The Permafrost Climate Feedback

A synthesis paper of the Permafrost Climate Feedback just came out in Nature this week (paywalled, but it’s here).  Field buddy Jorien is a co-author, so congrats to her!  I’m going to take this opportunity, then, to wax eloquent about permafrost and climate.  Plus the paper has some cool figures that I think everyone should see.

Permafrost is any ground that is below freezing (0°C) for two or more years.  Permafrost can be icy – some yedoma soils contain up to 80% ice – but often it is just cold.  The easiest way to piss off an Arctic scientist – say permafrost is melting.  Permafrost thaws, it doesn’t melt (see the update at the bottom of the article.  We get testy). 

Permafrost soil carbon, from Schuur et al 2015.  Permafrost covers about 25% of the northern hemisphere land surface.

Often, permafrost has been frozen not just for two years, but for thousands or tens of thousands of years.  Some permafrost has survived as much as 740,000 years.  It acts like a giant freezer, storing animal bones and mammoth mummies.  But, even more importantly, permafrost regions store as much as 1670 billion tons of organic carbon.  To put this in perspective, that is more than twice as much carbon currently in the atmosphere or in terrestrial vegetation.  That carbon has been locked away for millennia, but the freezer is beginning to thaw.  As permafrost warms, the preserved soil carbon can be decomposed, releasing carbon dioxide and methane – both powerful greenhouse gases.

We, as a scientific community, have been trying to quantify this process.  How much carbon, exactly, is stored in permafrost?  What portion of the frozen organic carbon can be decomposed into greenhouse gases? How much of the permafrost will actually thaw over the next century?  What timescale will this process occur over – abruptly or over decades?  Where will the carbon decompose – in the soils, or in streams, lakes, rivers or estuaries?  We still don’t know all of this, but we have some pretty good estimates.

First, as you might have guessed, we are becoming more confident about how much carbon is actually in the permafrost soils.  Some of the more remote areas in Siberia and the High Canadian Arctic still need more measurements, but the Permafrost Carbon Network database now contains many soil cores from all over the Arctic, including deeper soil samples that used to be rarely collected.   Subsea permafrost is the biggest unknown.  This is permafrost that formed during the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower, and has since been inundated by rising oceans.  Still, estimates for permafrost carbon are converging around 1300 – 1700 Pg C (units are petagrams, or billions of tons). 

If permafrost does thaw, what percentage of the carbon contained can actually be mineralized, turned into CO2 or CH4?  This is a complicated question, and one of the most important ones.  Elberling et al. (2013, paywalled) did a great experiment where they incubated permafrost soil for 12 years to see how much carbon was lost.  Twelve years!  I was nine when they started that project (it also took them, like, 5 years to publish after completing the experiment because writing/publishing is ridiculous – another rant for another time). 

Anyway, as much as 75% of the carbon was mineralized – turned, by microbes, into CO2.  Not all soils are created equal, though.  A friend did some experiments in Cherskii, Siberia and only a small percentage of the carbon was lost.  Joanne was limited by her time in the field, so a longer incubation could have different results.  Other factors matter too – exposure to sunlight can break down organic molecules, releasing CO2 even faster.  The ratio of nitrogen to carbon (it’s juiciness, as one of my committee members would say) matters.  All in all, the decomposability or lability of organic carbon varies widely. 

Still, we can combine what we do know of the lability with warming projections, to try and estimate how much carbon will be released from permafrost over the next century.  These models still need work, but there seems to be some convergence between multiple methods.  Or, we’re not sure, but people using the different data and different methods seem to be coming to about the same answer, so let’s go with that for now.  Until we can get better data and better methods.

From Schuur et al 2015 again.  Different models predicting how much carbon will be released from permafrost by 2100, 2200, and 2300.  The dotted line is the average C released by 2100 for all models.

Including just gradual permafrost thaw (there’s also abrupt thaw, but I’ll save that for a different post), we seem to be facing 5 – 15 % of permafrost carbon loss during this century.  Again, putting this in perspective: land use change (deforestation, etc) released about 0.9 Pg C per year from 2003 to 2012 (as said in Schuur et al).  If that held constant over the century (unlikely, but just for arguments sake), that means human-driven land use change would emit about 90 Pg C by 2100.  Loosing 10% of permafrost carbon would be about 130-160 Pg over a century.

Of course, that is a VERY back of the envelope calculation, and permafrost carbon would only be a fraction of the fossil fuel emissions (9.9 Pg in 2013, and it increases every year unless policies change drastically soon).  Still, it is useful to think about just how important the permafrost climate feedback could be.  And none of the current climate projection models include the permafrost climate feedback – yet they all include land use change. 

