Eleri in Antarctica

I may be in the UK right now, but this is no White Cliffs of Dover.
After several years of waiting and pandemic uncertainty, the leadership expedition to Antarctica, for women working in climate change, is officially re-booked for November 2023 - and I am going!

It’s been a bumpy road to get here, and we did our best over COVID with virtual sessions on leadership, climate change, visibility and strategy, but I’m so very much looking forward to diving deeper in-person! Not to mention the utmost privilege of stepping foot on the planet’s most secluded continent to witness the furthest-reaching effects of anthropogenic climate change.

#21 - Eleri Harris: All About Homeward Bound by Storytellers of STEMM • A podcast on Anchor

Looking for a podcast in these dire times of lockdown and distancing? Check out Storytellers of STEMM by my awesome Homeward Bound sister, Rachel Villani. And this week (or actually early March), she's chatting to ME!

anchor.fm Eleri Harris is a glaciologist, from Wales who is currently living in Vancouver. She and I are both members of Homeward Bound Cohort 5 (aka HB5), and we talk about the program, how we see ourselves as women in STEMM, and discuss the ins and outs of our experience with HB so far.

Happy Earth Day!
Spend some time away from COVID today and refocus your thoughts on Planet Earth.
Appreciate what we have, what you've seen already, what you want to see after all this is over, and ponder what we can do as individuals and as a collective to improve the environmental consequences of mankind.

NPI Glaciology

Antarctica is the only corona-free continent at the moment. There is also no confirmed covid-19 cases in Svalbard. However, the virus can still make it difficult for scientists in remote and isolated areas. Field campaigns have been cancelled and some people have difficulties travelling home from terminated expeditions. For people not in the field, working from home with young kids can be challenging.

At Troll Station, Antarctica, the overwintering team are used to isolation. They are 6 team members isolated for 8 months at the station until November 2020. Below, they give 10 recommendations on how to endure isolation:

1. SPEAK OUT! Take up problems as soon as they occur, do not let them grumble, it can hurt, and create misunderstandings.
2. SEE EACH OTHER and reach out a helping hand. Be generous with nice words and actions!
3. RESPECT ALONE TIME It is nice to be around others, but also good with alone time, so show some respect to those who need to be by themselves.
4. COOK TOGETHER It’s social and often fun to cook together! Find forgotten cookbooks or search recipes online.
5. COMMON MEALS ARE GOLD On Troll, the overwintering team gather daily for communal meals around the table. “Meals are like therapy for us”, says chef Karin Jansdotter. “Then the talk flows.”
6. LEARN SOMETHING NEW or find a hobby that you have put away. Do things you don’t usually have time for, such as learning a foreign language or an instrument, finding your forgotten knitting project, or sorting out your photos.
7. TRAIN! If you can’t exercise outdoors, there are many exercise films online that can be done from the living room.
8. BE ORGANIZED Do not let the home decay, but keep it clean and tidy. It increases your well-being. “At Troll we take care to have it tidy every day, it also makes us think better”, says Karin.
9. ROUTINES AND GOALS FOR THE DAY Create routines, even though everyday life is fluid, weird and new. Try to wake up at the same time and eat regular meals throughout the day. Set some goals for the day.
10. BE SOCIAL ONLINE Connect with friends and family!

Photo: Karin Jansdotter

Some of the wonderful female scientists who have worked in Antarctica, showcased by Prof. Helen Fricker in an online seminar today about the past 100 years of Antarctic research.

How about trying a bit of themed this week? Catch up on Dr Huw Griffiths' (British Antarctic Survey) online lesson "Antarctica - More than just penguins", a child-friendly intro to all things Antarctica. With more than 6,000 views, it's proving popular!
https://youtu.be/szr-TbRGt30

Greenland, Antarctica melting six times faster than in the 1990s

"If the current melting trend continues, the regions will be on track to match the "worst-case" scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of an extra 6.7 inches (17 centimeters) of sea level rise by 2100."

As if COVID-19 isn't enough to worry about...

sealevel.nasa.gov The two regions have lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in three decades; unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by 2100.

Homeward Bound

Wanna be part of ?

Applications for our sixth cohort are open now! Become part of a global collaboration of and join the leadership program of a lifetime. Apply now: https://bit.ly/2UnOX4D

Ahoy there! A new island has been discovered in Antarctica!
How? Why?
1) regional glacier melt, which has reduced weight on the earth’s crust and allowed it to rebound, making this island pop up above sea level.
2) local glacier melt on the island, making the rock/land visible around its edges.
It’s likely because of climate change. Scientists are concerned about what this rebounding means to the nearby vulnerable glaciers; will it stabilize or destabilize them? Give the Nature article a read. 📷 Gui Bortolotto
.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00489-4

After an unusual heatwave in Antarctica this past month, snow and ice is melting at alarming rates, and meltwater ponds have been forming more quickly than ever seen before on the big white continent.

