see here. You can see the green stuff in the ocean that plankton. You can also see the green stuff on the land that the vegetation. So it becomes very active during the summer months. This is a photo being taken during my cruise at the end of May. And you can see the sea ice is already melting. It's become scattered over the ocean. That makes the sunlight is able to reach down to have the plankton grow, especially phytolanton. And on the land you can see a lot of evergreen forest are growing there. This is the time when they start flowering and produce a lot of pollen. So that's the tube we use to take samples in the air and we take samples every day and I bring them back to the lab for analysis. This is just illustration. We actually bring them back all the way to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory because they have a much fancier version of the microscope that you can zoom in very much to look at the detail to give you an idea about the particle size. I'm showing this diagram. Could you guess what is the brown tube there? >> Yes, that's a hair. And um this is the comparation of your hair compared to this particles I'm talking about in the air. The big cube is the sea salt. It can be like 60 micron which is around the half size half diameter of your hair and then it gets slow smaller and smaller dust and the pollen they're still like relatively big in the uh aerosol communities. And then we can go smaller into the neuron cell. And then this very small one is a spore around two micron. Uh I hope you can remember how big the five micron it is. It's around the neuron cell. So it's really small. And this is the scale we are looking at. So when we zoom in everything in the five micron if you don't know the scale that is uh here is the scale bar this is the five micron and these are the biological particles we are saying they all have different shape and it's easy to tell them they're b biological but without the DNA analyzis or deep diving it's sometimes hard to tell who is who but that's some exceptions some aerosol So like Poland from different species they have different type that's why when you dig inside when you find Poland from the Asian time you can still tell uh what what type of trades are producing them. So in the Mindo part for this one this is uh from this is very likely to be Poland or sports with this type of a special shape. And uh in the top right one uh it's hard to tell what it is but it looks like some biological compound got get covered by other things either biological or either organic or organic which is very common in the air like they interact with each other and sometimes they can have this like blanket around them. And the bottom right one this is a tube-l like thing. It looks like a shred from the biological things like either a part of the plankton or a part of the sports. It's hard to tell but uh we can tell all of them are from biological compound because if it's not biological it's the shape looks more uh regular. It's not like all of these small details. So another way to make you believe that they exist in the air is that have you ever tried to taste the ocean air? How how does it taste like? >> Salt. >> Yeah, that's exactly what we saw. We found tons of salt particles in our aerosol or air samples as well. All of this crystal structure or cube structure that actually see salt. So with all of the fancy lab equipment from PNL, we're able to look at what particles are there and then we can do more experiment in the lab to see how they impact the clot. Uh and here it's a tiny bit of a scientific stuff coming. So we have been collecting the samples along our cruise track and uh here I'm just selecting two main region. One is IC bay and another one is mist fields to look at what's the compound. We put them for DNA analysis and we are able to tell now actually in detail what species are there on the air and um the in the ICB we see a lot of purple stuff that are from terrestrol plants. So if you look at the shapes in the purple box these are all examples of what type of small things the plant can produce. And then in the misty field we are saying more of this uh orange stuff which are dels and I also put some of the examples of deltum in the right and we are seeing big regional change but what is more exciting is the seasonal change. When we come back to the same region in July compared to May, all of the terrorist tro signal are gone which is probably like the flowering was happening in May and they produce pollen and you can see them in the air afterwards they're gone. It's mainly dominated by the deltum and this really matters because depends on different type of them they can actually be good or not good at making cloud. So here is a quick game. Guess who is better at making ice? We have our four candidates from left to right. Is one, two, three, and four. So if you think the number one is better at making ice, please raise your hand. Okay, we have like four or five, six. Uh, if you think number two is better at making ice, please raise your hand. No one think it's good. Oh, poor guy. Um, if you think the number three is good at making ice, please raise your hand. Oh, more people are thinking number three. How about the number four? Okay, so some of you actually made a really good guess for the number one and four. They're actually better at making ice because they have this spiky structure and more spiky it is it's easier for ice to form on these spikes. So depending on what we are seeing in the air we can actually see very different result about how they make ice. Uh and afterwards they are doing more lab analysis to actually put what they learn inside the model. The model I'm using is called community earth system model which