Please remember to dispose of cigarette butts in designated receptacles only, rather than in regular waste or recycling bins, and avoid littering them on the grounds. Misplaced cigarette butts can pose a fire risk, potentially damaging campus property and causing personal injury.

For those seeking assistance with smoking cessation, please visit your family doctor or pharmacy for a free consultation. Additional Health and Wellness Resources are also available for students and employees through the University’s websites. Thank you for helping to keep our campus clean and safe for all!

Air intake vent with no smoking sign

Garbage containers near Falcon Lake in southeastern Manitoba used to be stored in wooden structures that helped to protect the bins and prevent wildlife from eating what’s inside, residents say.

The province replaced the enclosures a few years ago with metal bins that have plastic lids.

“If you can open the container with a crowbar, it’s not bear-proof.… That is basic bear smart 101,” said Michael Campbell, Professor of environment, earth and resources at the U of M.

To read more about this story, please visit CBC Manitoba.

Defining ‘Resilience’

The term resilience has many definitions, including those for psychological resilience and engineering resilience. Advanced Introduction to Resilience treats it as a systems concept, informally defined as “the capacity of a system to deal with perturbations” or “the ability to persist and adapt”, or even “the ability to successfully deal with change”. Maintaining diversity is one of the ways to build resilience. For example, biodiversity can provide resilience in the face of climate change, as illustrated by the example of Potato Park (Parque de la Papa) in Peru.

The Park is home to eight known wild and cultivated potato species, and some 1,300 varieties. It is located near the center of the domestication of potatoes and therefore at the center of potato genetic diversity. The Park is an internationally recognized protected area and Biocultural Heritage site. It has high landscape heterogeneity and varieties adapted to a diversity of habitats. By conserving a high level of potato biodiversity, the Park provides “insurance” for potato farming everywhere.

Potatoes are grown all over the world, but only a limited handful of varieties are used in various localities, including parts of Canada. This results in a high degree of vulnerability given the accelerating change in environmental conditions. The world will most likely need new potato genetic resources to modify the widely used varieties to enable them to adapt to deal with warmer or dryer conditions or new diseases.

A sample of potato biodiversity in Parque de la Papa, Peru, which serves as a source of potato genes and therefore resilience for the impacts of climate change on potato farming all over the world. Photo: Vanesa Ramos.

The book is of interest to students and academics in the area of environment and related disciples. One critical acclaim regards the book as “…a crucial ingredient of healthy environments, societies, and communities…” (Dr. Anthony Charles, Community Conservation Research Network based in Halifax). Another review characterizes the book as “…a brilliant synthesis of resilience scholarship. It provides a fresh perspective on ways that society can address its most urgent challenges despite prevailing uncertainties about the future” (Dr. F. Stuart Chapin III, University of Alaska).

Additional Information

Advanced Introduction to Resilience is published by Edward Elgar as part of the Elgar Advanced Introduction Series. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/advanced-introduction-to-resilience-9781802202212.html

Dr. Berkes has published some 250 peer-reviewed papers, and is the author or editor of 14 books, including Sacred Ecology (Routledge, 2018) which has recently been translated into Chinese. At over 100,000 citations, he has the highest Google Scholar score at the University of Manitoba. His profile and list of publications are in: https://umanitoba.ca/environment-earth-resources/dr-fikret-berkes-profile-page

In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly 1,390 meters of ice in northwest Greenland, and pulled up a more than three meter tube of dirt from the bottom. The frozen sediment was moved to a freezer in Copenhagen in 1994 and forgotten. In 2017, the sample was again moved to a new freezer and the frozen sediments were accidentally rediscovered.

In 2019, two samples of sediments were studied by a team of scientists from Denmark and the US, and the team couldn’t believe what they saw: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past—and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet stands today.

Over the last year, an international team of scientists – led by Dorthe Dahl-Jensen at the University of Manitoba and University of Copenhagen, Andrew Christ and Paul Bierman at University of Vermont, and Jean-Louis Tison at Université Libre de Bruxelles – studied the one-of-a-kind fossil plants and sediment from the bottom of Greenland. Their results show that most, or all, of Greenland has been ice-covered the last million years and ice-free for a period before this time.

“Ice sheets freeze and preserve material in a very pristine way,” says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Canada Excellent Research Chair at University of Manitoba.

“But it is a miracle to directly discover delicate plant structures perfectly preserved. They’re fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. It’s a time capsule of what used to live on Greenland that we wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.”

The discovery helps confirm a new and troubling understanding that the Greenland ice has melted off entirely during recent warm periods in Earth’s history—periods like the one we are now contributing to with human-caused climate change.

Understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet in the past is critical for predicting how it will respond to climate warming in the future and how quickly it will melt. Since some seven meters of sea-level rise is tied up in Greenland’s ice, every coastal city in the world is at risk. The new study provides the strongest evidence yet that Greenland is more fragile to climate change than previously understood—and at grave risk of irreversibly melting off.

“This is a very urgent problem,” says Dahl-Jensen. “Sea level change will impact a significant part of the global population within the next 50 years.”