Antarctica Melts Under Its Hottest Days on Record

On February 6, 2020, weather stations recorded the hottest temperature on record for Antarctica. Thermometers at the Esperanza Base on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula reached 18.3°C (64.9°F)—around the same temperature as Los Angeles that day. The warm spell caused widespread melting on nearby glaciers.

The warm temperatures arrived on February 5 and continued until February 13, 2020. The images above show melting on the ice cap of Eagle Island and were acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on February 4 and February 13, 2020.

Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College observed that during the warming event, around 1.5 square kilometers (0.9 square miles) of snowpack became saturated with meltwater (shown in blue above). According to climate models, Eagle Island experienced peak melt—30 millimeters (1 inch)—on February 6. In total, snowpack on Eagle Island melted 106 millimeters (4 inches) from February 6- February 11. About 20 percent of seasonal snow accumulation in the region melted in this one event on Eagle Island.

“I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,” said Pelto. “You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.” He also used satellite images to detect widespread surface melting nearby on Boydell Glacier.

Pelto noted that such rapid melting is caused by sustained high temperatures significantly above freezing. Such persistent warmth was not typical in Antarctica until the 21st century, but it has become more common in recent years.

Read what caused this warm spell: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146322/antarctica-melts-under-its-hottest-days-on-record

Fixing the Leaky Pipeline

The leaky pipeline metaphor for women in STEM.

“We know that increasing the flow of water in a leaking pipe does not guarantee that more water will make it to the other end, but fixing the leak does. Understanding why men and women come out of grad school equally prepared, but it is mostly men who make it to the end of the pipe, entails examining a list of reasons including conscious and unconscious biases, lack of confidence in ourselves as capable and competent women, social barriers impeding our access to and permanence in high level positions, and gender equality programs generally focused on mentoring women rather than promoting them to high level positions.”

https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/fixing-leaky-pipeline

womenshistory.org Fixing the Leaky Pipeline The Importance of Women’s Success in STEM by Emma Dion March 20, 2019 Many of today’s biggest global issues involve economic growth, climate change, national security, health and the overall quality of life. In order to find solutions to these issues, there is a growing...

Approachability has always been an important consideration in my professional development. Can you truly be an effective leader if you’re unapproachable? I vote no.

Very happy to have received this valentine’s appreciation note at work today ❤️ Also appreciating the chocolate!

You’re the coolest ❤️

Posted • by ⁠

In 2012, I spent 6 weeks in the Arctic studying a specialist Glaciology course at the University of Svalbard. Almost 9 years later, I’ll be visiting the Antarctic with Homeward Bound to check out the glaciers in the opposite polar region.

Journey to the 'doomsday glacier'

Great article last week on the “Doomsday Glacier”, or Thwaites glacier, in Antarctica. (What a name to catch your eye, eh?!)

The BBC accompanied scientists to the glacier on a research expedition to drill into the ice, and see what’s going on below.

This massive glacier, the size of Britain, is melting fast. How? A brief explanation:

- the glacier is very thick, and most of its height sits below sea level.
- warm ocean water is “attacking” the ice at its front, finding its way underneath the ice.
- once enough water gets under the ice, it loses its grip on the ground and starts to float.
-this allows more warm water underneath the ice, attacking it from beneath.
- There’s a bedrock ridge under the glacier front where the ice has started to float, allowing the warm water to flow downhill behind the ridge for the first time, attacking further back underneath of the glacier.
- the more ice that’s left decoupled from the ground and floating in the warm water, the more that melts, and the more vulnerable and unstable the glacier is to potential collapse.

Scary stuff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51097309

bbc.com Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "doomsday glacier", is reported to be melting quicker than previously thought - scientists are now trying to find out why.

18.3°C. Yesterday saw the highest temperature to ever be recorded in Antarctica 🇦🇶
Posted • The Argentine research base, Esperanza, on the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, set a new record temperature of 18.3°C on 6 February, beating the former record of 17.5°C on 24 March 2015, according to Argentina’s national meteorological service (SMN). A committee for WMO’s Weather and Climate Extremes Archive will now verify whether this indeed is a new record for the Antarctic continent.

The record appears to be likely associated (in the short term) with what we call a regional "foehn" event over the area: a rapid warming of air coming down a slope/mountain, but it takes place in the wider context of our changing climate.

The Antarctic Peninsula (the northwest tip near to South America) is among the fastest warming regions of the planet, almost 3°C over the last 50 years. The amount of ice lost annually from the Antarctic ice sheet increased at least six-fold between 1979 and 2017.

Some 87% of glaciers along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated in the last 50 years with most of these showing an accelerated retreat in the last 12 years.

Cracks in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica have been growing rapidly over the last days, according to satellite images from Europe’s Sentinel1. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the primary ice arteries in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The two large rifts were first spotted in early 2019 and have each rapidly grown to approximately 20 km in length.
🇦🇷

https://instagram.com/p/B8QO3zJHiVB/

Have you seen this yet? Lewis Pugh swam along a meltwater channel at the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet, and then into the ice sheet itself! And just in speedos! Brrrrr.
All in the name of climate change and science communication.