is developed by ankar. Basically they just write code and put all of the process in the earth system inside the model system. So it's like a small digital twin of the earth and we can see how that's different things interact with each other. And what I'm doing is to put the cute guys if you still remember them in the ocean in the land and make them to impact the cloud. Actually interestingly currently although these small things are making a big impact in Alaska or high latitude system we don't have it in our community earth system model yet. So that's my interest to make it. So after all of this I hope you are not feeling bald. It it felt like everything is happening in Alaska. It's so far away from Earth. So why does it matter? Why why we even care about this? So here is the thing in the earth our atmosphere are connected and it has this big circulation to take the air around and give us our weather system. And this air is driven by the temperature difference in the polar region and the high latitude region. If the polar region is very cool, for example, it has a lot of ice claw, it keeps reflecting the sunlight back. So it stays cool and then the jet stream which is a part of the atmospheric circulation would stay strong and straight which is what we generally saying. But it becomes different when the polar region become warmer as with say ice melting or that's less cloud forming which means more sunlight would get into the region to warm the polar region and with that the temperature gradient become vaker and the jet stream become vary. So in some region more north uh more warm warm air goes to the north and in some region the cooler air come down. But more importantly is that our weather system would be starking the corner of this viv jet stream. So you'll see more persistent weather system and it can also drive more extreme weather. So uh not to warn you but we are actually seeing a lot of changes in this high latitude region already. This is a satellite image taken in 2012 compared to 2019 around the same time and we are already actually seeing a lot of sea ice loss in the high latitude region. As we have discussed without sea ice sunlight get inside plankton start to grow and the plankton can impact the cloud again and all of this would become a system to impact each other and that would eventually impact the global weather system. So what's next? We are doing more collections this year and we upgraded our instrument. We have visibility sensor and the aerosol counter showing over here. This is actually our very fancy uh measurement. We usually put it in the airplane but now they designed it for the cruise. So actually we have a more fancy stuff this year except the suitcase we were carrying last year and this year we are able to get double the amount of data and got get able to send around like a double amount of scientists on board. So it was very exciting. Okay, I hope the science part doesn't bore you because now we are going to go to the takeaway part about summary. So the story starts from Bob. Bob is a plankton. Bob grows up in the ocean and Bob is cute and happy. But if Bob is not careful to be lifted by the bubble or Bob dies and the fragment get lifted by the bubble, Bob and his friend would can be lifted up there in the air and the wind would bring all of them up to the higher atmosphere to help them make cloud. So the droplet uh and ice can form on Bob and his friend. So they become a part of the cloud. So cloud has eyes now and with them that's more the cloud become thicker and more reflective so it can put more sunlight back to the space and bulb and friend and the claw together in the high latitude part of the earth system they can reflect sunlight and this energy change or the temperature change would further impact the entire system with changing ring and temperature as well as the shifting vent pattern. So that's the takeaway message. Hopefully you'll like Bob. Okay, thank you. We are going to keep an eye on questions coming in from online. So again, if you're online, please use that slido um to ask a question and we'll be monitoring that. Um otherwise, if you have questions in the room here, please go ahead and raise your hand and um I will bring you the microphone. >> I wonder if you can tell us something about the indigenous animals that were important to the indigenous people and how that relates to what you have told us. This is actually the question for Christina. I really hope I can make a phone call to her, but Wendy, do you know how to answer? >> Yeah, I I would only be guessing. So, um, unfortunately, we are Yeah, we're missing our key partner. Um, on that, but I do think that, you know, there are many, many different indigenous communities that, um, we both visited and the cruise, you know, visits along that route. And um definitely you know all of the animals play an important role um and the plankton just like they impact the weather are obviously impacting all of those animals as well. >> How does the plankton imp impact the weather? How does the plankton impact the weather? >> Okay, this one I can take. So when a lot of plankton get lifted in the air, they can be dropped. uh they can be take to the upper atmosphere and with more of this small nuclear floating in the air it's actually easier for the water or the ice to condense on them to make cloud. So depends on how many of them are there, we can actually see different shape, different dense density of cloud and if that's a lot of them, the cloud actually have too many of the droplet and that would make the cloud ring faster. >> The plankton is in how does it get into the air? >> So just one second for online. The question is if the plankton's in the water, how does it get into the