Sinéad was born a scientist. As a child, she asked for extra math and physics lessons on the weekends, and she thrived at University College London upon finding fellow science folks.
Now, Sinéad Farrell, PhD, is a geophysicist at the University of Maryland, and she uses remote sensing satellites to study Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. She also explores the ice on foot, braving polar bears and frozen food to determine how the frozen ocean is changing over time.
You can find Sinéad at @dr-slfarrell.bsky.social.
[00:00:00] So when I first came to the US, I thought, well, you know, I'm a polar scientist, I better learn how to ski. And I went skiing in West Virginia, which is a great place to be skiing, by the way, lovely places out there. But I was cross-country skiing, and I have zero dexterity, and I'm not coordinated at all. So I actually broke my leg pretty much.
[00:00:23] Yeah, yeah. And then I was hiking at a different time. And it was icy and hiking up a hill and slipped on the ice and broke my arm. So I have to avoid ice related social activities. So as an ice scientist, I'm an absolute disaster in icy environments.
[00:00:48] Hi, I'm Rachel Moeller Gorman. I'm a science writer, and I interview scientists about their research. But I've always wanted to pry a little deeper and ask more personal questions like, what were you like as a kid? What happens when you make mistakes? Why should the rest of us care about your research? I can't wait to ask these questions and many more on Socializing with Scientists.
[00:01:12] Hello, and welcome to Socializing with Scientists. Summer is here. The weather is warm. And so today I'm talking with someone who might be able to cool us down a little bit, Sinead Farrell. She studies sea ice in the polar regions and has spent decades looking at it and studying it remotely with satellites. She's also studied it close up. She and her team snowmobile out onto the ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic for days.
[00:01:35] They do fieldwork amongst the seals and the polar bears, the vast cold whiteness of the ice stretching on for miles and miles. Sinead is a lot of fun. She loves a good adventure. She loves learning about wherever she is. She and her scientist friends like to sing karaoke, and she's trying to visit all of the national parks in the U.S. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Sinead Farrell.
[00:02:01] All right. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. Where where are you today? Are you, you know, teaching? Are you doing research today? Are you home? Are you at the office? Like what? Where do I find you? So it's great to be here, Rachel. Thank you so much for inviting me to join your podcast. You find me working from home today on Friday. And yeah, I find I'm surrounded by nature and woodlands where I live.
[00:02:28] So quite an inspiring place to work. Are you in Maryland? I am. That's correct. But not in the city or in the countryside? No, out in the countryside. Yes. Oh, nice. So the question I always ask first is what kind of scientist are you? And then what does that mean? Tell us a little bit about what that means. Yeah, it's a good question. And it can be hard to define. I would say, generally speaking, I'm a geophysicist.
[00:02:55] So I study the physics of how the Earth works. And I did training in Earth science, but also space science. So I actually have expertise in something called remote sensing, which is an interesting way to do science, an interesting way to study the Earth. We study it from afar using satellites.
[00:03:20] So a lot of geophysicists spend their time in the field taking measurements in the field. And we do. I do that at times. But the majority of the time, we're using remote sensing satellite data observations of the Earth to understand how it works. And my particular area of interest is the polar regions. So you study ice, right? Yes. So I would say I study the physics of sea ice.
[00:03:49] And that's part of the polar oceans. What about the ice? Like, is it's the Arctic and the Antarctic that you study? That's right. Yes, exactly. So we've got sea ice in both polar regions. And sea ice is a little different to what we think of as the ice caps.
[00:04:11] So different to the ice in Greenland and in Antarctica itself, which is glacial ice that forms from snowfall compacting over time. Sea ice is a little different. Sea ice is actually the frozen ocean. So it forms in the wintertime when the ocean gets cold, just like you would have ice forming in a lake in the wintertime in sort of cold temperatures.
[00:04:37] So we get ice crystals forming in the ocean and they float up to the surface. And over time, they consolidate and they form this layer of ice that is a cap on the ocean. And that stays there all throughout the winter in both the Arctic Ocean and in the Southern Ocean, which is the ocean that surrounds Antarctica. And then during the summertime, it starts to decay and melt.
[00:05:03] And in many places, it completely disappears before it refreezes again in the winter. But in some locations, it does stick around. So we do have areas where we identify multi-year ice. That's the term we use. So it's ice that sticks around for many years, multi-years, multiple years. And so we track that. And the cool thing about the sea ice is that it moves on the ocean.
[00:05:31] So the wind can blow it around and the ocean currents can move it. So it's a very dynamic part of the Earth system. So that's one of the reasons I really love studying it. Wow. And I think we've all kind of heard about sea ice and global warming. And why do you think it's important to better understand sea ice? Yeah, that's a great question. Exactly.
[00:05:55] So currently, we're tracking this ice because it has been declining very rapidly over the last several decades. So just like we would track our own health if we started, you know, something changed in our own systems, we would speak to the experts about that. We're doing, we're the experts here tracking the health of the sea ice.
[00:06:18] So in the Arctic in particular, global warming is actually happening at twice the rate it is in the rest of the planet. So we're warming up the Arctic at least two times faster than everywhere else. And ice naturally doesn't like heat, right? So as we warm up the air and we warm up the ocean, that makes it harder for that ice to form in winter. And it helps it melt faster in the summertime.
[00:06:47] So this is a big change that's happening in particular in the Arctic. But we're starting to see the same similar changes happening in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, where we're seeing these rapid declines and sea ice. And this has really important societal consequences because the Arctic Ocean is it seems like it's very far away. But actually, it really has a lot of influences on our world.
[00:07:15] For example, it can affect the weather that we get here in the US. So there are lots of connections because it's an integrated Earth system. There are a lot of connections with what happens in the Arctic and what happens in other parts of the world. So the sea ice controls, you know, weather patterns.
[00:07:36] It has an influence on ocean currents, which, you know, take temperature, move temperature and salt and nutrients all around the globe. And of course, from our perspective as humans, it really opens up a wealth of opportunities. So the first thing we might think of is tourism. A lot of people, including myself, are interested to see the changes that are happening. You know, these rapid changes that we see. People want to be there.
[00:08:06] People want to see that with their own eyes. You know, the loss of this kind of pristine environment. People want to go there and check that out before it maybe disappears completely. So tourism is on the up. But in addition, there are other things that are happening, such as fishing. The fisheries are the location of the fisheries is changing because of changes in the sea ice cover. So that's causing, you know, ship fleets to maybe have to move into new locations.
[00:08:35] And then there's also transportation of cargo across the globe. And if you are transiting from Europe to Asia, it's much faster to go across the Arctic Ocean than it is to go on the other routes. And, you know, so there's a huge uptake in ship traffic that we're seeing, especially in the eastern Arctic, you know, along the Siberian side.