The new research was published March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (PNAS).

Beneath the Ice

The material for the new PNAS study came from Camp Century, a Cold War military base dug inside the ice sheet far above the Arctic Circle in the 1960s. The hidden purpose of the camp was a super-secret effort, called Project Iceworm, to hide 600 nuclear missiles under the ice close to the Soviet Union. As cover, the Army presented the camp as a polar science station.

The military mission failed, but the science team did complete important research, including drilling a 1,390 meter-deep ice core. The Camp Century scientists were focused on the ice itself, being the first deep ice core ever drilled. The stable water isotopes measured by professor Willi Dansgaard was the first climate record from ice cores and became an important part of the burgeoning effort at the time to understand the deep history of Earth’s ice ages. They apparently took less interest in a bit of dirt gathered from beneath the ice core. Then, in a truly cinematic set of strange plot twists, the ice core was moved from an Army freezer to the University at Buffalo in the 1970s, to another freezer in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the 1990s, where it languished for decades—until it surfaced when the cores were being moved to a new freezer.

For much of the Pleistocene—the icy period covering the last 2.6 million years—portions of the ice on Greenland persisted even during warmer spells called “interglacials.” But most of this general story has been pieced together from indirect evidence in mud and rock that washed off the island and was gathered by offshore ocean drilling. The extent of Greenland’s ice sheet and what kinds of ecosystems existed there before the last interglacial warm period—that ended about 120,000 years ago—have been hotly debated and poorly understood.

The new study makes clear that the deep ice at Camp Century—some 120 km inland from the coast and only 1300 km from the North Pole—entirely melted at some time within the last million years and was covered with vegetation, including moss and perhaps trees. The new research lines up with data from two other ice cores from the center of Greenland, collected in 1990s. Sediment from the bottom of these cores also indicate that the ice sheet was gone for some time in the recent geologic past. The combination of these cores from the center of Greenland with the new insight from Camp Century in the far northwest give researchers an unprecedented view of the shifting fate of the entire Greenland ice sheet

The team of scientists used a series of advanced analytical techniques—none of which were available to researchers fifty years ago—to probe the sediment, fossils, and the waxy coating of leaves found at the bottom of the Camp Century ice core. For example, they measured ratios of rare forms—isotopes—of both aluminum and the element beryllium that form in quartz only when the ground is exposed to the sky and can be hit by cosmic rays. These ratios gave the scientists a window onto how long rocks at the surface were exposed vs. buried under layers of ice. This analysis gives the scientists a kind of clock for measuring what was happening on Greenland in the past. Another test used rare forms of oxygen, found in the ice within the sediment, to reveal that precipitation must have fallen at much lower elevations than the height of the current ice sheet, “demonstrating ice sheet absence,” the team writes. Combining these techniques with studies of luminescence that estimate the amount of time since sediment was exposed to light, radiocarbon-dating of bits of wood in the ice, and analysis of how layers of ice and debris were arranged—allowed the team to be clear that most, if not all, of Greenland melted at least once during the past million years—making Greenland green with moss and lichen, and perhaps with spruce and fir trees.

In a 1960s movie about Camp Century created by the Army, the narrator notes that “more than ninety percent of Greenland is permanently frozen under a polar ice cap.” This new study makes clear that it’s not as permanent as we once thought. “Our study shows that Greenland is sensitive to natural climate warming, but significant warming is needed to melt the full Greenland ice sheet, a state we will reach in the future warming climate,” says Dahl-Jensen.

Media Contact:

Sam Swanson
Communications and Outreach Coordinator
Centre for Earth Observation Science
University of Manitoba
Phone: +1 (204) 590-8591
E-Mail: samuel.swanson@umanitoba.ca

What is your full name, and your position?

My full name is Juliana Marini Marson, and I am an assistant professor at CEOS.

What attracted you to the University of Manitoba?

Well, I’d been looking for a tenure-track position for a while, and when this particular position opened up, I was very excited because it was exactly the type of research I wanted to do. So, I thought maybe now the stars are aligned and this will work out for me. And so it did. My husband and I moved from Brazil to Canada five years ago, and we have loved living here, no matter in which city. And once we came to Winnipeg and got to know a bit of the city, we already liked it. So, all ended up very well for me.

What would be your superpower?

I think I’d like to be as fast as Flash, just so I could visit my family in Brazil for a weekend and come back really quickly. That would be useful.

What’s your favourite place in the world?

That’s an interesting question. I’ve visited several beautiful places, but I would say my favourite place is my home, especially my bedroom. I love that moment at the end of the day when I can finally sit down on my bed and gather some thoughts and read a book or watch something to relax.

Who do you follow on social media?

Mostly my family and friends, just to keep them updated on our life in Canada. I also follow some funny pages like “Pet Portraits by Hercule” or Nathan W. Pyle – super recommend if you are not familiar with them, and some science-, animal-, parenting-related pages. But honestly, nowadays I barely have time to check out social media.

What would people be surprised to learn about you?

