Communicating the beauty of Antarctica with Dr Natalie Robinson

Welcome to Polar Diaries, a podcast where polar scientists from around the world share their icy adventures and incredible research from the Arctic and Antarctic, hosted by me Octavia Braille. If you enjoy this podcast, please share it far and wide and give it a follow on Instagram, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you have a burning question for a polar scientist, you can leave a comment below this episode to be featured on a future show. Now without any further ado, sit back, relax and enjoy your travels to the frozen regions of the world. On episode seven of Polar Diaries, we are joined by Dr Natalie Robinson. Natalie is a marine physicist with a passion for polar oceanography. Based in New Zealand, at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Wellington, as well as at the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, Natalie's work dives deep into the icy world of Antarctica. From large-scale ocean circulation and year-to-year variability to the fascinating small-scale processes at the ice ocean interface, Natalie's research is as wide-ranging as it is groundbreaking. She has played a key role in unraveling the mysteries of how ice shelves and sea ice interact using cutting-edge sub-ice observations to study everything from pressure-induced supercalling and multi-phase fluid flow to the drag and roughness at the ice interface and buoyancy-driven convection. Don't worry if this all sounds quite confusing, Natalie will simplify things and explain everything in more detail during the show. But Natalie's work isn't just about science, it's about sharing the wonder of it with the world. She's a big advocate for making science accessible and loves bringing together the humanities and sciences to help people appreciate the beauty of Antarctica and the challenges it faces. In 2015, Natalie received a $300,000 fast-start Mazden grant to investigate a fascinating question. Why is Antarctica producing more sea ice even as the ocean warms? Her work focuses on the boundary layer beneath the platelet ice, a little-known but critical area. Today, she's also a co-lead on a major Antarctic science platform project, studying the links between sea ice and carbon cycle feedbacks. So it's fantastic to have you on polar diaries, Natalie. Thank you so much for agreeing to have a chat with me today. Now I think that you've just come back from a field season in Antarctica. Could you tell us a little bit about the research that you were doing out there and where you were based? Sure. Thanks for having me. I'm an oceanographer, so what I'm interested in is how the ice interacts with the ocean and in particular how the ocean makes connections between the two main types of ice in Antarctica. So that's the glacier ice that flows off the land to become ice shelves and then the sea ice, which is when the ocean freezes over winter. So the location that I work in is right at the connection between those two types of ice and the ocean circulates under both and makes the connection between those two types of ice. In the location that I'm working, the water is super cool, which means it's below its own freezing temperature even when you take into account the salt that it contains. And so that has a whole raft of really cool processes that it supports, but the one I'm interested in at the moment is that it allows tiny ice crystals that are floating in the water to grow and they'll grow to a disc that's like the size of your hand. So you can kind of think of them as autumn leaves coming out of the ocean and they'll float up to land against the ice above them and they can form layers several metres thick sitting beneath the sea ice. And so what I'm interested in at the moment is how that becomes a unique habitat for biology that is unique to Antarctica and unique to these areas in front of ice shelves. That's so interesting. This is again an area that I really don't know much about, so it's really cool to hear everything that's going on and all the really interesting stuff relating to sea ice and I really loved your description about the leaves kind of describing the crystals. I think that was really, really lovely. And as someone who is not a physicist nor an oceanographer, what exactly is happening in the ocean to allow that sea ice to remain, sorry the sea to remain liquid? Why doesn't it eventually kind of form ice? How kind of low with the temperatures need to get for it to actually form into ice? Right. Well so water's a bit fussy. We're only talking a tiny bit below the freezing point. So we're talking in the millicalvins rather than, so that's 1,000th of a degree is a millicalvin. So I'm talking about a range up to about 50 millicalvins, so it's only a very small fraction of a degree below the freezing point. So when you're in that range, the water simply won't spontaneously turn into ice crystals. All it will do is grow onto existing ice crystals and that's about when you get down to the molecular structure of ice. But so if you're in that range of temperatures, it can actually just stay super cooled, stay below the freezing temperature indefinitely unless it comes into contact with ice crystals. And yes there are ice crystals floating in that, well you know, suspended in that water, but it's in a volume that's only about 1,000th of, so the ice crystals take up about 1,000th of the water volume. So it's a very small proportion and what that means is that the water can just keep flowing in its super cooled state and it takes about 100 kilometres from where it exits the ice shelf cavity before that is all extinguished. So we've got quite a bit to play with really. Yeah, no that's