What does this all mean?  The permafrost climate feedback will exacerbate climate change.  Warming climate thaws permafrost.  Permafrost releases additional greenhouse gases.  Greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere more.  More permafrost thaws.  This loop, or positive climate feedback, needs to be included in our decision making.  There are still unanswered questions about permafrost.  But we know that this carbon pool is vulnerable.  And we know that it will contribute to global climate change.

The birds and the bees

As I’ve noted before, I have a lot of “old lady” activities.  We’re getting to the time of year where one of them winds down (knitting is not pleasant at 80 degrees and 90% humidity) and another ramps up.  Spring means gardening!

I’m only container gardening this year, but I have a lovely full sun deck.  I am somewhat hampered by my broken ankle, which limits my ability to haul bags of dirt upstairs.  But I persevere!  There’s a plant sale at the South Texas Botanical Gardens this weekend, and I already have a few things going.  Mostly tomato plants.  Soon, I will have more native plants!  I love natives.  Because I am deeply geeky and most cool things are under-pinned by science.

Native plants are the base of any terrestrial ecosystem.  They evolved in conjunction with the myriad butterflies and bees, moths and wasps, flies and beetles that inhabit any particular place.  You may not love the bugs, but know what does?  Birds.  Particularly, baby birds.

I'm practically a cartoon!  Image by Suzanne Britton

While adult birds will eat seeds (depending on the species), young birds generally need insects.  The early bird gets the worm and all that.   Take the adorable Ruby Crowned Kinglet.  They eat insects almost exclusively, with occasional berries.  You will not see one coming by your birdfeeder.  And who wouldn’t want to have these guys around?  They’re little balls of floof, with a red crest!  Hummingbirds are similar – the adults may drink nectar all day long, but the nestlings primarily get bugs stuffed down their throat. 

If you want birds, you need bugs.  Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy really drives this home.  The author is an entomologist, so he’s partial to insects anyway.  But the science remains true.  Native plants lead to more insects – and a greater diversity of insects – which lead to more birds.  It’s for the birds.

Between Port Aransas and Austin, I used to stop at the Cuero Nursery, which has since closed down.  The first time I went, a friend was with me.  Slow, lazy bumblebees hovered nearby, while flies and parasitic wasps and a hornet buzzed around.  The humidity, still wind and blooming flowers made the air feel heavy and everything smelled wonderful.  My friend was not thrilled.  The owner of the nursery replied to her feeble attempts at avoiding the bugs, “Any good nursery is going to have bugs.”  And, of course, it’s true.  Go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center during their plant sale in April.  I guarantee, there will be lots and lots of bugs.  Then go to, say, Lowe’s garden center.   I know which I prefer.

Some suggested reading:

Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center: http://www.wildflower.org/explore/

Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy

Noah’s Garden by Sara Stein

Attracting Native Pollinators from the Xerxes Society

Ecosystem Gardening: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/start

And, this is the blog post that spawned my initial interest in the subject:  http://www.redwombatstudio.com/garden/?p=355

RIP Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett passed away this week.

I chronicle my life by the books I read, and few authors hold as prominent a place as Pratchett.  His books are funny and cynical, warm and pointed, comforting and probing.  I laughed with these books, and grew up with them.

I read Good Omens when I was 13 or so.  I couldn’t stop talking about it – I was a wee atheist, then, and had not actually told anyone that I didn’t believe in any god.  Good Omens poked fun at religion, alternating between vicious, uproarious criticism and a more gentle, good natured “isn’t this ridiculous” voice.  I knew the authors agreed with me, even if they did not say so outright. 

My overenthusiastic prattling about this book also led to the first time I was told to censor myself – a relative thought that the storyline I described would be offensive to some born-agains at Thanksgiving.  I bristled at that - the same way I do now when it’s suggested I keep my opinions to myself – but I kept the peace.  Terry Pratchett’s book affirmed my worldview, and led to the realization that not everyone would tolerate that view.

Soul Music, Hogfather, Mort.  Equal Rites, Maskerade, Witches Abroad. Eric, The Truth, Going Postal.

What other fantasy book titles reference a John Knox’s tirade against women leaders (Monstrous Regiment)? Or who models their entire plotline off of a Macbeth joke (Wyrd Sisters)?  Who sums up an entire theory of economics and why poor people stay poor with a boot metaphor (Men at Arms)?

Neil Gaiman wrote an eloquent memorial for Terry Pratchett, in anticipation of his passing from Alzeimer’s.  You should read it.  The fury and anger he describes are there in Pratchett’s writing.  These were books that helped me through being a teenager, that shaped my philosophy.  But also kept me from being too cynical, too down on humanity.  He was humane and hysterical.  That’s a rare combination, and the world is a poorer place without him.

And now to go re-read Hogfather and Feet of Clay.

A Humerus Tale - among others.

I tripped outside my house and broke my ankle this weekend.

Yes, you can laugh, particularly if you’ve known me a long time.