I don’t know if this is surprising or just embarrassing. But I have a pretty hard time spelling out loud. If I have to spell something, I have to write it down first. It’s not that I don’t know the correct spelling of things, but my brain just stops working when I have to say the individual letters out loud. I don’t know if I am a tad dyslexic, but this certainly puts me in some awkward situation sometimes.

What is your main research focus?

My main research focus is studying the polar oceans – the interactions between ocean and ice and climate. I’m especially interested in how warming and increasing freshwater, especially coming from melting glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets, in the oceans. They are affecting physical processes like ocean circulation and other biogeochemical processes, such as primary productivity and carbon sequestration. And the main tools that I use to study the polar oceans are numerical models. I’m also quite interested in icebergs – their drift patterns, their physical and ecological impacts on the ocean, how these will change in the future, and how they will affect socioeconomic activities that are affected by them.

Is there a story behind what attracted you to your research area?

I decided to be an oceanographer when I was 12. That’s when I took an intensive, three-day marine biology course. I just fell in love with it and decided I wanted to study anything related to the ocean.

What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done?

Ah, I think becoming a mom. Not necessarily labour, although that’s pretty difficult, but becoming a parent. I am an anxiety-driven person who likes their routine and having things under control. When a child comes into your life, all that is out of the window. Also, all the high-level math courses I’ve done were just insanely difficult because they were taught by geniuses. That’s why one of my life’s missions, to explain hard things in simple ways so everyone can understand them.

What is one experience that changed your life?

I don’t think there was this one thing that made everything change. I think every major change in my life came from a process, usually involving the search for who I am and what is my purpose in life. This long-term type of reflection really makes you focus on what is important and changes the way you see everything around you.

What is your greatest indulgence?

Ice cream? Yeah, that’s one thing that I just can’t live without.

What is your favorite movie or book?

I have several favourites, but one book that comes to mind is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, from Maya Angelou. It’s one of her autobiographies, and it’s just beautifully written. It shows what this woman had to overcome during her life and how she became an incredible person nevertheless. It’s truly inspiring. I’ve even named my daughter after Maya Angelou, and I hope she is strong as her namesake.

How do you like to relax?

Binge-watching TV shows, playing video games or reading when I have time to myself. Otherwise, playing with my daughter and petting my dog are things that help a lot to de-stress.

What are you reading or watching right now?

I’m reading a book called Erebus [by Michael Palin] which recounts the ship’s voyages and its final demise in the Northwest Passage. It’s quite interesting getting to know the people whose names were used to name straits, channels, and sounds in the Canadian Arctic.

What is your greatest fear?

Maybe one fear is dying without doing something meaningful for other people. The other one is regarding the safety of my daughter. That’s a normal maternal fear, I guess.

If you’re singing karaoke, what would your song be?

Ah, probably a nursery rhyme since those are high up on my playlist right now! Five little ducks?

What is your most treasured possession?

My computer – it was the first one I built and it has everything I wanted in terms of configuration, so I can use it both for work and for gaming.

What personal trait are you most grateful for having?

I’m patient. I’m very patient. I’m really grateful for that, especially now with the pandemic when we have to spend all day at home with family.

What three people would join you for your dream dinner party?

Oh, wow. I would say my three grandparents who have passed away. I barely knew my grandfather on my father’s side when he passed. So that would be a great opportunity to know him better. But I grew up with both my grandparents on my mother’s side, and I just miss them so much.

What would you say is your best quality?  And what would you say is your worst?

My best quality is that I’m very organized with my work stuff. All my notes are very neat, and I usually have all my ducks in a row work-wise. My worst quality is that I’m not super organized with my personal stuff. I leave things in places they don’t belong – I function well in a kind of organized mess, if you will. But my husband is a neat-freak, so he gets a bit cranky with me sometimes.

If you did not take this career path, what would you have chosen?

I’d have chosen music if not oceanography by the time I finished high school. I played the clarinet for a long, long time and I loved it very much. But if you asked me what other path I’d choose today, I’d say computer science or astrophysics.

The Chemical Institute of Canada announced the recipients of its 2021 awards, recognizing outstanding contributions to the Canadian chemistry research, engineering and technology communities. The Subject Division awards recognize exceptional individuals within specific fields of the chemical sciences and chemical engineering.

Dr. Feiyue (Fei) Wang, a researcher at the Centre for Earth Observation Science, has been awarded the Environmental Division Research and Development Dima Award for distinguished contributions to research and developments in the field of environmental chemistry or environmental chemical engineering, while working in Canada.

Dr. Wang is a Professor and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Arctic Environmental Chemistry at the University of Manitoba. He studies environmental fate and effects of legacy and emerging contaminants. His recent research focuses on cold-temperature chemical and biogeochemical processes in the Arctic sea ice and marine environment, marine oil spill response, and the interplay between chemical contamination and climate change. He also holds an Honorary Professorship at Aarhus University (Denmark).

“It is most humbling to be recognized by my fellow environmental chemists in the country. As someone who studies contaminants in the environment, I am always amazed by how molecular-level processes operate on regional and global scales, and how many people and places I get to know and learn from,” Wang says.