really interesting and particularly interesting for me because my research is focused on insects in Antarctica and actually I'm just about to do some field work in Chile to look at some physiology of insects and part of that is looking at kind of super cooling points of water within kind of arthropods and stuff. So it's quite interesting to hear about this. And could you perhaps describe a little bit about what a normal day on base is like for you when you're out on field work and kind of what the normal routine is like? Yeah, sure. So we actually work out of a field camp so our typical season would have coming into Scott base so we fly down from New Zealand which is a flight about 5 and a half hours and then we'll spend sort of 5 to 7 days at Scott base preparing to get our camp out to the field and that's things like gathering our food supplies, doing all the electrical checks on our converted shipping containers which make up our camp. What else do we do? We're unloading all our cargo which has been sent down ahead of us and getting all the instruments ready to deploy and amongst that is kind of the central part of the work we're doing at the moment which is our sampling system that allows us to cool through this very delicate structure of the autumn leaves that have come out of the ocean. It's a good analogy because it tells you about how difficult it is to try and capture that structure if you're trying to cool through it. So we're doing all of that work at Scott base getting things ready to go out and then it will take us a couple of days to actually move the camp out onto the sias and get it already and set up to actually do the science. And so from that point then we're getting up early in the morning having a teen brief over breakfast, getting the vehicles packed up for the day and dragging them out. out to that location for the day of sampling. And to collect a single core, well we got faster across the season, but initially it was taking us about six hours to get through the whole process. We got it down to just under three hours over the course of the month that we were doing the sampling. But still, if you're trying to collect, well we initially had an aim for about 50 cores, but we were very pleased with the 30 that we came away with after a whole field season. It's a huge investment of time on a daily basis. And along side that, so all of the samples that we were collecting needed to be processed in the field, so we had two people constantly in the biology lab, so that was again another converted shipping container that had all the equipment needed to process those samples. So they were spending all day turning over those samples and getting them ready to take home for the final analysis. And that was just enough to keep up with the rate at which we were collecting the samples. And then there were a few other activities going on as well. We had some instruments. And in the ocean under the CIS collecting oceanographic data, we had a couple of people who were doing survey work on the surface, and all of this provides context for the samples that we're collecting, so that we can start to make the connections between the physical environment that the platelet ice is forming in and the biology that we find associated with it. That's really the aim of what we're doing, because until we can start to understand those connections between the physical environment and the impact it has on the biology, then we can't. Well, that will allow us to then project forward into a future with different physical parameters or a different environment and start to understand what we can expect of the marine ecology. That was really, really fascinating. It's so interesting to hear about what a normal day is like, and I think it's really nice for people to hear about that as well, because it seems like such a strange place and a strange thing to be doing, I guess, for some people. And yeah, I suppose I, you know, very sleep of me, but I always forget that, of course, you're so much closer to Antarctica than I am. So are there ever any situations where you might not have enough food, or perhaps you've forgotten a bit of equipment, and you kind of go back to New Zealand and come back to Antarctica, or is that kind of out of the question for the field seasons? We wouldn't send people back, but it's very easy. So over the summer period, there's usually three or four flights a week that are coming down from Christchurch to McMurdo, which is right by the stop base. And so if there's, so this actually happened to us, a couple of our pieces of equipment broke. So I got onto a colleague back home and said, I need these two special pieces of equipment. And five days later, I hit them in my hand. So we can do that, but not food. The food is, we've got plenty of food supplied through Scottbase. Yeah. Okay. So that's good. That's good. And you were talking about how all of the ice cores are kind of processed in the field. Is there a particular reason for that? Is that kind of preserve things under field conditions as much as possible, or are there also regulations with what you can actually bring back to New Zealand? So these aspects of both. So before we go, all of the activities that we intend to do in Antarctica have to be approved by a minister in New Zealand. And that will include the volume of samples that we intend to take and how much of that we intend to bring back to New Zealand. So we actually, we don't want to be bringing back tons and tons of water. What we're interested in is the biology that's contained in that water. So if you filter it, filter it through in the field, then all you need to come back with is little filter papers, which might which might only weigh