air? >> Yeah. So this is the magic thing about the sea spray. So when the vent is driving the ocean to circulate, you can see the wave breaking and that's a lot of bubbles happening at the same time. If you saw the bubbles kind of um happening on the top of the ocean and these bubbles, they actually can carry a lot of microbes. When the bubble burst, the microbes get lifted in the air because how tiny they are. They can stay floated in the air for a long time and then eventually impact. >> Yeah. >> All right. We do have a question online. We'll go to if we could pull up that slide out. So this is from Simon um who is 11. Why is it that when it gets hotter the line becomes wavy? So I believe this is in regards to the jetream images that you showed. Yeah, that's a really good question. So, you can thinking about the air. When it's very cool air and warm air get to each other, they're pushing each other. Like warm get up, cool air gets down. They push each other very strong. And when the cool air gets vaker, like it warms up, you can imagine when you are doing wrestling, the people beside you actually lose a leg. And then it's easier to push them around to be like a a shaking. So that would create it's a wavy thing. So jet stream is basically the system between these two temperature gradient and when the polar region warm up and become vapor we can see it becomes more viv. >> I just wonder if there is a role of human beings affecting the clouds. Uh yeah so generally the human activities can produce a lot of these tiny particles when you are cooking or when you are driving a car it would emit a lot of such particles a lot of them are black carbon or like when you do industry event and that would produce a lot of this type of aerosols. So if you use a machine to marrow the aerosol concentration or the particle concentration in the air when there's more human activity it's going to be higher actually when we are all talking in the room we are also making aerosols like the small spray aerosols actually I'm meeting a lot of now I'm talking so uh all of these particles are everywhere but as a human like when you do any activity it would make these particles But there's not I'm sorry I'm just wondering because the um research that is being done is in the ocean in relationship to the clouds >> um and I wonder why our activity was not part of the research. Just wondering >> I you're you're absolutely right and that the value of being able to do the research to a certain extent in this area is because we cannot we can study the science and the processes of the clouds honestly without the interference of what all the people are doing. But we're collecting some of that because it's in our samples. For example, when another ship is going past us, we see that in our filters, right? And especially in the instruments, some of the advanced instruments that we used this summer, we can see it really obviously. Um, so we, it's not that we're not collecting it. It's more and that it's not important. It is important and it's dominant in a lot of cases. It's dominating, right? But the value of this research is that this is one of the few places that Ying Chow and her colleagues can study what's happening without all of that pollution, >> right? And so that was really, you know, the value of being able to do this research um in this place um and really being able to pair the actual plankton communities in the water with what we're seeing in the air, you know, within those aerosol samples. And so that's what is unique and new. And if we can get multiple years of that data, that's really, you know, to, you know, really be able to really inform the models and what's happening next. >> Yeah, I sorry I didn't realize how good your question is. You're actually a bone scientist. It's actually one of our big biggest struggle. We are trying to reduce the human impact on the samples we collected. That's why we go through the microscope for all of the sample they are having. That's why we need to look at them. If that's a lot of blank carbon means like there probably a ship passing by or someone smoking although it's like smokefree boat but who knows and then we remove the states because they are polluting the samples when we are looking at the plankton. Yeah. All right. I think we have another question online that we'll go to. So this question is from Debbie. Is phytolankton increasing with the warming climate? And if so, how is that affecting sea health and the food chain? >> Oh, that's a good question. I think Christina knows much more about but but I actually know something. I know that uh they are saying they are changing. I don't know if they're becoming more or less but I know some plankton they like warmer weather. Some does not. So when the temperature become warmer for the ocean, you can actually see more specific types of plankton become more abundant compared to others. So we are seeing the change and in regarding to how it impact the sea health and the food chain email Christine Christina she knows everything about this part. I'll just add to it that um again my limited knowledge is that as just if you remember the diagram of the food web if you think about that as the specific species and the types of phytolankton and zup plankton that are available change through time that directly impacts other things in that food chain. The warming water affects other aspects of the life cycles of many of those other components of that food web as well. So that you know is this affecting the sea health? Yes. Exactly. How? Not either one of our expertise unfortunately. >> All right. Another question in the room. >> Actually, is it okay if I ask a couple questions? Just uh a followup to that. Is that kind of one of the