Dr. Wang leads the Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility, and is Chief Scientist of the Churchill Marine Observatory’s Ocean-and-Sea-Ice Mesocosm, and directs the Ultra-Clean Trace Elements Laboratory. He serves as a project coordination member of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program and the United Nations Environment Program. He also served as Chair of the Environment Division of the Chemical Institute of Canada. Dr. Wang received his PhD from Peking University (China) in 1995.

“Looking back at my career, I have had the incredible fortune to work with great mentors, inspiring collaborators, and brilliant staff and students, without whom I would not be where I am today.”

The award will be presented this year at the annual Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition or Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference.

In November 2020, NASA and the University of Manitoba highlighted a few compelling features around the Thomsen River estuary on Banks Island, including lines of sea ice tracing the shoreline and the braided pattern of the river. But there’s so much more to explore across this remote lowland tundra and river valley. 

January 27th, 2021 by Kathryn Hansen/NASA Earth Observatory, and Robie Macdonald/University of Manitoba/Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans

Robie Macdonald, a scientist at the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba, shared some photos that he shot while doing fieldwork in the region between 2014 and 2016. The purpose of that project was to collect geochemical measurements from small rivers across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. 

“I really do love working in these places,” Macdonald said. “Once the aircraft has landed, one is bathed in a tremendous silence broken only by waves breaking on shingle. Then you have this incredible tundra spreading out toward the hills that define the river floodplain.” 

Here are ten of Macdonald’s favorite photographs.  

1. Ponds and Oxbows

“Numerous ponds of all sizes populate the drainage basins of Banks Island, and you can see several clusters of them in the satellite image (top), especially along the small river to the west of the Thomsen. This photograph provides a closer look at one such pond cluster. In the image, you can also see textbook oxbows, which have become the setting for more ponds.”

2. Permafrost Polygons

“During breeding season, it seems like almost every pond on Banks Island has its own population of snow geese (visible in this photo). You can also see old permafrost polygons that are now submerged within the pond. Polygons are widespread features of the permafrost in soil-rich locations and are produced over time by freeze-thaw cycles of the surface active layer. Permafrost thaw is widely impacting these regions, leading to feedbacks in the carbon system (CO2, CH4).”

3. Vibrant Vegetation

“Perhaps the most surprising characteristic of the valley bottoms in this ‘Arctic desert’ is the vibrant color of the vegetation: yellows, greens, and reds mark a dense ground cover that can be seen on the satellite image as areas with a yellowish-brownish cast.” Robie Macdonald/University of Manitoba

4. Sediment Ripples

“As a result of the strong sediment supply, the large embayment at the Thomsen River mouth has been practically filled with sediment. The shallow water reveals itself in the satellite image by the lighter-greenish tone compared to water out in the channel north of Banks Island. More evidence of the ample sediment supply can be seen in beautiful displays of sand/silt ripples in the lower river between the islands. In the satellite image (top), the ripples are almost visible as grey zones between the islands before the river enters the open bay.”

5. Ice Shoves

“When walking on these islands near the river mouth, you can see evidence of bank erosion and ‘ice shoves.’ These are produced when wind forces newly formed ice to ride up over the river bank and gouge out the top layer of the silty material that makes up these islands. Unfortunately, ice shoves are too small to show on the satellite image.”

6. Vulnerable Permafrost

“Global warming and the extensive loss of sea-ice cover in late summer have helped accelerate coastal erosion and permafrost slumping. This image shows a section of coastline just to the east of the Thomsen River mouth that consists of a lot of frozen ice. This sort of permafrost is especially vulnerable to the changing temperature regime.”

7. Erosion and Slumping

“Thaw slumps are also a sign of the permafrost warming. These can be seen just barely in the satellite image as small dark regions along cliff faces–both facing the ocean and within the river drainage basins. Erosion and slumping expose ancient organic carbon to the air and the hydrosphere, thus providing an extensive positive feedback to climate warming.” Photo by Robie Macdonald/University of Manitoba

8. Bergy Bits

“Lines of bergy bits has collected along a thin shore margin at the point where the sea bottom rapidly deepens below ice keel depths, likely at approximately 2-4 meters. Although the grounded ice bits are continually melting, they are resupplied by more ice chunks shed from the permanent pack out in the channel. Two turbid plumes supplied by a river to the west of the Thomsen easily pass through the necklace of ice.”

9. Sampling Amid an Icy Barrier

“When we were sampling the water in this region, we found this ice barrier to be a bit more of a problem to navigate in our small inflatable boats, but ice along the shore did make it simple to sample sea ice. This image shows Greg Lehn preparing to launch our boat.”

10. A Suitable Landing Spot

Sampling in the Thomson River itself was somewhat simpler, once we had found a suitable place to land the plane. This image shows Greg Lehn scoping out the shore of the Thomsen River near its mouth.”

See the article as originally published by NASA Earth Observatory here.