[00:09:09] Okay. So regarding the weather patterns and the ocean currents that the ice affects, how does that happen? And do you know exactly what the effects will be if there's less ice in the Arctic? Yeah. So one of the main things that's happening with sea ice is that we have something called it's a technical term. It's called the albedo feedback.
[00:09:33] And that is very simply the amount of energy that gets reflected back to the to the to space. So we have sunlight coming in and, you know, we have a nice sunny day. Sun warms up the planet and keeps us nice and toasty and generates, you know, an environment that humans that we can live in. Okay. But the polar regions play a really important role. They actually regulate that overall temperature on the Earth.
[00:10:03] So the ice is bright. It's white. It's covered in snow. And that reflects a lot of energy from the sun back to space. So it's I always say it's a little bit like wearing a baseball cap in the summertime. So it's keeping the heat off of the planet as that ice melts. We're enabling more and more of that heat from the sun to be absorbed. So it can be absorbed by the land if we're losing ice off of the snow off of the land.
[00:10:32] But in terms of sea ice, we're actually allowing the open ocean to absorb that energy. So we're putting more energy into the system with the loss of sea ice. We're putting more and more heat into the system. And as we put more heat into the system, that, of course, then causes the sea ice to melt back even faster. So we have this what we call a positive feedback loop. And I always say to my students, it's a positive in that it's self-sustaining, but it's not a positive for the sea ice.
[00:11:01] It's a big negative. So it's not necessarily a good thing. And yes, so that energy then is there for, you know, which warms the ocean and has sort of downstream effects on our weather systems, as I mentioned. And over time, we'll change the overall climate system as well. So I know you said you do a lot of you collect a lot of your data remotely from satellites, but you you also go to the Arctic, right?
[00:11:31] Or the Antarctic. Like you've you've been there several times, right? I have. Yeah. It's been such a joy. I I'm so privileged to have been able to do fieldwork in both polar regions. The majority of the work that I have done has been from aircraft.
[00:11:49] I've worked with NASA since I was a grad student, actually taking aircraft to both poles, to both polar regions and surveying the sea ice with instruments on the aircraft. So the advantage there is that we can bring multiple different instruments on our on our plane and we can obtain sort of a multi multi view picture of the ice as we fly over it.
[00:12:18] And we then compare that to our satellite observations, our remote sensing observations. And that helps us to understand how good those remote sensing observations are, whether they're limited in some way, you know, what the accuracy of those measurements is. And the aircraft is kind of nice because you get a more extensive view and you can get into different regions. So, you know, you can study different time periods or different regional settings.
[00:12:46] But we do get to go to the field as well and do real fieldwork. And that kind of is close to my heart. As I mentioned, my training is as a geophysicist. Yeah, it is a life changing experience. It has been for me anyway.
[00:13:03] And it's a great way then to use, you know, we use the field data to better understand, again, you know, limitations in our both in the airborne observations and then in the satellite observations as well. So we kind of scale up from from the in situ measurements in the field up to the aircraft and then from the aircraft up to the satellite. So that's how we like to do the assessment. But what's I just want to know, what is it like to be on all that ice?
[00:13:32] Like, is it just this vast expanse of white? Like, what is it? Can you hear anything? Can you smell anything? Like, what is it? What is it like to be there? Such a great question. Well, I'll just say it's really cool. That's a very bad joke. Yeah, no, it's cold. Definitely cold. So we go well prepared, you know, with our gear.
[00:13:57] And I think it's always funny when you have sort of we do a lot of field work in Alaska and we're really lucky to work with the local communities in Alaska to get out on the ice. And I always joke, you know, the folks, they say we come from the lower 48. So, you know, from from the contiguous U.S. And we tend to go with all our polar gear. And, you know, it's super funny. They're very lightly dressed and we're like ready for an Arctic adventure.
[00:14:26] But yes, the environment is amazing. It's it's quite austere in some ways. It's really monochrome. So we have this kind of white, but also a lot of blue. There are pictures behind me here at home of the ice. Unfortunately, folks online won't be able to see. But I can tell you that, yeah, the scenery, it's primarily blue and white. It's very, very quiet.
[00:14:55] There is not a lot of noise, but you do hear the cracking of the ice as you're walking on it and as it moves, you know, on the ocean current. So you do hear faint cracking and the whole area is covered in snow. So we have the ice itself, which I mentioned is the frozen ocean. But then that accumulates snowfall over the course of the winter. You know, it snows there throughout the winter.
[00:15:21] So a lot of times it's trying to figure out if you can walk either on top of the snow or if your feet sink into it. In general, the snowpack is very, very cold. So it's very rigid. So it's a little bit like that snow creep that we got here in the in the US on the eastern coast, at least this year, this winter. So it's very dense and easy to walk on. And then, you know, in terms of flora and fauna, there are no trees. There is no vegetation. So you miss that.
[00:15:51] You know, that's something that you really miss. And if you're lucky, you know, you'll get to see or hear some birds or some of the marine mammals that live in the area. So, you know, quite frequently we will encounter polar bears. Oh, wow. Yeah. And, you know, that's really exciting.
[00:16:08] I think the very first time I went out on the ice, I was probably only out for about five minutes when our guide, we always have a guide with us, a local who we actually call them bear guides because they are there to identify bears in the area. And, you know, make sure that we're conducting our field work in a safe environment and that we're not, you know, interrupting any of the activities of the local mammals.
[00:16:38] So the bear guard, you know, within the first five minutes said, stop, we there's a bear ahead. And, you know, he could see it with his with his eyes, with just his own eyes. And I was looking through my binoculars and I couldn't even see it. So they're amazing. Yeah. So but I mean, you could see the footprints. And so I've seen bears both on the ice and from the air and they're incredible creatures. But we do have to remember, you know, they are top predators.
[00:17:08] So it is a dangerous work environment from that perspective. But we take that precaution always to bring someone who's an expert in that and knows how to handle that situation. So and the other cool thing that we people never ask, but I'd like to mention is just there are also a lot of seals. And that's why the bears are there. So the bears hunt the seals and the poor seals have to try and hide from the bears.
[00:17:37] And so we do encounter seals quite frequently because they actually den into the snow. So they they can excavate through the ice. They can excavate holes in the ice and from below, they come up through the ice and then they den in the snow cover on top of the ice. So that's really incredible.
[00:17:57] And I have been able to assist biologists in studying seals off of the coast of Alaska to understand populations and and, you know, the places that they live, the marine habitats for these seals. So, yeah, so they're really amazing. And you asked about smell. And that's the only thing I recall in terms of smell is that seals are really smelly.