implications of the research that you're doing is to just get those numbers and tell like I I have all this data and then other people can do the research of what that effects in the uh what that the downstream effects of that are. >> Yeah, that's actually a good question because Christina and I both have expertise in the earth system modeling and mainly looking at the atmosphere. Christina is looking at the ocean. So for this data it actually benefit both of us but my act u my forecast would be on the weather system. Christina would work on the biological part of this uh data. >> Yeah and I think that these data um would be a very small part. There are lots and lots of ocean monitoring projects out there in terms of really getting at the plankton part of that last question that make data available um to both the science and naturally the general public community. And so this data would be a relatively small sample but potentially an important one um you know compared to some of the lo because of the locations we were but there's much much more rigorous data you know sort of ocean monitoring data that's available through many different sort of monitoring programs worldwide. >> And then the other question I had was how how did you get to the point where you thought this is the research I wanted to do. I wanted to collect data on these these things. >> Oh, that's a good question. When I saw it, I only remember the cruise. I was like, I want to go on a cruise, but I'm a modeler. How am I going to go on a cruise? So, I just write something about what I can do for the field. And that actually convinced the people think a modeler that I write code all the time can actually go to that region to collect the samples and then I design the science I like. So it's all like a positive feedback chain. You do something you like and then you enjoy it. >> Um one thing I want to add for the phytolankton is if anybody is interested in learning more about the phytolankton and the ecosystem or food chain impacts. Um there was a previous explorer series focused on Arctic shifts um which was a visualization done by Anna Lindman um and then using some of the um work done by Alice Duvier who is a NSFN car researcher looking at using the CESM model which is the model that you were saying this work might inform to look at um as temperatures may change in the future how that could impact where the phytolankton are and light availability and and the ramifications on the food chain there as well. >> Um I was wondering what the most surprising finding both of you had like in your research um from collecting all of this data was. >> What was really surprising was being able to see that huge shift. I mean, we know we collected those data like the ship went to the same place and we collected the same data through time, but to see that dramatic shift from pollen to sort of the datoms, which when I think about it, that makes sense, but I would have never thought of that. Um, so for me that was pretty amazing to see, but then also to see that um the way that the sampling we were doing, you know, when you're out there and you're sampling the water and you kind of look through the microscope and you see there's a lot of stuff in them, that's really cool. But to see the actual analysis and how much we were able to collect in, you know, basically three weeks of different, you know, back back and forth sampling um for me was fascinating. Um and really I think has informed what we did this this last summer as well. >> Yeah. And for me, I think it's similar with what Wendy just mentioned. It's very rare for scientists to collect the data on the commercial cruise because people are worried about pollution and also worried about like if you are able to collect high quality data. So uh I was very concerned the entire time when we are doing the campaign or like when we are collecting the data but eventually when we are looking at the data it's surprisingly high quality and we are actually seeing very interesting science findings that it's the big seasonal shift in this community and that gives me confidence to further extend this project and to uh try to have more funding from NSF to look at look deeper at it. >> All right, another question online. So this question is from Fernanda. Have you evaluated the ice nucleating abilities of the collected microorganisms? And if so, what techniques did you use? >> Uh it's definitely a scientist to ask this question. It's very technical. Yeah, we we uh we did look at the ice nucleation uh and as we said, we actually used the more fancy equipment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and they are using a technique called freezing essay. Basically, they're reducing the temperature with the same amount every like three seconds or something and then they keep taking photos and you with this you can see when the particle start to make the water freeze and with all of this repeated experiment we are able to actually learn how good them at making ice and uh actually get something that can work for the model. Yeah. I I hope it's not too conf Yeah, it's >> all right. Another question in the room. I'll come bring you the microphone. >> Are you concerned about future funding for the research? >> Always. I think that, you know, with in general, you know, we're always excited to look for opportunities for funding. Um, in this case, you know, I think we're excited to think about what we can do to continue the partnership with HX Expeditions, whether, you know, doing this project or even opening up the possibility for other projects. I think there's a lot of opportunities there. Um, so you know, I feel like with funding, it's not that we're necessarily always concerned about the