Arctic sea ice has been in steep decline over the last two decades. Meanwhile, tundra shrub abundance has been increasing in many regions of the Arctic. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America reveals that declining Arctic sea ice extent has been associated with increasing shrub growth in some regions of the Arctic and decreasing growth in other, generally drier, regions.

An international team from eight countries led by Dr. Agata Buchwal from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland gathered 23 existing shrub-ring chronologies and investigated their relationship to changes in sea ice extent, air temperature and precipitation.

One of the study’s lead co-authors is Dr. Julienne Stroeve, Senior Canada-150 Research Chair in Climate Forcing of Sea Ice at the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba.

“Previous studies have suggested an increase in vegetation from sea ice loss as a result of enhanced warming, but this study shows that shrub growth responses are varied and the reasons seems to be a result of dry vs. wet conditions,” says Stroeve.

The project’s data set included birches and willows from Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Svalbard and Siberia.

“Our synthesis represents a major collaborative effort to disentangle one of the most complex issues in climate change research: heterogeneity of tundra shrub dynamics across the Arctic” says Buchwal.

While Arctic tundra greening and browning have received increasing attention over the past decade, one comparatively under-studied area is the ultimate role of sea ice dynamics and decline as drivers of terrestrial vegetation change. Sea ice decline is emerging as a powerful driver of warming and associated precipitation changes across the Arctic, and tundra shrubs are recognized as climatically sensitive proxies of Arctic environmental change. However, sea ice – shrub interactions had not been studied at the Pan-Arctic scale. “The comprehensive assessment reported in our synthesis not only addresses that knowledge gap, but also, more importantly, documents contrasting influences of declining sea ice on summer climate and shrub growth at the biome scale”, says Buchwal.

While the majority of shrubs take advantage of warming induced by sea ice decline and increase their growth, there is a remarkable group of shrubs that have progressively decreased their growth during the period of sea ice decline. What drives these divergent shrub growth responses to declining sea ice extent? Buchwal and team have shown that regional changes in sea ice extent are highly coupled with changes in local temperature and moisture availability. Specifically, sites with shrubs that grew less with the declining sea ice extent were characterized by increasingly drier conditions that hampered their growth.

Why we should care about the tundra shrubs? The implications of increasing heterogeneity in shrub growth responses to sea ice-induced changes in climate might be widespread, with local to global consequences, including carbon uptake potential and albedo effects. While tundra areas dominated by increasers have the potential to take up and store more carbon from the atmosphere, areas dominated by decreasers might be areas of increasing carbon loss to the atmosphere.

“Tundra shrubs will not announce the effects of climate change in the Arctic. Instead they patiently record their responses to change in their growth rings. And it is our task to learn from their records,” says Buchwal. 

This new addition to our understanding of tundra shrubs can potentially improve the models used to forecast climate change. “I hope that this research can go into new parameterizations for climate models to better predict tundra responses,” says Stroeve.

Media Contact:

Sam Swanson
Communications and Outreach Coordinator
Centre for Earth Observation Science
University of Manitoba
Phone: +1 (204) 590-8591
E-Mail: samuel.swanson@umanitoba.ca

Phytoplankton are free-floating microscopic organisms, most of which are single-celled algae. Like terrestrial plants, they use photosynthesis to turn light into chemical energy by consuming carbon dioxide (CO2) and nutrients in the water. Phytoplankton are the basis of the marine food web and play a vital role in the carbon cycle by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Until roughly a decade ago, most scientists assumed that phytoplankton remained in a sort of stasis throughout the winter and spring until sea ice break-up. Now there is a growing body of evidence that suggests under-ice blooms (UIBs) of phytoplankton can occur in low-light environments below sea ice.

“Up to about a decade ago, most Arctic phytoplankton research focused on open water and ice-edge conditions as there was a long-running assumption that not enough light reached under the sea ice cover to allow for a bloom to occur,” explained CJ Mundy, co-author of the study and Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS).

“However, this assumption was flawed in that under-ice phytoplankton blooms can and do occur during the melt period, and sometimes before melt if the ice and snow cover are thin enough.”

Associate Professor CJ Mundy onboard the R/V William Kennedy

The prior belief was that phytoplankton blooming in low-light environments below sea ice was uncommon.

“There was a long-standing assumption that what was happening under the sea ice in the water column was almost ‘on pause’ during the polar night and before seasonal sea ice retreat, which is apparently not the case,” said lead author Mathieu Ardyna, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

The revelation means that phytoplankton production in some regions of the Arctic Ocean may be an order of magnitude greater than originally predicted. That’s important for climate modellers who want to know how much atmospheric carbon is being absorbed by these algae.

Few places on Earth are transforming as rapidly as the Arctic due to climate change. Over the past 30 years, the Arctic has warmed at roughly twice the rate as the global average. One of the most visible signs of that change has been in the decline of the sea ice that floats on the ocean surface, with this year’s ice cover shrinking to the second lowest extent on record.