[00:18:26] In general, you don't, you know, there's not that much that can create smells. But, yeah, they I guess because they eat a lot of crabs. Oh, seafood. Oh, that was interesting. But yeah, it's pretty rank. So when you when you go there, how long are you there?
[00:18:54] Is there what's like a typical day or where are you staying? Are you staying somewhere on the ice or are you traveling to the ice each day to do your research? How does it all work? That's a great question. So in a lot of locations, we have the ability to stay on land. So there are a couple of different research stations, particularly in the Arctic, I'm talking about, where we would be able to sort of stay in a research community.
[00:19:18] So that typically consists of dorms, laboratories, you know, workshops, that type of thing. So here in the US, we have some research facilities like that and other countries maintain those as well. So in Canada, there are field communities, Greenland, you know, run by Denmark. So there are places that we can work from that are close to the ice. And then we take snow machines out onto the sea ice.
[00:19:48] And generally, we travel on snow machines wherever we go. We tend to travel, you know, a couple of kilometers off the shore and set up our field sites on what's called shore fast or land fast ice. So some of that ice is connected to the shore and it's quite stable. So we're not necessarily drifting around on these ice flows when we're doing our field work. There are campaigns that do take people out into the deep field.
[00:20:17] That's how we would call that. And so people get dropped off onto the ice by helicopter or by plane. And, you know, in some cases, we do field work in those more remote locations. And I would say in my case, I've not done that. But in those situations, you would camp out on the ice. So typically, you'd be there for, you know, a week to two, three weeks setting up the field work.
[00:20:43] And, you know, the historical measurements that we have of the sea ice are from camps like that, from places where people set up field camps and did measurements over time. And then the one other way that we do access this area is also by ship.
[00:21:01] So we have several research vessels that we're able to use that can actually break through the ice and take scientists up to the polar regions to take, you know, to take observations either from the ship or, you know, to disembark the ship and get onto the sea ice that way. And we've had a couple of experiments where a research vessel has frozen itself in on purpose. So they get stuck in the ice.
[00:21:32] Yeah, a little bit like Shackleton in Antarctica. But these are polar hardened vessels so they can survive that. And they are frozen in for a year. So we stay the whole year. Yeah. So we just completed. This is the royal way I was not involved, but we just completed a campaign like that called Mosaic, which was run by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, but it was an international activity.
[00:21:58] So scientists from all over the world joined that campaign and they stayed for a year on the ice and drifted with the ice. And we took a lot of measurements. So, yeah, that was a repeat of a U.S. activity that happened, I believe, in the 1980s. So this was, you know, kind of an update to see how things had changed. So do they just wait for the ice to melt again to get out? Yes. Oh, wow.
[00:22:24] And in this case, in fact, that when we did it this time around, the ice melted out sooner than expected. So they actually transited back up into the ice. So they went back for a second leg to take additional measurements. So, yeah, that's what you do. You wait, you drift with the ice and you're somewhat at the mercy of the weather as to where you're going to end up. So there was a lot of fun trying to predict, you know, where to where where should you start?
[00:22:53] And then where where would you end up? So you're kind of it's a little bit like being like it's like a buoy, you know, floating around on the ocean current. So we have a fairly good idea of where things are going to go. But but there are always surprises in particular in the polar regions, I would say, because it is stormy. Weather systems don't behave the way we often think they will.
[00:23:20] Well, there's still a lot of unknowns about the system, about the how the Earth system works in the polar region. So it can people get caught by surprise. And, you know, just anecdotally, I heard the deep field camp that was out there this year, this winter. They were expecting to drift westwards with the ocean currents. And that would be the traditional direction for the location where they were. But in fact, they drifted eastwards. And so they were completely caught off guard by that and surprised by that.
[00:23:50] So, yeah, so this does happen. And, you know, but we plan for that. But it yeah, it just goes to show you that there's still a lot to learn about how the system works up there. And so they have everything they need on that boat for a whole year. Are there helicopters that come in and out? Like, how do they heat? Heat. Yeah, you've got to bring your own fuel. That's really important. But they're cold. These places are really cold. And generally, you know, the my colleagues who come back are always disappointed.
[00:24:18] They always have expectations of doing more. But it's just when it's so cold, you know, your body starts to shut down. It's really hard to move. You do need to take on a lot more calories in the field than you would expect. And of course, instruments break. You know, things don't work. So a quick anecdote there, you know, never try to write your field notes with a biro with a pen in the Arctic because it just won't work. The liquid ink will freeze.
[00:24:48] So we use pencils. And more importantly, you want those little click, you know, what are they called? Clutch. Yeah. Mechanical pencils. Mechanical pencil. Yeah. So we have we have notebooks that can withstand rain and mechanical pencils. So, yeah, one of the key things you learn the first time you go out on the ice.
[00:25:13] Another trick is to keep your food in your pocket so it stays warm and it doesn't freeze. What do you eat that if you're going out for the day? Do you bring you just bring a bunch of food in your pockets? I mean, you do. You bring snacks, warm drinks. You know, it depends. Again, it really does depend on the situation.
[00:25:34] If you're deploying from land, you know, from one of the science centers, generally we'll have good facilities and access to kind of all your regular types of food. So people love to bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out on the ice. That's a good one. You know, but a lot of candy, believe it or not. I have a sweet tooth and I was delighted to find out that we should bring as much candy as possible. So that was great.
[00:26:01] And then one other thing that I have become addicted to since I've started doing this work is like salmon jerky. Fish sticks and salmon jerky, which sounds a little weird and gross maybe, but it's really delicious. So protein is good. Yeah. So we tend to bring our own food with us. And, you know, to be honest with you, it's one of those situations where you're so excited to be out there. It's such a unique experience and you're so focused on doing the research.
[00:26:31] It's actually easy to forget to eat and not to think about it at all or to even hydrate. So I think that's one of the reasons why my, you know, more senior mentors have always said, take a lot of candy, eat it as fast and as much of it as you can and as fast as you can. So M&Ms are a favorite. And especially if you can get those peanut butter ones, they're even better. Do you have any good stories about times that things went wrong out there and how you dealt with it or any?
[00:27:00] Well, you tend to think that you're when you're working on the sea ice, you know, it feels very stable. It's this frozen surface. You're walking across. You start to think, OK, I'm just on the ground, you know, and you forget that you're actually floating on the ocean. You're walking on the ocean, which is very exciting. But when you start doing the fieldwork, you know, we drill holes into the ice to measure how thick the ice is. That's one of the key things we're trying to measure.