a couple of grams compared to the several liters of water that has gone through the filter to produce that. So that really reduces the volume of samples that we need to take back. But also because we're talking about organisms that are living in very low light conditions underneath the sea ice. So you're talking about light levels that are about one in a thousand of what it was striking the surface of the sea ice by the time you get underneath. Then those samples have to be processed very quickly so that they don't degrade in the surface light levels. So yeah, we're trying to capture things as fast as they can and preserve them as close to the natural state so that we can make the proper analysis of those samples, which will take several months after we get home. And with those samples, are you looking mainly at just presence or absence of organisms or are you looking at other things like species richness? What are you kind of trying to quantify? So by training, I'm a physicist. So what I've learned about the biology I have learned from my colleagues. So our part of the bigger project is focused on the primary productivity and in particular the phytoplankton. So these are the tiny wee algae that inhabit the platelet ice. There's also some zoo plankton, so these are wee little critters that can actually move around. And if we can understand something of the higher trophic levels, so the more complex parts of the food chain than that's good too. But our focus really is on that very fundamental part of the food chain, those tiny, tiny plants that are all in the platelet ice. And so our focus of our work is understanding the nutritional value that primary productivity, those phytoplankton provide for the rest of the food chain. And we've seen that in the same year, but just under different conditions of sea ice, the species that you get can be completely different. Like there's no overlap in terms of the community assemblage, the makeup of those communities. And so that's, we haven't, that was exciting and interesting for us, but we haven't actually yet been able to analyze it through two changes, but that means for the rest of the food chain. So an example that my colleague likes to give to sort of bring it home is that you can think of these microelge as the the produce department of your supermarket. And if you've got a lovely rich environment, then you've got everything to choose from. You've got bananas and potatoes and broccoli and you know, you've got everything you want to choose from. But if we're under particular light conditions and so you're only having a certain section of that, well, you might only end up with the beans and that's that's all you've got to choose from. And so that doesn't give you your full array of nutritional value. So that's kind of what we're interested in is understanding how those physical changes might actually flow through to a different produce department for the marine food web. That was a really great analogy. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, that was fantastic. And yes, Zoo Plankton, of course, so important to the marine ecosystem. So again, really interesting to hear more about that. And I think that some of your research has also kind of been linking this to carbon cycle as well. So I was wondering whether you might be able to elaborate a little more on how the carbon cycle in the ocean is kind of affecting the work that you're doing at the moment or have done and how this may also kind of connect with climate change, for example, as well. So the Southern Ocean, which covers, I think it's about 17% of Earth's surface, is a huge player in terms of global climate. It really, it really punches above its weight in terms of absorbing both heat and carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And so I think that the Southern Ocean actually absorbs up to two thirds of the extra carbon dioxide that human activities are putting into the atmosphere. So Mh, it really is a huge contribution in terms of, um, of what the carbon dioxide composition of the atmosphere is. One of the main ways that the ocean absorbs that carbon dioxide is through the life that lives in the ocean. So at the very base of the food chain, we've got these tiny plants that float in the ocean and grows. So that's the algae, the micro algae. Um, and in order to form their little, their bodies or the organisms, um, they're, they're using that carbon out of the atmosphere to, to do that. And then once they die or they get eaten, that carbon is then wrapped up, um, either as seafloor sediment or it gets, you know, absorbed into, into higher members of the food chain. Um, and so that it's, it's kind of a long term, um, repository for carbon dioxide. And so I guess what we're, we connect with that is understanding how changing sea ice conditions, and they are changing right now, would have an impact on how much the southern ocean is able to absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through that mechanism. And on a very large scale, so if you think about the whole southern ocean, um, you've got carbon dioxide coming out of the ocean. So this is old carbon dioxide that's been recirculated and come up to the surface. So that's been released out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. And at the same time, we have this sort of sucking down of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. So at the moment, we're sitting, um, there's the net carbon sink. So the net amount that the ocean absorbs. Is a balance of two very large numbers, and it comes out just on the sink side. So the southern ocean is just pulling down a bit more than it's releasing into the atmosphere. Um, but we can certainly imagine