“It was fascinating to discover that so many regions of the Arctic Ocean provide a favorable habitat for these little algae to flourish when the sea ice cover is still present in late spring. It shows once more how vibrant the Arctic ecosystem is,” said Lisa Matthes, a PhD candidate at CEOS and co-author of the study. “But it also highlights that environmental changes induced by global warming affect all levels of the marine food web, from phytoplankton to polar bears,” she added.

It’s no surprise that the thinning ice cover has enabled phytoplankton, which require light for photosynthesis, to flourish. What was surprising to the researchers is that the phenomenon of UIBs occurred well before climate change affected Arctic sea ice.

“Digging up research that occurred from the ’50s and prior demonstrates that blooms, albeit not very large, were occurring under thick ice in the central Arctic,” he explained. “I think this fact surprised many of us, as models had suggested this was not the case.”

The historical observations included a pair of studies during the International Geophysical Year, a global campaign that ushered in the modern scientific era. The authors noted, “The end result of this work was nothing less than an incredible first glimpse of UIBs occurring in the central Arctic.”

The paper goes on to describe the variability among UIB events across the Arctic Ocean in terms of occurrence, magnitude, and even the type of organisms present. Some of those findings are based on scientific programs and expeditions dedicated to studying UIBs specifically. In many cases, observations relied on autonomous floats, robotic gliders and even remotely operated vehicles that can swim under the sea ice.

Ardyna said further observations to feed new computer models will be key to more accurately predict how the Arctic carbon cycle will change in the future.

1. What is your full name and your position?

My professional name is Alex Crawford. And my position is a research associate at CEOS.

2. What attracted you to the University of Manitoba?

The second part of that last question is my legal name is Alexander Crawford-Alley, and that -Alley there, that’s my wife, Karen Alley, who is starting a tenure track position here as an assistant professor right now. So that’s part of the reason why I’m here. Um, other reasons include, I’m an Arctic scientist. And that means that I’m in a great place for having collaboration with my research. I mostly focus on the atmosphere. And I know that CEOS has been hiring a few people lately that are kind of in that same mold, especially under Julienne Stroeve‘s group. And I’d worked with Julienne before when we both were in Colorado. So there were several different good reasons to be coming in. People that I already know. Good work environment for what I do. And my wife got a position here.

3. What would be your superpower?

My superpower would definitely have to be Wolverine style. I really like the idea of being able to be reckless, especially if you’re a superhero, you’re going to get yourself into tight spots a lot. So being confident that even if you get injured now you’re going to be okay later. That’s pretty cool.

4. What’s your favourite place in the world?

Favourite place the world, um, probably Rocky Mountain National Park. I went to grad school with my now wife at University of Colorado Boulder, which is like an hour away from there. We’ve been there dozens of times, done a lot of good hiking, we got engaged there. So it has some sentimental value too.

5. Who do you follow on social media?

I follow my family, some of my friends. I don’t tend to follow celebrities or, you know, famous people or anything like that. I know a lot of people do. So, I really just use it as a way to stay in touch a little better.

6. What would people be surprised to learn about you?

Okay, um, I think that one thing they might be surprised by is that I put on a good act of being outgoing and confident. Apparently, that’s what I had people telling me, but I am fairly awkward in social situations, or at least I feel awkward. I’m very, like, shy to meet new people and to call people on the phone. So, that one might be a little bit surprising.

7. What is your main research focus?

Right, main research focus, I’m primarily trained as an atmospheric scientist. But I am a little more broadly, an Arctic system scientist, or Arctic climate system scientist would be a way of framing it. And by that I mean, some of my bread and butter stuff is working with synoptic scale storms, so big storm systems that you get in the mid-latitudes and the Arctic. And then it becomes climate system, because I work a lot with how those storm systems interact with the snow cover, the sea ice cover, even the ocean and a little bit of biology actually, most recently, so I definitely try to work on the interaction level, how do these different systems relate to each other? And how does change in one of them cascade eventually into change in another? I think that sort of stuff is fascinating. And so I can’t stay cooped up in the air all the time.

8. Is there a story behind what attracted you to your research area?

When I was a kid, I definitely watched the Weather Channel a lot back before, you know, it became like TV shows. It was just weather all the time. So I definitely have always had a thing for weather and I guess that translates to atmospheric science fairly well. But really going into college, I did not see myself as a scientist, I didn’t really think that that was a career path that you could do. So it really took one of my professors asking me if I wanted to do some research with her because she had an opening unexpectedly and I was in her class at the time, and I was doing well. And so she just kind of off-hand asked about it. I was like, Yeah, why not? That sounds like it might be interesting. I didn’t really think very much of it. But that really got me into it. And she encouraged me a lot in doing, like, extra coursework that was related to scientific research and geology in particular. And I think that that just kind of eventually became, Yeah, okay, this is fun. This is cool. This is engaging and intellectually stimulating. And I feel like in a climate science realm, I’m not just a scientist asking basic questions. It’s something that everyday people can recognize has some value.