[00:27:26] It's super easy to drop things down those holes and they're gone forever. So, you know, expensive equipment can easily be lost. But more often than not, it's like a small allen key or some tiny piece of equipment that you really badly need to connect things together. And then it goes into the depths of the Arctic. So, yeah, so that's kind of one of the more common things.
[00:27:53] But generally, I will say before you do the fieldwork, you know, we go through field planning, quite extensive field planning and we have contingencies, you know, on the aircraft. When we do our airborne surveys, we have multiple flight paths picked out and we try to capture the best opportunities. So are the pilots of the planes kind of part of the research team, too? Or where do they come from? Yeah, that is a super, super great question.
[00:28:21] And I hope some pilots listen to this podcast so they get a shout out. They are absolutely the linchpin of all of our research. They typically for us, we the airborne surveys are conducted by NASA and we use NASA aircraft for that. They are typically piloted by U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force pilots. So we have the best of the best piloting our planes. Yeah. And so they're really an important part of our research campaigns for sure.
[00:28:50] But in terms of expertise, they don't necessarily know a lot about the sea ice. So I have had pilots ask me, you know, as the scientist on board, how thick is that ice? And so I give an estimate, you know, it can be hard to tell from looking at it, but I give an estimate of how thick it is. And then I said, well, why are you asking me that question? And the reason is in case we need to land. And there have been cases where, you know, they've had to make an emergency landing.
[00:29:21] The thing is, you do not want to land on sea ice in an emergency. Obviously, it could be difficult to do that. But more importantly, it might be very difficult to take off again because there's no fuel, you know, available there. So that would be a situation we would try to avoid. But yeah, some aircraft are equipped with skis so they can land. Yeah. Yeah. So but I haven't been on those planes myself.
[00:29:48] But if you're going into a deep camp, then that's kind of how they bring in supplies and the field gear and everything gets deployed that way. So we do build runways on the ice. And yeah, so it's important to know how thick it is and make sure that it's, you know, we pick areas that are safe to work on. But yeah, the pilots are really important. And it's something that we really, yeah, we're very, you know, thankful for their for their work that they do with us. Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:30:18] That must be an interesting job to be flying over ice. And then I'm assuming go back to like a base of some sort to land. That's right. That's right. So we work out of, for example, the in Petufet Greenland, there's the space base. I think it's called. I forgot the name of it now. It used to be called Tule Air Force Base, but I think it's called the space base now. And but it's that's in Greenland. That's a U.S. Air Force base.
[00:30:46] And we fly from there a lot. In Alaska, we would normally work out of Fairbanks. So that's quite nice because we are based then in a town and go in and out of Fairbanks International Airport every day. In Antarctica, a lot of times the surveys are based out of Chile. So Punta Arenas, the southern tip of Chile. And we fly from there all the way across the southern ocean to Antarctica. So those are really long flights.
[00:31:13] Typically, we'll do 14 hours, 12 to 14 hours. So they have to take two crew for that because they're long, long campaigns. So but only one group of scientists. So we don't get to stop. So there is a lot of snoozing on those aircraft surveys. How often are you doing surveys like that? Are you going out and doing that? It could be every day. You know, it really does depend on the weather.
[00:31:38] Again, we would set up for a campaign with typically an airborne campaign would typically be, you know, multiple weeks. So maybe four weeks up to six weeks, depending on how much surveying we're going to do. And it's a mixture of flying over the sea ice and over this glacial land ice over Greenland, for example, or Antarctica. So we have a mixture of objectives that we're trying to achieve.
[00:32:07] Are you like how many of those surveys a year are you going off and doing? Oh, that's a good question. Sorry. Yeah. So they would happen, I mean, two to three times per year. Oh, well. Yeah. At the moment, it's a little bit less. We had a campaign which was called Operation Ice Bridge. And that was, we called it Ice Bridge because we were bridging a gap between two satellite missions.
[00:32:33] So we had, NASA had launched the ICESAT mission, which was a satellite designed to measure ice in the polar regions. And that operated in the noughties from 2003 to 2009. But then we had a gap in time where we didn't have this dedicated polar satellite. We launched ICESAT-2, the follow-on mission in 2018.
[00:32:58] So we had a period of about 10 years when we needed to obtain measurements. So we did that with aircraft and that was Operation Ice Bridge. So during Ice Bridge, we had multiple campaigns per year and a huge international community that we collaborated with to make sure that we maintained measurements and observations throughout that time period. Now that we have ICESAT-2, you know, we can dial back a little bit on the airborne campaigns.
[00:33:27] But as I said at the beginning, they are still needed because we do always want to understand the accuracy and limitations associated with the satellite observations. I wanted to step back and talk about you a little bit and how you got here and why you're so fascinated with ice. I mean, it's super fascinating, but where did that interest kind of come from? So where did you grow up? What was the landscape like there?
[00:33:56] Was there a lot of ice there? Talk a little bit about, you know, where you grew up. Oh, I love that question. That's so great, Rachel. Yeah. So I was born in the UK, but I grew up in Ireland and it was a really a rural part of the country. And growing up, we had a ton of freedom. You know, we had my family had traveled extensively, especially before my sister and I were born.
[00:34:22] So we had stories of exotic travel from my parents. And so they encouraged us to explore both in our backyards, but also, you know, around the country. We were always taken on kind of field trips on the weekends to go and look at, you know, ruins of castles or rivers, lakes, anything at all. My father was in engineering and construction.
[00:34:48] And they really encouraged us to be interested in the natural world. I myself had a huge curiosity in nature from an early age. I always say I was born a scientist. I just had a curiosity about how things work and why did everything work the way it did. So I must have been a little annoying at times asking my parents to explain everything. But I did it. I had a freedom to experiment.
[00:35:14] And, you know, I was always trying to grow things and observe things as a child. And I would trap insects and things and all sorts of creepy things. And, you know, just try to observe those. And then, you know, I think in high school, I was clearly becoming very interested in math and physics. And geography was another topic I really enjoyed. I went to an all-girls school.
[00:35:40] And I think that could be a challenge as a scientist because it's not something that's traditionally, you know, offered to young girls. And so I struggled to get the sort of, you know, teaching, I guess, the education that I was truly interested in. And so my parents were aware of this and connected me with teachers and tutors who were teaching in the all-boys school in the same town.
[00:36:09] And I went to learn, you know, I went to study with those tutors on the weekends. So when other teenagers were playing sports, I was doing math with a mentor on a Saturday. I would go to math class and, you know, my sister would go play music. So, yeah. So I, but I feel really blessed because, you know, my parents were very excited to encourage that and always thought that, you know, I would go on to do science.