a future where that switches and the southern ocean actually becomes a source, a net source of carbon dioxide. Um, and considering the huge role that it plays in working to stabilize our climate system, that potential switch is, you know, really significant. So we're right at the very base understanding of that process, but that's where it's headed in terms of global implications. Yeah, that was really, really fascinating. And it's again, it's just fascinating to hear the massive contribution that the ocean makes to carbon capture. Because I think we often think about trees in the Amazon rainforest, for example, and we perhaps forget the importance of algae and micro algae for the carbon cycle. And so when you're looking in the ice course, sorry, I'm going back to biology briefly. Um, is the majority of the species you're seeing algae, or are you seeing lots of other kind of different species as well? I'm really interested. Yes, yes, the bulk of the species we're seeing are micro algae. So the tiny wee plants. We have also captured a few tiny critters. So those are zooplankton. And then we're also running our water samples through a sophisticated form of DNA analysis, which allows you to find trace records of other other animals that might have been in the region. So there's a couple of those that we're particularly interested in. One is Antarctic Silverfish, which is a key stone species of the Rossi ecosystem. And that is known to be associated with platelet ice. And so we've got sort of clues into those, those higher, more sophisticated animal species, even though we're not actually collecting them in our samples. Okay, yeah, that was really, really interesting. And I was also thinking about, of course, you know, as the ocean is absorbing more carbon dioxide, we're seeing the effects of ocean acidification. Is there something that we're also kind of seeing in Antarctica has, yeah, have you kind of seen that during your work? That's getting a bit out of my own experience, but I do all colleagues who work in the Benthek ecologies. So this is the various life forms that live on the sea floor. And they are definitely seeing a degradation of those animals that have to form shells in order to survive. And so the more acidic water is definitely making it harder for them to form, form good and valuable shells. But again, this is not something that I directly study myself. Yeah. Sure, sure. No problem at all. Thank you. And I really find your work particularly fascinating because it does combine things like physics and biology. So when did you first become interested in oceanography and why do you think it's so worthwhile and important to be in quite interdisciplinary field? I think I was pretty fortunate in that I had completed a physics degree and didn't quite know what I was going to do with it. And this opportunity came up to go to Antarctica and study the ocean. I really know much about Antarctica and I didn't really know much about the ocean, but it was immediately fascinating both of those aspects. And so I guess for me, the original attraction was just the real novelty of going to Antarctica, studying things that other people hadn't studied before. And just the aspect of discovery every time we put an instrument in the water, we learned something new. That over time, and I've been going for more than 20 years now. And you know, a lot of that is connecting with my colleagues and understanding how my work fits in with theirs and where we're heading. And I really sort of changed my own motivation for being there and that's because I've come to understand the huge role the Antarctica and the Southern Ocean play in our climate system. And I've come to have a much greater appreciation of, you know, what it is that we as humans are doing to our climate system and what's coming for us in the future. For me, it's really being in a position to push forward our knowledge boundaries and to be able to inform the future that we're moving into. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it's just it's great to hear kind of how passionate you are about Antarctic science and bringing that to people and helping people really understand how important the region is. And yeah, so I didn't realize that physics was your was your first degree. That's quite interesting because many, many moons ago before I did my first degree. I was actually thinking about oceanography for a very short period of time. And I suppose what I guess put me off a little bit was the idea that it was so interdisciplinary and there was so much to learn. That I was kind of worried about how I was going to kind of balance all of that. So it sounds like you just know a lot of people and connect with people and collaborate with people. And I guess that's kind of how you are able to balance all of the knowledge and different subjects. Yeah, I guess so New Zealanders quite a diverse a small but diverse community of Antarctic scientists. So we're every day bumping into people who are working in similar geophysical locations but have quite a different perspective on on the science that needs to be done there. And so there's lots of really fruitful conversations about, you know, what we could do together. For me, I was very much on the physics side of things until relatively recently. But even then that that was a whole bunch of different sub disciplines, I suppose. So I was doing oceanography but I was working alongside colleagues who were glaciologists and snow scientists and moving into the geology side of things. So the addition of biology to my field programs really really got kick started with this new project just seven years ago. Because it was apparent that this this platelet ice habitat was absolutely swamped with biology and previously that had just been brown stuff that was in the way of doing the oceanography from my perspective. And it's really come to understand, you know, the richness of that community and its potential impact on the on the food web. So that's been really fascinating journey for me. But we're really. really in a good position in New Zealand because we've got people who represent all of the disciplines but in quite a small and tight community. So yeah, as I say, constantly connecting with people who have a different perspective and we're generating new ideas out of that. Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, the best way of generating ideas is by collaborating and talking to people from different fields. So that's really great. And that's really, did you grow up in New Zealand? Yes, I'm in New Zealand, I've born and bred. Okay. Great. And you kind of said that you didn't know much about Antarctica before you embarked with your research. So is Antarctica not really talked about in schools, for example, very much? Well, that's something I've really noticed. And I guess I've been a part of that change is that, you know, I'm quite regularly going into schools and providing materials to schools now. But children seem to be much more savvy about the world around them, which includes Antarctica, then they were in my generation. So that's a really pleasing thing that I'm able to reflect on. And it's quite exciting for me to see a new generation of potential scientists who just are more aware of the world around them than we then we will when I was growing up. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I'm really passionate about as well. Trying to engage more people with Antarctic science and definitely getting young students involved with it. So it's so important. And so you go into schools to do various bits of resource creation and stuff, which is fantastic. Are there any kind of other public engagement activities that you take part in or maybe something in the past that has really inspired you or has there been a kind of a moment that stuck out for you? I'll say yes to any invitation to speak to any audience. I've certainly grown in my confidence of public speaking over the time I've been an Antarctic scientist. I guess I started off small with going into primary school classes and talking to my mum's friends sort of thing in low risk situations. But over time do you know develop the skills to speak to all sorts of audiences? One of the engagements that I've been really pleased with and just worked really well. In Wellington we happen to have quite a community of Antarctic scientists. So there's about 50 of us. And so I and a couple of my colleagues put together an Antarctic Discovery Day. So we hired a school hall for a Saturday and invited all of our Antarctic colleagues to come and run a stall in the hall. So provide a hands-on activity and be able to talk face to face with a real Antarctic scientist. And that was just a real hit with the local community and all of my colleagues, the Antarctic experts on side of things just thought it was a wonderful experience and we're keen to do it again. So yeah, that sort of thing is just really enjoyable and I think if you make the opportunity people will just show up and learn something. So nice to hear that and that's definitely something that I have seen about New Zealand especially with Antarctic science. There seems to be a lot of really great public outreach and science communication stuff going on which is which is so nice to see. I think I'm right in saying this that maybe a few years ago you published a paper about connecting art and science in Antarctica. I don't know if I've got that right. But if so perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that project. So I'm very much on the science side of that but I do appreciate the contribution that art can make and actually in a lot of ways art and science are very similar. Different ways of describing the world around us but towards the same sort of overall objective. And so that paper came out of an experience where both I and a colleague of mine took an artist so Gabi O'Connor with us on our field events in successive years. And so that was an experience of seeing how someone who has an artistic eye can do a different and often better job of documenting the world that we're looking at in a way that makes it more easily accessible and engaging for a wider audience. And that's just really you know that's something that we all as scientists want to be able to do but we don't necessarily have the skill set so so collaborating with people who do is a really valuable way to to take a science out into the world. Yeah and I definitely think there's more emphasis being placed on storytelling for researchers and scientists you know and I've done certain training workshops for public engagements and science communication we often talk about storytelling and it's definitely something that you know I'm hoping to get better at and as you said I really think that art and the humanities allows people to feel a lot more connected to nature and wildlife and actually helps them engage with science and research which is you know really what we want to happen. So how many how many Antarctic field seasons have you done now out of interest? So this one I've just completed was my 10th the first went to Antarctica as a master's student and then I had two seasons as a PhD student and since then I've been leading my own research which has sort of grown in size over those years so this recent most recent field trip I was leading a team of 13 and we were out there. I was away from home for six and a half weeks we