specific, but the um the process of doing science is understanding what can be funded at what time to answer what questions. >> So you are trying to figure out how how the clouds come together. Why do you need to know this? The when the clouds change, do they change in a certain direction or are you afraid that it would show you something that is dangerous or something that is better in the future? I mean, this is not only one research for two or three years. I guess this will go on. What do you want to really find out or what are you afraid of or what should be better? >> That's a good question. I think one of the main motivation for us to do weather forecasting is to help us to benefit society to understand when it's the rain coming when it's um good to go out when it's sunny. And I don't know how many of you notice when that's like very strong rain coming sometimes the model or the forecasting doesn't do well and here is already much better if you look at high latitude region it's really bad. So uh the more you understand the process that help the cloud making the more you can make the forecast better to understand when it rains or and as we were mentioning in the high latitude it's especially important because the system there is more sensitive and the cloud actually change how much energy get into the surface. Do you have anything to add? That was excellent. Yeah. So ice forms on the particulate. Can the ice form without a particulate? And if so, how does that work? >> Um, can ice form without a particulate or a nuclei? And if so, how? >> Wow. Yeah, that's also a really good question. If you have a very pure droplet, it which is very rare in the nature, it generally start to freeze when it's below minus 40 Celsius degree. How many how much Fahrenheit it is? Sorry, I I don't know how the conversion, but it's really really cool. However, if you have this particles, the ice can start to form when it's around like minus5 or minus 10. So it would start to form cloud at much warmer uh temperature or like much lower part of the atmosphere. >> This is from Karen. Do the particles raise high into the atmosphere and what effect does that have on the higher atmosphere? >> I I think that's also good question for me. Uh so this small particles actually we are seeing them going very high up in the atmosphere. we have some other collection with the airplane when we fly very high and try to collect the air we can also see this particles existing there and um I'm mainly looking at that impacts on the cloud but the particle itself can also reflect the sunlight so it would also impact the energy balance uh although I didn't specifically uh study this part to see how much the difference it's making >> okay so this question is from David, so if the clouds are denser and reflect more light, doesn't that cool the air and counteract global warming? Then the plankton grows less. Is that a negative feedback for global warming? >> Wow, this is a really good science question. >> Yeah, that's actually what I'm trying to understand. It's just uh our collection for civil summer. It's this part this amount of data would not be able to be long enough for it to see this feedback. Therefore, we are trying to put all of the process in the earth system modeling that we can make the model run for longer period time and have more plankton or more cloud to see what actually is happening. That's why we need the models. How did you get into the career of being a scientist or a modeler or an ecologist? >> For me, I think it um the I kind of look back on um my time as a kid always been interested in science and being interested in summer camp. And those two things somehow gelled that by the time I was an undergraduate, I had a really inspiring professor that really kind of helped me understand what ecology was. Um, if anyone's into tropical biology, Dan Jansen was, um, he's a famous tropical ecologist, um, who's retired now. But it was kind of one of those aha moments for me where I was like, I love science. I love understanding what's going on, you know, around me. I love being outside in at summer camp and uh ecology was a great way to kind of get to do all of that. So, it was definitely for me the the turning point. >> Uh for me, it's also because I like it. Uh when I was young, I like plants a lot. My grandma used to have a garden. I'm not good at taking care of plants plants, but I'm good at destroying them. So I always dig in her garden and to see how things are working, how these things are growing. So uh when I grow up, I really want to use truth biology as my major. But then I heard that they cut mice and I'm really scared because I don't want to kill or cut anything. So I decide to choose alternative which is also science related. My core research is actually looking at Poland and the sports in the air. So it's also connected to the plants and that's also why I was very interested in this field. Awesome. Well, let's have another round of applause for our speakers. And thank you all again for attending this Explorer series lecture. Um so this month we have several more explore series events um that will be taking place outside of the Mesa Lab. Um so if you are interested in these events um please check out our website and we also have those past recordings on our website as well. Um, and if you are 18 years or older, please take a moment to fill out our three to five minute anonymous survey to help us better understand the impact of this program and how we can improve our next event. And we'll be sending out um a link to those of you who have registered or you can find the survey by scanning the QR code just outside the door as you leave. And I hope to see you all next time and have a great rest of your evening.