[00:36:37] So, and I think for me, everything then changed when I went to university. I was really lucky. I went back to the UK for my studies. And at university day one, when I met other students who were doing the same topics as me, I thought, oh my goodness, there are other people like me. Wow. Okay. I'm not as unusual as I thought. That really felt great. That was just this homecoming instant feeling that, you know, you're not alone.
[00:37:05] Your curiosity can be nurtured. Um, and so that just was beginning of, you know, a new, uh, sort of a new chapter of my life that has led me to where I am today. Um, but the opportunities, I think the opportunities I got at university are really the reason I have the job that I have today. Um, you know, so that's, that's kind of where it all changed. Definitely. It's really sad that the girls school didn't have the same resources as the boys school of the same town.
[00:37:35] Is it a public school or is it a Catholic school? Yeah, they were Catholic schools in Ireland. And I think things have improved and changed a lot. And I think stories like mine sort of help that. I think, you know, there, I suppose the resources can be limited and, you know, the teachers are trying to address the needs of the majority.
[00:37:56] And, you know, in some cases there might be one or two students who have a particular interest, but they, you know, it is difficult with limited resources to kind of match the needs of every student. So, you know, I think in my case, I was really lucky that the opportunities were there to do it outside, you know, extracurricular activity. And I was just lucky that my parents were interested in supporting that, you know, so, but I do, I think that has changed a lot since then, you know, that was the 1980s and early 90s.
[00:38:26] So things have come a long way since then. So I would like, you know, wouldn't want to make a sort of generalization now that that's how schooling is. I think overall the education was fantastic, in particular in math. I mean, the math education was wonderful and you did get, you know, you got a broad education. The system in Ireland is actually quite different to the UK. It's much more like the European system.
[00:38:51] So we do a lot of languages and you get kind of a very broad education at high school. So it's, it's a good system. But yeah, in my case, I just needed that nurturing of physics a little bit more than others. And definitely was glad to, to get that when I went to university, you know, as well. Yeah. I was going to ask why you decided to go to the UK for university, but it sounds like that was just where you were from. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Family there.
[00:39:20] And again, I think I wanted to escape though. I think I still have that curiosity and exploration. You know, I thought, wow, I, you know, have an opportunity to go back to the UK and live an independent life. And that sounded good to me. I thought, yeah, I could get away. You know, as a teenager, you're like, okay, I want to start out on my own. So it was fun and exciting. And I, yeah, I lived in London. That's a great city.
[00:39:46] My parents, I know my father was thinking that, you know, I would end up as an engineer. I was very interested in engineering classes and he was an engineer and he thought, oh, you know, this may be not the right thing for her. But, you know, then I said geophysics and he thought, oh no, she'll be doing, you know, field work in the North Sea on oil rigs. You know, this type of thing. And that could be bad, you know, environment for a young girl.
[00:40:12] So, yeah, I think my parents were worried, but somehow figured that I would manage and figure it out. And for myself, I think the best piece of advice I can give to young people listening is that you try everything, right? You know, I ended up choosing a degree at the beginning that was, it was just simply physical science.
[00:40:34] So I had the opportunity to try lots of different topics and ended up in a degree called, I think my degree was earth and space science. So it was split across multiple departments. And that really suited me in the science that I wanted to do. It's very interdisciplinary. I think that has probably come across already. You know, we don't just look at the ice. We think about the ocean. We look at the atmosphere. We look at the wind patterns. So it's very interdisciplinary.
[00:41:01] And I think if you can get that type of education in your degree, that that will really be beneficial in the long term. Did you do research when you were in university, like with professors? I did. And I think that was the big changing point for me. I mean, I was so lucky. My university offered the opportunity to work with researchers from kind of the beginning, almost, of our degree. The professors were very active in research.
[00:41:29] It was at University College London. Shout out to UCL, my alma mater. But yeah, I was really lucky. The world-class education at UCL. And I got to meet my mentor. My undergraduate degree was a professor called Seymour Lachson. And he was studying sea ice with remote sensing.
[00:41:52] And it was really an offshoot of the research on land ice, you know, the research on this glacial ice that I mentioned in Greenland and Antarctica. Seymour was interested in whether those same techniques could be used, those satellite techniques could be used to study sea ice. So he was one of the pioneers of studying sea ice with remote sensing, you know, with satellite instruments, satellite technology.
[00:42:19] And initially, as an undergraduate, funnily enough, I thought that I wanted to study either planets, you know, I was interested in the planets, planetary geology, or even volcanology. And I ended up doing fieldwork, or sorry, not fieldwork, but projects, research projects that were based around mapping of maybe old lava flows or impact craters on distant planets and on the moon. Yeah, it sounds really exciting.
[00:42:48] And it was, but it turned out I actually found it a little bit boring because nothing was moving. These were ancient features. And it sort of felt like I was doing history and I really didn't want to do history, you know. So then I spoke to my professor and I said, you know, I'm finding this a little dry. Is there anything else I could do? And he said, well, I mean, we need some help on my project. We're studying sea ice. We have a ton of historical data. And I'm thinking, oh, no, not more.
[00:43:18] But it was historical logs from ship captains. So it was ship logs. And they were tracking, I guess they were fishers and hunters. And they were tracking the edge of the sea ice because that's where they were doing all their fishing and their hunting.
[00:43:35] And so we had these logs and my job was to put that into a digital form, into ArcGIS or something like that, into some sort of software so that we could digitize it and look at the changes over time. And I had this treasure trove of information. And what I quickly learned at that time, we were very interested in long term changes in the sea ice. So climatic changes, changes happening over decades.
[00:44:02] And I had about 100 years of data in these logs. And we could see this retreat of the ice edge in the data that I, as an undergraduate student, got to work on. So I was hooked from that moment. Oh, my goodness, this thing was moving. It wasn't stationary like these lava flows that I had. And suddenly I was this world opened up to me. OK, what is this ice? And you asked, I didn't answer the question.
[00:44:31] But no, we did not have a lot of snow and ice when I was growing. And, you know, like every child, I was excited by the idea of working in a snowy environment. I thought, oh, this is cool. But right from the beginning, I was really interested in this remote sensing and the techniques, you know, the technology that we would use to measure this ice. It is a vast region. You know, it's not easy to measure it by on foot, for example.
[00:45:01] You know, you just can't do that. So so the satellites really open up a new view. And at that time, NASA, the European Space Agency and NASA and actually other space agencies, the Japanese space agency JAXA at that time, were all starting to invest resources into polar remote sensing. So I got in on a good time.
[00:45:25] And, you know, there were a lot of missions coming up that needed, you know, fresh energy, shall we say. And so there was a lot of work. And I got to, you know, dive right into that research as a senior at undergraduate level. And then I got offered an opportunity to do a PhD. And I had no idea what that was, but it sounded like a great fun to me. I thought, OK, if I could still do this, I get to live here and work on this. Sure.