were out on the ice for a month of that so that was my most ambitious field work so far. Fantastic amazing and what are your future research plans? Are you just kind of continuing on with all of the analysis that you've now all of from all the data that you've obtained from your last field season? Are there any other kind of projects up and coming for you? So certainly the data that we've collected this season will take a wee while to tune through but we're already cleaning the next extensions of that and where else we could go to to get a better a more holistic understanding of the whole system. Another piece of research that I have funded and I'm just at the start of is right at the other end of the ice shop so where the ice first leaves the continent called the grounding zone and this is a critical location for understanding the future of ice sheets and the future of their contribution to sea level rise and so we've got some data from right back there under 500 metres of ice in an ocean water column that's only 30 metres thick so it's kind of the first of its kind and we're just really delving into what that tells us about how the ocean melts the ice and it warrants and under what conditions so that we can we can better feed that information into the models that that people are using to understand our global future and then the other main part of my role is I've been appointed as the next director of New Zealand's Antarctic Science platform which is a seven year program that accounts for about half of New Zealand's Antarctic Science and so we're just in the process now of designing that program and getting all the teams together and working out our field plans. I was actually going to ask you about that about that platform so how many scientists generally are there in New Zealand that are that are working on Antarctic research at the moment? I don't know but I'd say a ballpark figure would be probably about up to 200 active scientists at any one time. So it is actually possible to know everybody in the community but it's enough it's a big enough community to have that diversity. Yeah, yeah, no that's fantastic thank you and I guess this is kind of my second to last question as we're kind of getting towards the end now and so I was wondering whether you have any advice for other researchers that are hoping to get involved with more public engagement for example. I mean you mentioned that you just kind of say yes to everything which I think is a really fantastic way doing it and that's definitely how I've got a lot of opportunities just kind of throwing myself into everything. But yeah, do you have any kind of other advice for how research researchers could get a bit more involved in that? So I wouldn't necessarily say that people should just say yes to everything straight off the bed. My recommendation would be to start low risk. So for me that looks like going into into schools and chatting with students or maybe giving a talk to a community group or something like that. Where you can start to articulate your ideas about what your science is and how it connects with the rest of the world. And I would say once you start doing that and start gaining some confidence. So this is me speaking as an absolute introvert. I public speaking was never in my in my wheelhouse. So it took a while to gain the confidence in but also to gain that ability to articulate things in a way that that resonated with an audience. But once you start to do that then you get invitations for more and more, maybe call it risky situations or sort of more with more profile as well. And also don't be afraid to speak to media because they're not there to hang you out to drive there, they're there to get some good information out of you and they'll help you tell a good story. Yeah I think that's really a good thing to consider because yeah I think the media does terrify a lot of people, it definitely terrifies me but it's supposed like with everything it's just kind of practice isn't it and then you get a bit more confident with it but that's really fantastic that you even as an introvert have been able to get involved with lots of stuff so that's really fantastic. My last question and I hope this doesn't put you on the spot too much but when you think of Antarctica what kind of images or words do you associate? Now that you've been there so much and what do you kind of hope to share with others about this amazing environment? Yes it is certainly a different environment that is quite challenging to convey to people who haven't been there before. For me I enjoy the the bleakness I suppose and the silence that's possible there it's a depth of silence that you don't get anywhere else there's no traffic sound there's no sounds of wind in the trees sort of think as a scientist what's fascinating is just the sheer volume of discovery that's yet to be made. It's a hard place to get to and it's a hard place to pull data from just everything takes longer everything is harder and there hasn't been a long history of human interaction with Antarctica which means that there is still a lot to be found out and increasingly these interdisciplinary projects are where the real new discoveries are being made. Thank you so much it was a really interesting to hear that you enjoy the bleakness and the quiet I think we can a lot of us can resonate with that so thank you so much for being part of Poladiris Natalie it's been so interesting hearing about all of your research and especially your passion for science communication and I wish you lots of luck with all of your data analysis over the coming months. Thank you so much for having me it's a real pleasure. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]