East Antarctica is the coldest place on earth, and yet I was able to swim down a river under the ice-sheet. It was the most beautiful and terrifying experience of my life, and comes with an important message for us all. http://bit.do/fqCDF Please share.

Words of leadership wisdom from my rollerskate club

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8DgorjnM1b/?igshid=1hmshoso0pwn0

I’m up on Instagram now as EleriInAntarctica. Follow me!

You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

How our dietary choices contribute to greenhouse gasses and climate change.

This article, with well sourced data, clearly shows that the key to a more environmentally sustainable diet is in the type of food itself, and less in the whether or not it was from the farm down the road vs shipped in, e.g. locally sourced lamb is still far more environmentally damaging than chicken from further afield.

I've made a conscious effort the past few years to reduce my meat intake. I definitely can't class myself as a vegetarian or vegan, but many of my meals now are plant based. Beef, in particular, is something I've cut right back on, because it takes up a lot of land and cows fart a lot! Just look at the beef bar in the chart compared to EVERYTHING else - it's shocking!

And look at chocolate at #5! That was a particularly sad surprise to me.

https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local?fbclid=IwAR15o0xxX1p-wdSr8o4XojTKVrVU3K-Sq_fmqrDzT8B0gEvuChZy5yaV4T0

ourworldindata.org ‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?

Throughout my Homeward Bound journey, I’ll be posting all things climate change;
- what’s happening and where
- how we know it’s abnormal and not just a natural trajectory
- how we can influence those in power to commit to and follow through on meaningful climate focused policies
- what we can do to change our own habits to reduce our individual impacts.

And some cool Antarctica stuff, just to get you as excited as I am for ’s leadership voyage to the big white continent later this year!

A focus of the Homeward Bound program is to communicate climate science to the masses, so the more people we get following this page, the wider the message can be spread! Collaboration is powerful and, while I collaborate with my TeamHB5 sisters, I also call on you lovely humans to collaborate with me. I encourage you to like and share posts you find interesting, and to invite friends and family to this page! Spread the word, let’s educate ourselves, and let’s use science to silence the nay sayers!

Grunge is getting climate conscious! 🤘
Pearl Jam announced a new album today, and it looks to be making a statement on climate change.

`1) It's called Gigaton, the unit of measurement commonly used when discussing polar ice loss.
2) The cover artwork is a photo of a melting ice shelf by National Geographic photographer and co-founder of conservation company SeaLegacy, Paul Nicklen, who quotes: "...Even though this was taken just 600 miles from the North Pole the temperature was in the high 60’s. The Arctic could be completely devoid of sea ice during the summer months in the next 10 to 20 years. This striking scene is a reminder of the fragility of this icy ecosystem".
3) Note the red symbol at the end of the title, GIGATON. It resembles a red flame, potentially in reference to the current wildfire situation in Australia, and increase in fires elsewhere e.g. California.

We've passed the $1000 (CAD) mark in my fundraising efforts (thanks to Lindi Braund's sock purchase)!
Thanks to everyone who's donated so far, particularly over the Christmas/Holiday season where cash is a bit tight.

It’s not Antarctica, but it is climate change. And it’s terrifying.

Author quote:
A little 3D visualisation of the fires in Aus. This is made from data from NASA’s FIRMS (Satellite data regarding fires) between 05/12/19 - 05/01/20.
These are all the areas which have been affected by bushfires. Scale is a little exaggerated due to the render’s glow. Also note that not all the areas are still burning.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B69RAcwn6fT/?igshid=1d1mmhvaxp9qg

A very happy new year to you all!
Blwyddyn newydd dda i chi gyd!

2020 is the year I go to Antarctica. And I still can't believe I'm fortunate enough to have been chosen to go! There's a lot of work to be done in the meantime though, leading up to the November voyage. This will partly include sharing a lot of info with you about the great white continent.

So check out this post below on the brand new south pole marker. A marker has to be relocated to the true 90deg point every Jan 1st as the ice it sits on flows, shifting the marker throughout the year.

Here is the official 2020 South Pole marker! Unveiled on New Year’s Day. The ice sheet moves 10m per annum over the bedrock 2.6km below, so the marker needs to be relocated 1 Jan each year to the true 90°South point.
It is a tradition at the Pole that the offical marker for each year is designed and crafted by station personnel through the previous winter. This year, the magnificent brass marker was designed by Luis Gonzalez and made on station by Steele Diggles, both 2019 winter-over team members. The classical 12-point compass rose at 30 degree intervals is inspired by previous logos of the US Antarctic Program. The names of the 42 personnel who wintered-over in 2019 are inscribed on the pole below the rose. Office of Polar Programs - National Science Foundation
(photo: Marisa, land_meets_c)