[00:45:54] OK, I'll do that with no actual plan in mind. Yeah, it was it just took off from there, you know. And I think a lot of scientists, that is what happens. You know, I think people just don't really know what the career path is. And it seems very vague. Like, you know, how do scientists become scientists? You know, it's like you don't really talk about, you know. Yeah.
[00:46:23] So so you went straight from undergrad to graduate school at the same place and you worked with the same professor then? I did. I did. I got very lucky. Yeah. It was funny because I I was applying to other places. And every time I went to talk to him, I would say, you know, I put an application into this other university. And oh, no, why would you go there? No, no, no, no, no. Not a good idea. So finally, I was like, well, am I staying here? And, you know, so it was one of those.
[00:46:50] It was very, you know, my father used to joke that these are jobs you don't see advertised. You know, at the time when when I was that, you know, at that age, we used to see jobs advertised in newspapers. You know, that's how you got a job. Yeah. These were not jobs that were advertised in newspapers. So it was very much, you know, word of mouth. But what I say again, what I say to my students now is it's your network. Right.
[00:47:14] It's all about making connections, leveraging those connections to learn about opportunities. And yeah, I got really lucky. Yes, I did get to stay at the same university and continue my research. And yeah, I mean, that just opened up an entire world for me of opportunity. And it's the reason then that I came to the United States for my postdoc after graduating from my PhD,
[00:47:44] because I had been connected in with NASA and my colleagues at NASA and at NOAA while I was a graduate student. So that was how the postdoc in the US is how you got here? Was it in Maryland or was it somewhere else? Yes, it was in Maryland. I was able to come over. There was a program that the National Academy of Sciences ran, the National Research Council. They offered postdoc opportunities to folks.
[00:48:12] And I was lucky enough to get one of those and come over on that. And so, yeah, you know, at that time, I came for one year. And my supervisor, it was actually a supervisor at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration here in the US, who asked, well, what are you doing next year? Would you be interested in extending? And 20 years later, I'm still here. So, well, 19, I'm here.
[00:48:41] I've been working in the US for 19 years now. Wow. Have you ever thought about going back? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's always that the opportunities are in science or international. And so, you know, you kind of go where the work is. So, yeah, I would love to, you know, again, work. I mean, I work really closely with folks in different universities around the world.
[00:49:05] But, you know, extending that collaboration to other job opportunities is always a dream. And, you know, I think as a scientist, you have to balance your love and curiosity of the topic that you're researching with family commitments. Right. As you get older, there are more responsibilities. And so I do, you know, miss opportunities or I look for opportunities. I miss being at home back in Europe.
[00:49:34] And, you know, of course, you miss your family and things like that. But, yeah, you just have to balance that with the job opportunities. So you like that? You like Maryland? Have you traveled around the US at all, too? Absolutely. I try to get out and explore as much as time permits.
[00:49:53] I think one thing about the US that people don't realize, both within the US, but also I mainly meant from outside, is just the natural beauty of the country. I mean, the national parks are phenomenal. And I have a goal. I set a goal for myself. One of my relatives gave me a book, like a tour guide book of the US when I first moved here.
[00:50:20] And I said, I want to go to each of the parks in this book. And someone said to me, you know, that'll take your whole lifetime, like a long distance. And I thought I could drive to all these places from Maryland. I wanted to drive to Utah. Someone said that wouldn't be a good idea. OK, so I flew. But yeah, so I'd love to do the scenic national parks. That's my personal goal and hobby.
[00:50:43] And so every summer or, you know, at some point during the year, we tried to do an expedition to at least one of the scenic national parks. But in Maryland, we're lucky. I mean, we have a lot on our doorstep. The Chesapeake Bay is amazing. That's right. I live on the Chesapeake Bay. We have the Shenandoah Mountains, you know, in Virginia. So, you know, we have a lot of natural beauty. But yeah, any opportunity to go to meetings in other parts of the US, we always love that.
[00:51:12] And that's one of the nice things that science enables is that opportunity to travel. You know, like we definitely have this kind of, you know, yeah, extra extra kind of perk of the job, which is when we meet each other. We try to go to the more exotic options that we have. Yeah, we get to see places. And yeah, you know, so definitely traveling, I think, is goes hand in hand with being a scientist.
[00:51:41] I think, you know, that curiosity, you naturally want to see what other places look like and what the climate system is and how things work in other parts of the world. So and also looking for analogs. I always feel like that's something, you know, we do. We tend to relate things back to what we know. And so as a scientist, it's always good to kind of go to new places where you do not have an analog and you've never experienced that environment before.
[00:52:06] So, yeah, I tend to I enjoy exploring rocks and, you know, rivers and that type of nerdy stuff. Have there been some national parks that have blown you away? Like what have been your favorite national parks? Absolutely. I mean, Zion National Park is mind blowing. I think that one has been my favorite. Did you hike the Narrows? Yes, absolutely. Actually, I hiked the subway, which is a slightly different part.
[00:52:35] It's in Colab Canyon. Yeah. So that's that was a little bit of a different hike. And oh, my goodness, it's amazing. I just was blown away by that. I think I think the rock formations there, you know, you really see the history of the earth right there. But yeah, funny story. Actually, there's a rock that's in the National it's in the Natural History Museum here in Washington, D.C. And it's the oldest rock on the planet.
[00:53:04] A piece of the oldest rock on the planet. And it's over. It's nearly four billion years old. And actually, it doesn't come from Utah. It actually comes from a part of Canada and the Northwest territories in Canada. But it's this old continental rock. And I found myself down in the museum a couple of weeks ago with my family. And I was really excited to show them this rock. And they were just so not interested.
[00:53:31] And I was like, this rock is nearly four billion years old. It's a very important piece of our history, you know. And we were just like, where's the cafe? Where's the gift shop? Yeah. Yeah, I think I think the national parks are just phenomenal. But every national park is something to offer. I mean, that's the that's the joy of it. You know, and you get to see these amazing places. I think Olympic, the Olympic Peninsula.
[00:54:00] That's also amazing. You know, primordial sort of really ancient rainforests, temperate rainforests out there. That's also amazing. So, yeah, I can't. It's difficult to pick the favorite, really. Yeah, I know. There's so many. It feels like are you close to seeing them all? I'm about halfway through. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, keep going. Hopefully I have the opportunity to see that. See more this year. It's Glacier National Park.
