More than 1,500 students attended the unique Arctic and climate science workshop with experts in physical and chemical oceanography, sea ice optics, marine mammals, remote sensing, contaminants, and oil spills.

Scientists from the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) in the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources at the University of Manitoba gave seminars, demonstrations, and answered students’ questions live through Zoom.

This digital edition of Arctic Science Day was even more accessible than years prior, through a format that allowed more students to participate. The new virtual experience was viewed by students throughout the entire province, including Frontier School Division which hosts Manitoba’s northernmost young learners.

This year’s event didn’t include live ice auger demonstrations, but students had a mixed schedule of information seminars and hands-on learning activities. They asked insightful questions throughout each session, displaying their interest and literacy in science topics. Teachers approved as well.

“The activities provided for Arctic Science Day were great,” says Diane Nickel, French Immersion Teacher 7e année, École Communautaire Leila North. “My students were engaged and loved the connections that were made while having fun.”

Physical oceanography lessons came from faculty research professors Karen Alley and Juliana Marini Marson, as well as postdoctoral researchers Erica Rosenblum and Laura Gillard.

Students learned about sea ice and optics from postdoc Aura Diaz and PhD candidate Lisa Matthes, including lessons on instruments and technology used in the field, and principles like sunlight reflection, scattering, absorption and transmission, with functions like the albedo effect where more light is absorbed by dark colours than bright colours, resulting in rising temperatures from polar ice melt.

Aura Diaz showing how liquid enters an ice core using a colour dye

PhD candidate Tonya Burgers taught aspects of chemical oceanography like how much dissolved carbon is in the Arctic Ocean, and how much carbon in the Arctic Ocean is absorbing from the atmosphere. Burgers also taught concepts like temperature effects on air volume using household materials.

“What happens when CO2 dissolves in water, it reacts with the water and forms carbonic acid,” Burgers tells students, explaining how the process impacts water quality indicators like pH levels.

Students took a break from chemistry for whale watching as they learned about marine mammals and remote sensing methods with researchers Maddie Harasyn, Elizabeth Worden, and Emma Ausen.

Harasyn showed how she pilots drones to study sea ice properties like surface elevation, or to find areas of land slumping, or permafrost melt where indicators of climate change can be found. Harasyn also showed students the Sea ice Environmental Research Facility (SERF) on UM campus, where researchers study different ways of monitoring sea ice with satellites, and what happens to microplastics in sea ice. Students also learned how researchers like Harasyn train machine learning algorithms to identify marine mammals in drone footage.

Ausen described the processes of researching marine mammals, from data collection to analyzing key indicators like abundance and distribution. Worden told students about the impacts of climate change on communities and traditions.

Worden describes “a whole cocktail of climate change” taking place in the Arctic, including “strong storms, earlier ice break-up, changing the timing of migrations, rivers changing their paths, so access to the ocean getting harder, coastal erosion, unpredictable weather conditions,” she lists. “And then there’s also social change which is more complicated and more personalized.”

Postdoc Diana Saltymakova led a session on oil spills with PhD candidates Durell Desmond and Kasia Polcwiartek where students learned about the impacts of oil in the ocean through interactive demonstrations that students followed along with on their own.

Kasia Polcwiartek leading students through activity teaching oil spreading with household items

CEOS Technician Debbie Armstrong wrapped up the day’s programming teaching students the difference between a contaminant (a substance in greater concentration than normal in an environment) and a pollutant (a contaminant that results in adverse health effects within ecosystems). General types of water pollutants include nutrients, decomposed algal blooms, trace metals, pesticides, oil, microplastics, zebra mussels, acid rain, and more.

Students finished Arctic Science Day with the starter tool kit for Arctic science research, having learned, participated, asked questions, and received answers from scientists conducting world-leading research into important environment and climate topics.

More than 150 middle-and-high school learners met with climate researchers on March 5 for Arctic Science Day. Students learned how new knowledge is developed from working in Arctic conditions, and how the learning process can be a lot like playing video games.

Arctic Science Day is a partnership between FortWhyte Alive and the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba. It connects students from grades 6-12 with climate scientists involved in various forms of environmental research, from physics to chemistry to playing with video game joysticks.

But first, the kids had to learn the basics.

Over 100 grade 6-8 students from three schools learned about the challenges of oil spill clean-up in the Arctic. After PhD candidates introduced students to the interactions between freshwater and saltwater in the Arctic Ocean, students got engaged in an oil-spill response workshop.

Next, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Michelle McCrystall initiated the youth with climate models with a computer simulation. “Climate modelling is the process which aims to allow us to further understand important interactions in the climate system and to project these in to the future to predict potential changes in Earth’s climate,” she says.

“The predictions are based on a number of factors such as future energy sources, population size, projected socio-economic growth and land use change of varying degrees to give a range of possible future climate scenarios,” Dr. McCrystall adds.

More than 60 high school students from 15 schools spent the day visiting research stations on FortWhyte’s Lake Cargill, learning about sunlight reflection and absorption through sea ice, remote sensing of ice thickness, and how to take ice core samples.

Students also learned how to age a narwhal by counting the growth lines on its tusk, and about technology used in marine mammal research. Other topics included impacts of ocean acidification and contaminants like methylmercury.

Research Associate Maddie Harasyn showed how drone piloting is part of collecting climate data through remote sensing. Harasyn operates a drone like a real-life video game to collect land surface data.

“The students were really interested in the technology, and how cool and exciting drones are. And then they were even more excited to learn about how scientists apply the data to mapping vegetation or finding caribou in the forest,” Harasyn says.

Maddie Harasyn showing the sensors on a drone used in Arctic research

It’s not only drone pilots like Harasyn who get to operate joysticks for science. High-scoring gamers couldn’t help but hear PhD candidate Lisa Matthes compare the underwater navigation methods of her research to playing a video game.

“When we visit the North for field measurements, we no longer only drill small ice holes for single measurements. We want to study larger scales to understand what is happening to the Arctic sea ice under a climate change scenario. To do so we use underwater drones, called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that are equipped with large sensor arrays and can be driven below the ice for hundreds of meters. ROVs are connected through a long tether to a computer and a joystick, sitting in a tent on top of the ice,” Matthes explains.

“My job as a researcher is now to play a three-dimensional underwater video game by driving a very expensive ROV along sampling transects without bumping into ice chunks or getting off-course.”

Students left 2020’s Arctic Science Day with a sense of some of the career opportunities in Arctic science – and not just the ones related to gaming.  In the words of some inspired high school students:

“I learned how many different branches of science are present in Arctic research –a wide variety of careers.”

“Environmental science must be studied from different angles – biology, chemistry, physics – to gain a full understanding.”

“I realized that Arctic research is going to be forever on-going and with the research we are doing today, we can use it to determine how we should be acting or supporting actions around climate change.”