9. What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done?

Most difficult thing I’ve ever done? Um, I think there’s a few ways you can take this. One is kind of from an emotional or mental standpoint, I think it’s pretty hard to figure out what really fits the best in those realms, but I have a pretty clear answer if you’re asking me about like physical achievements. And that is that when I was a junior in high school, I was on a cross country team. And I managed to do about two kilometers into a five kilometer race, get tripped by the guy behind me. And then he also managed to then step on my back on top of rock. And if you’ve ever run cross country, like, seriously, you may have seen those metal cleats that you wear. Very sharp spikes. And the pressure from the spike pressing down on my back actually popped my lung. And I got up and I didn’t realize I had popped a lung there. It’s not like there was any bleeding externally, or anything. And so I got up and I was just ticked off, basically. And so I ran as hard as I’ve ever run in my life. I ended up finishing really well in that race. I beat the guy who accident– he wasn’t on purpose, accidentally tripped me. That was the only race my team won that year too. And then after that, apparently I had to go to the hospital because I had a collapsed lung. So I think that was very difficult to do, to run with one lung going down. But it’s a good, like, fun sort of story. And it got my team win. So there you go.

10. What is one experience that changed your life?

Oh, gosh, um, yeah, I don’t know, there’s a few. I mean, Oh, God, why did my head go to that one? Well, it’s the first thing I thought of, so I’ll say it. Um, my parents got divorced when I was in middle school, that was a huge impact on my life. I think before that I had– that’s kind of where I made the transition from being a kid to starting to become an adult. I’m not saying it made me an adult, but I started to become that. It was fundamental, in just kind of changing how I look at the world as being something that is simple with right and wrong answers to something that’s complex, with nuance that you have to start looking at things from different perspectives. And, you know, just the simple idea of being brought up, being taught in religion that, you know, divorce is bad, it’s a sin, it’s a bad thing. And so how can two good people do it, and kind of shape up your life, that’s a good way of really messing with your morals and your philosophy. So I mean, without a doubt, that’s a fundamental moment in my life, on how things change. And then, of course, a week later, is when the planes flew into the World Trade Center. So, in terms of like, world shattering paradigm shift in your mind, that would be a month that would be a really big one in my life.

11. What is your greatest indulgence?

Baseball is one of them, has become much more interesting because my team, the Rays, have made it to the World Series. Now, they are totally over-matched against the Dodgers. So if they win, it’ll be with some luck. But I am a big baseball fan. I’m really into statistics. And that’s one of the main reasons why I follow it. I do fantasy baseball — really into that, more so than like fantasy football, or hockey or basketball. So that’s definitely something that is often on podcasts when I’m running, and is often on the TV in the evenings when I’m like grading or something.

12. What is your favorite movie or book?

Growing up, and I still think this might qualify, Lord of the Rings was definitely my favorite book. And when the movies came out, it was a great time for the movies to come out in terms of like, where I was in life, because that was around like middle school, high school. So those are great. Love them. Yeah.

13. How do you like to relax?

Well, one of it is having baseball on, well right now actually that’s more stressful. When your team’s never won the World Series before you start to hope for a little bit too much sometimes. So to relax, often I do run. Exercises is helpful, I think, especially right now where it’s hard to get outside, like just outside in general, to do errands or go socialize, or go to work for that matter. Running is still something I can do outside solo. That’s pretty safe, COVID-wise. So that’s definitely one of them right now. I definitely do like listening to podcasts about history, a lot of history podcasts. So that happens. And yeah, I think those right now are the two biggest things that I’m doing in terms of relaxation.

14. What are you reading or watching right now?

So, we just finished watching a TV show called The Good Place, which is a comedy, but it is like surprisingly probing in terms of philosophy. So, that was a clever show. Really enjoyed that one. And actually, so right now, since that finished, it’s the Great British Baking Show, because the new season now available. And that’s what’s going on.

15. What is your greatest fear?

Okay, so the easy answer to this is spiders. That’s the non-controversial, like, doesn’t make me too bad. I am arachnophobic, absolutely. I grew up with two sisters who also were afraid of spiders, though. So, it’s developed into this weird– it’s really hard for me to see a spider and not kill it. And I know that that doesn’t make me a very good person. Because, you know, spiders are living things too. And they have a role. But when they’re in my house, then they’re invading. Yep, that’s the one. That’s the easy one. There are other fears that I’m sure are much deeper, but I think we’ll stick with that today.

16. If you were singing karaoke, what would your song be?

Yeah, I think this is one that you got to think about a little bit and be careful because I don’t think I’ve ever actually done karaoke. But if you go through my iTunes and see songs that I play a lot, and am not afraid to sing to if I’m like, driving by myself, Good Charlotte is definitely a band. I do a lot of like of post punk, alternative rock sort of stuff. And so I Just Want to Live by Good Charlotte, probably the number one song that I know all the lyrics to.

17. What is your most treasured possession?

Yeah, so definitely the cats. Yeah, that that would be it. they’re shared, but Maximus and Lily are my cats. They are strays that we picked up when they were kittens, and they are adorable and lovely, and fluffy. And yeah, so that’s definitely most treasured possession right there.