[00:54:28] That's my goal, you know, so. To look at the ice. Well, I was about to say in the summertime, you don't get to see a ton of ice. You know, that's the glaciers will be melted back. But I think that's the time when you can actually access the park more easily. So, yeah, that would be the goal would be to get up there and just see the scenery. But the Denali National Park in Alaska is amazing.
[00:54:54] I've just been to the outskirts of that and we've flown over it many times. So that's amazing. And just to see that, you know, mountain and all of the glaciers on that is phenomenal. So, yeah, no shortage of glaciers in my life. For summer holidays, I'm OK with not seeing glaciers. Take a break from the ice. It's fine for me.
[00:55:25] A lot of times my work is really devoted, my time is devoted to the satellite missions themselves. So, you know, when we develop these missions, the instruments are very precise, very specific to the task at hand. And so one of the main roles that I do is actually provide expertise, subject matter expertise to, you know, the agencies that are building these satellites.
[00:55:54] So that might be NASA, it might be the European Space Agency and helping them to understand, you know, the medium, what it is we're trying to measure. So we're trying in our case to measure the thickness of the ice. How should we go about that? What is the accuracy we need? What type of sensor should we use? You know, should it be a radar? Should it be a laser? Should it be a camera? Should it be a microwave instrument?
[00:56:21] You know, so we have to kind of give advice on the design of these instruments. So we work. It takes about 10 years from inception, from the project conception to launch. And so, yeah, we tend to work very diligently over the years to make sure that we build an instrument that once we launch and it goes into space, it's working from day one and is obtaining the measurements that we need.
[00:56:51] So funnily enough, my the first instrument I worked on, I mentioned it. It was NASA's mission ISAT. And unfortunately, we had some technical challenges with that satellite. It was the first of its kind to measure the polar regions. And after one month, the instrument broke. And I was just starting my PhD. And so I told my family, I said, you know, oh, no, the instrument I'm using is dead. And I don't know what's going to happen there.
[00:57:21] Maybe I will have to quit my PhD. And it was OK. There actually were two backup instruments. So it actually worked out. But as a student, I didn't know this. We continue to have technical challenges with that mission. But it was really a great it was a great test bed. And the follow on mission that we're using now, ISAT 2, which is also a NASA mission, is just working so well. I mean, we've had very few glitches with that satellite touch wood.
[00:57:49] And the main thing that's happened to ISAT 2 is we had to we shut down for about six weeks because of a solar storm, a geomagnetic storm. And we had those really strong aurora, the aurora borealis, the northern lights. So that can impact satellites in Earth orbit. And so we had to shut the satellite down for safety for a few weeks. So we lost a couple of weeks of measurements.
[00:58:14] But overall, it's been working for we've had it now for probably seven and a half years, roughly coming up on eight years, which is sort of phenomenal for us to be able to get that length of observation. Because now we can start to look at, you know, year to year changes as well as seasonal changes. So it's really changing the way we understand the sea ice and opening up a whole new set of information that we just did not have before this mission.
[00:58:43] So that's a real privilege, you know, to work with that data. Yeah, that's amazing. So what kind of motivates you then to get out of bed each morning and go to work? Is it this curiosity, this excitement about like your satellite, your data? Or is it a feeling like you're helping the world somehow? Or what kind of motivates you? That's a great question, too. Yeah, I think it's a mixture of those things. Mostly these days, the motivation to get out of bed is pure anxiety that I'm not doing that.
[00:59:12] I'm absolutely late for something. But I think that happens when you're in academia. There are so many, you know, things that we need to do and a lot of needs that need to be addressed. But no, the curiosity of things, how things are changing. So at the beginning, I mentioned that we're, you know, the Arctic is opening up, for example. The ice has been in decline now for roughly 40 years. And that is opening up these shipping routes and activities.
[00:59:42] If it's tourism, if it's fisheries, whatever, you know, so more and more people are going there. And there's a real need for information, for awareness of the environment. So mapping that area, monitoring what's happening is really critical. And we have this unique capability to do that. So my motivation is to push the instruments that we have in space.
[01:00:09] So we have, you know, a whole fleet of satellites that are observing the Earth. And they all have advantages and limitations. And it's really the motivation is to really push those instruments as best as we can to get as much information as possible. So my main interest is really kind of pushing the technological advances in terms of what we can measure with the observations. So I mentioned one of the things we try to measure is the thickness of the ice.
[01:00:38] And that seems like something kind of simple, like you have a block of ice and you measure how thick it is. But sea ice is a bit like an iceberg. It's not an iceberg, but it is similar in the sense that only a small portion of it sticks out above the water surface. And the majority of it is within, you know, is floating in the ocean. And so we only observe the top part. We only observe that small portion of the ice from space.
[01:01:04] And so we have to infer lots of things to underestimate how thick the ice is. So, you know, it's pushing the envelope on how we can do that and make that observation as accurately as possible. And sort of what technologies we need on these satellites to what sensors we need on these satellites to make those observations. So that's what makes me tick.
[01:01:29] I'm also extremely interested in the changes that are happening and why they're happening. One of the things that when I started out as a student, we were interested in long term changes. You know, we thought that things were changing in the polar regions, but very, very slowly over decades. We would see small incremental changes. And during the course of my PhD and my postdoc, things rapidly started changing in the Arctic.
[01:01:57] We reached a couple of periods in the 2000s when we lost dramatic areas of ice in the summertime. And that was just it changed everything. We didn't really know that it could change so rapidly and that there could be such significant meltback in the summer. So the reasons for that were not known, you know.
[01:02:20] So that started a whole sort of interest in looking at both what we call the thermodynamics, the way that heat is in fact is affects the system. And heat, you know, is bad for ice. But also the dynamics of just the wind and ocean and how that how, you know, storms can break up the ice and help it to melt faster than. So that opened up a big kind of research field, I would say.
[01:02:47] And now we see these rapid changes much more regularly. Every couple of years, we can see kind of swings. And in some years, we get more ice. That's important to say. You know, it's not always year on year decline. It can be very regional.
[01:03:04] And so understanding that variability is super important, because especially if you're planning a trip there, you know, as a tourist or as a cargo, you know, captain of a cargo vessel, you need to know what that variability is so that you can kind of plan appropriately. So the ice is now considered, you know, by many a hazard. It's a pristine environment. It's a very important part of the climate system. It's a habitat for marine mammals.
[01:03:33] But now it's kind of a commodity, too. Right. And it's kind of, you know, considered a hazard for sort of human activities. So the need for observations, the need for mapping the area is only growing. And so, yeah, there's I find myself quite anxious about that because we need more people to help do this work and, you know, train the next generation to.
[01:03:58] To continue this research and continue to learn about it so that we can better forecast what's going to happen. And so the same way that we pick up our phones and look at the weather forecast, hopefully one day we have an opportunity if we're going there, we can pick up our phone and get a forecast of the sea ice conditions. I think that would be, you know, the goal. You don't find it.
[01:04:20] Once it started changing rapidly when you were PhD postdoc era, did it, was it like depressing or was it exciting? Or I mean, the idea of these huge changes happening to me sounds scary and like a little like kind of sad. So I don't know if in the scientific field, though, you're just kind of like you said, you're mapping, you're learning more about it in order to be able to forecast and predict better. So maybe that's a good place to be.
[01:04:48] So a better understanding of it will help everybody versus just kind of getting dragged down by like, oh, our climate is warming and what are we going to do about it? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's a good that is a good point. And it is sad. I mean, definitely the loss of pristine environments on Earth, you know, through any for any reason, pollution, you know, fish kill, everything like that.
[01:05:11] You know, if you're interested in the in the natural world and you care about the Earth and you care about your environment that we all live in, you know, it's natural to be down and sad about these things and these changes. But I think as a scientist, in particular, looking at the polar regions, what I see is actually the resilience of the environment. So there's an idea that the Earth is a living being.
[01:05:38] OK, so it's almost like it has the ability to write itself. And this tends to happen over long time periods. OK, so climatic scales. So I teach a little bit about the past history of the Earth and we have oscillated between, you know, glacial periods where there has been a lot of ice and snow covering the majority of the planet to the situation where we find ourselves today, where there's a lot less ice.
[01:06:07] So so there are natural oscillations in the in the long term climate system. So some of the changes that we see are in, you know, as a scientist, you have that perspective that these changes do happen in the Earth system. But the speed at which they're happening, the rapid rate at which things are happening is unprecedented. And that is not something we see in the climate record. So I think we're driven to understand why that is happening.
[01:06:36] Yes. So that we can say, OK, this is what we need to do to to sort of hold the decline. And the fun thing is that we do not fun, but the positive here is that we actually do know what to do. We do have the technology. And again, this is something I teach my students is to think about all the things that we can do. Really, what we're doing is putting fossil fuels into the atmosphere that are trapping heat.
[01:07:04] But without getting into the technical details of that, it's a simple solution. We have to stop putting the fossil fuels into the atmosphere. And I say that simple, but it's not as easy. It's not as easily said as it is. It's easier said than done.
[01:07:20] And so but we do have the technologies to reduce that, whether it's, you know, through different sources of energy or through scrubbing the air, scrubbing CO2 out of the air, for example, or capturing CO2. In fact, in ROC, there are lots of different technologies being investigated and ones that we have already operating that we can use to kind of improve things. So we know what needs to be done.
[01:07:47] We even have some solutions on the table for us. It's really the motivation is, you know, to try and get folks to see how important that is. So I think that's probably another big part of the job as you become more senior in your career is to try and get that information out there and make sure that people understand. And these questions are answered, you know. So, yeah, there is there are oscillations and there is change.
[01:08:13] And I would say then even year to year, you know, we we see even sometimes there can be a large area that opens up in the Arctic, which can happen now more frequently than it used to. So you see these large areas of open water. But if it's cold enough, the ice will immediately start to refreeze.
[01:08:32] And what's funny is if that happens at a particular time in winter where you get like a lot of ice gets pushed out of the area, for example, by wind, by a storm, you end up freezing new ice. And actually it ends up providing more ice than you would have had in the first place. So it's a production. So ice production or ice factory, we call that. So that can happen, you know.
[01:08:54] So so on the on the regional scale, there are lots of things happening year to year that, you know, yeah, that the whole kind of the big picture, it tends. The depression tends to not factor into it too much because you're really looking at, you know, the here and now and kind of why that happened. You know, what were the things that caused that to happen? And, you know, so I mean, it's it's a beautiful environment no matter what.
[01:09:23] And so there's that to write that it's, you know, one one aspect will change. But then other things that will give rise to other growth of new things and and that will be beautiful as well. So, you know, so there is there is a lot to look forward to, but there are definitely challenges ahead as well. All right. One. I know I've gone way over with you. I'm sorry, but one last question for you. What are you ever bored and what do you do to relax?
[01:09:50] What do you do to like just do something silly and fun? Do you ever do that or are you mostly focused on your work? That's a good question. I think my family would say I don't do the silly fun stuff enough. I'm really lucky. I have a big family, a lot of a network of cousins and friends. And, you know, so, yes, I think the fun stuff does happen, but not enough. I think no matter where I go, I have a curiosity about my surroundings that takes over.
[01:10:19] But it's all about being outdoors. You know, it's hiking, being out on the water, you know, things like that are really fun. And that's just a funny story to conclude, perhaps. You know, not growing up in a country where we had a ton of ice, we didn't do any skiing. And so when I first came to the U.S., I thought, well, you know, I'm a polar scientist. I better learn how to ski.
[01:10:44] And I went skiing in West Virginia, which is a great place to be skiing, by the way. Lovely places out there. But I was cross-country skiing and I have zero dexterity and I'm not coordinated at all. So I actually broke my leg pretty much. Yeah, yeah. And then I was hiking at a different time and it was icy and hiking up a hill and slipped on the ice and broke my arm.
[01:11:14] So I have to avoid ice related social activities. Oh, that's really funny. So as an ice scientist, I'm an absolute disaster in icy environments. But yeah, no, the socializing is important and scientists are social creatures. I mean, you know, I think that's the fun thing. We are social and, you know, maybe we tend to socialize with each other a little bit too much.
[01:11:39] But yeah, I mean, I think that's, you know, we definitely do like to get together for beers and karaoke. That's a big part of our... Karaoke. Oh, yeah. Very, very, very bad, but highly entertaining. Do you have a go-to karaoke song? I'm not going to admit to that. Yeah. Then I'll never be... They'll ask me to do it every time. Dad dancing, I would say, is quite common as well, you know? So, yeah.
[01:12:09] Definitely have a sort of, you know, nerdy social life for sure. I have to find these karaoke bars with all the scientists. That would be awesome. I highly do not recommend it. I highly advise you to avoid them. Oh, that's funny. All right. Well, Sinead, thank you. This has been so wonderful. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I love learning about this.
[01:12:34] I love living through other people, seeing their jobs and seeing the amazing places they get to go and experience. So thank you for sharing everything with me. I appreciate it. You're so welcome. Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate it. That's it. Our theme music is called Discussion and was composed by Folk Acoustic. Send along any questions to socializingwithscientists at gmail.com.
[01:13:03] Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app. And we'd love it if you could give us a five-star rating or a short little review. Follow us on Instagram at socializingwithscientists and on blueskyorx at soswithsci. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next week.