18. What personal trait are you most grateful for having?

I’m neurotic about some things. But one thing I’m not neurotic about, and it makes me happy, is food. And I just, I am happy with whatever food you give me, as long as it doesn’t make me sick. Um, and I find a lot of people really like food. And they’re like, really, really into it. And they get really excited about it. And they really enjoy it. And they get way more excited than I do. But they also get way more disappointed than I do, whenever it’s not the way they want it. And I think that that’s nice. I like that I’m similar with TV shows, I’m easy for movies, I’m pretty easy to please with those sorts of things. And so I might not get quite as into them as a lot of people. But I also am just generally content about those sorts of things. And I think that that is, I have enough stress in my life. I’m glad that’s not one of them.

19. What three people would join you for your dream dinner party?

Someone who’s living right now, there’s a chance I actually could talk to them. So it’s got to be someone who’s dead, or otherwise it’s not as interesting. And then the other big consideration here is, it’s really hard to get an individual’s perspective on something really big and overarching. So, like a lot of history, I feel is really determined by these large scale systematic changes, that it’s hard for one individual to really speak to over the course of a dinner conversation. So it’s probably going to be more fun to be talking to people who can speak to and converse with particular events in time.

So, things that are going to happen over the course of less than a human lifespan. And so then you start thinking about what are some really interesting things that happened? Well, one thing that just fascinates me in history is the Mongols. They’re just so different from so many other empires that have existed. And so somebody I don’t think I’d really want to talk to Genghis Khan, both because of the fear and the bias that you’re going to get talking to the individual, but talking to like a wife of Genghis Khan or a second command is someone who’d be close to him. It could be really interesting to get to know that person who did all these, like, terrible things, but also great things, you know, like a Voldemort sort of vibe there. Talking to someone like that would be really, really interesting.

I also think in a similar vein, you could go to somebody like Alexander the Great, or Gaius Marius or, or Julius Caesar, somebody like that would be very interesting. I definitely know a lot more Western history than I do, like African history or Asian history, by the way. So that’s probably where I go to. Then, the last person I was thinking about recently, it was Herodotus. So, Herodotus is this guy who does a lot of writing in ancient Greece, about daily life. But he also does a lot of writing that intersects with certain sciences, and especially both astronomy in the strict sense and astrology in the loose sense. And I think that that would be just a really fascinating person to talk to, because he clearly, based on his writings, was thinking very broadly, but also had a lot of appreciation for the small scale stuff. So I think those are the sorts of people that I’d like to like to talk to Herodotus is one individual I would say, Yeah, definitely. And then after that, you take some of these, like big, you know, big disruptors in history, and not talk to them, but talk to like a wife or a second-in-command, somebody who would know them, but also have a little bit more detachment.

20. What is your best quality? And what is your worst quality?

You can go  a few ways with this. I mean, one thing that kind of might cut both ways, is that I really do try to be very careful and very thoughtful. So I’m sorry, I don’t know what the best word for this is. Maybe it’s like diligent with my science. I’ll turn over a lot of stones. I try to look at things a lot of different ways. I try to break my hypotheses. So I think that that sort of carefulness and thoroughness is often a really good thing for getting a robust answer. I think that it also can be a good thing for making important decisions in life. And on the other hand, that can be a really bad thing from a perfectionist issue. It means that I’m not always very efficient, it means that I sometimes spend too much time on what I perceive as being my duty or my work, and not as much time on like social relationships, which also are important, but are a lot harder to quantify. And I think it also means that sometimes I can be exhausting, in terms of when I’m making a decision or analyzing something that just happened. And so I think that that both frustrates other people about me, and puts me at a disadvantage, sometimes It’s not always a very good thing. Not something I always like about myself, but on the other hand, sometimes it can be a great asset, it can be a great benefit. And it means that I think that I can produce good work with that. So that might be a good nuanced answer to that.

21. If you did not take this career path, what would you have chosen?

I went to college, mainly because my mother thought it was a good idea. Like, seriously, that’s, that’s why. And I like school. I did well in school. So it seemed like a place where I could succeed, but she just said it opens up doors for you. I didn’t know what those doors were. So, if I didn’t end up doing what I’ve done, the most likely scenarios is that I probably would end up working with my dad. I mean, he’s a small business owner. He doesn’t have any employees but he works in landscaping slash construction, kind of, whatever you want to call it. He has an excavator and a dump truck, and he digs things. And I probably would end up doing what he did. And honestly, both my brother and I, at certain point, he like, you know, introduced us to his work, but he never pushed us to do what he did. And I’m looking at this right now and saying, dang, you know, he’s got a lot of clients, he’s got a good reputation. And when he’s when he retires, there’s no one who’s going to pick that up. It would have been a really easy thing to do, you wouldn’t have to have gone into college debt, you’d still be able to work with geology to some degree, because you have to understand some geology to understand how to do what he does. That actually could have been a good career path that would have had maybe less stress in some ways. But then there’s a lot of stress in other ways that I can think of that he has. So yeah, I’d probably be stressed no matter what. But that’s probably what I’d end up doing. Because it definitely was something that was available and possible.