But, see, I was overdue.  I haven’t broken a bone since 2008.  And really, this is by far the least spectacular of my skeletal injuries.

When I was a toddler, I fell down the stairs.  1990 or so.  And I broke my collarbone.  Luckily, I don’t remember this.

I do remember, however, breaking both my arms six years later.  Imagine little Claire, running around at the Zilker Park Kite Festival, in a bright red skirt.  I tripped, landed face forward with my arms crossed in front of me.  I believe each arm had multiple hairline fractures.  A couple of splints and six weeks later, I was as good as ever. 

Another six years, another injury.  I rode horses most of my life, and in 2001 started at a new stables.  I should have realized that this place was not great when I was thrown three times in a six month period.  Still, I wasn't hurt and I persevered until May 2002 (I don’t generally think of myself as stubborn, but maybe I should rethink that).  Then I started riding Scout.  He was a really beautiful horse, well-trained.  But he had been abused and was very skittish.   As long as you didn’t try to touch his head, he was a doll and perfectly mannered, if a little prone to start at sudden noises or movements.  It took two of us to bridle him.  I worked with him twice with no problems, and felt for the first time like I had really started to become a good rider. 

The third lesson I rode him, though, was in an arena with many other students and horses.  He spooked, I came off, and found I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg.  I passed out at one point.  My mother and instructor loaded me into a golf cart to get me to the car.  Despite this, I insisted on going home, not to the ER.  Friends were coming over for a movie party!  I would sit on the couch and not move – if my leg still hurt in the morning, then we could go to the hospital.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get out of the car when we got home.  When we did get to the ER, EMTs had to use a backboard to slide me out.  This, of course, is how I broke my femur – the thigh bone.  A spiral fracture in the middle, and a hairline fracture at the top inside the hip joint.  I spent the summer recovering from the break and surgery - my leg is now reinforced with titanium.  I started high school with a cane.

Six months later, I was riding again.

And it was great!  I switched barns twice, but both places were wonderful.  I fell off once, but in a six year period that is not bad at all.  And, no injuries at all.

Until 2008.

My summer plans were amazing.  I had a job with Texas Parks and Wildlife.  I was leasing a horse for cheap from a woman who was spending the summer in China.  I was going to Siberia! 

The first time I levered myself on to Sterling, he took off at a trot the moment my butt touched the saddle.  Not very good manners, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  He calmed down after a couple of loops around the arena, and we had a pleasant ride.  However, the next time I rode, I asked someone to hold him for me.  He did not react well to this.

I had just barely mounted when he tried to take off.  Foiled by the woman holding his bridle, he reared and spun instead.  I remember coming off, curling as I fell to avoid hitting my head on a rail.

I knew my arm and shoulder were messed up.  One of the other riders gave me a ride to the hospital, since I was definitely not in any condition to drive.  My orthopedic surgeon said my upper arm bone shattered like an 80-year old’s – ortho surgeons are not known for their bedside manner. 

Really, it was just a very high impact event – I don’t have a calcium deficiency or anything.  But, I am that much closer to being a bionic woman.  A plate and thirteen pins now hold together my humerus. 

And once again, six months later, I was back in the saddle.

I don’t ride anymore.  I would love to, but graduate school in South Texas does not lend itself well to such things.  Someday I'll get back into it, when I have the luxury of a postdoc salary – all $40,000 of it.  It has been almost seven years, however, since that last broken bone.  Apparently, I’m on a schedule.

Which brings us to this weekend.  No dramatic story.  Just tripped and landed wrong, resulting in a "non-displaced fracture of the lateral malleolus".  That’s the outside ankle bone, which doesn’t actually bear any weight.  I have a giant boot, and crutches that I don’t use as much as probably should.   But, it will heal cleanly and quickly, so I'm mostly alternating between laughing at the whole ridiculous thing, and annoyed that walking upstairs is such a pain in the ass.

Next time, more science!

Sustaining character

Whew.  Had bronchitis last week, had to miss out on seeing the whooping cranes.  I tried coming in to do work twice, and was told by officemates to go home in no uncertain terms.  Eventually, I bowed to their judgment.  Now I’m playing catch up, so of course I write a blog post.  To, um, get back in the habit of writing.  Yeah.

A couple weeks ago, I hosted book club.  We read Wool by Hugh Howey – which I keep wanting to call Howl – and all had thoughts about the book. 

Howey originally self-published Wool as a series of short stories that garnered some praise and attention, which were eventually picked up by a major publisher to be collected as a single book.  The five sections – each its own short story – are very distinct.  One book-clubber described the book as “post-apocalyptic mystery” which is as good a description as any.  I devoured the first three sections, then stalled out on the last two.  It took awhile for me to figure out why, but I think I’ve nailed it down.

Each of the first three sections has a very strong point of view, tight third person narrative.  We see through the main characters’ eyes.  Each section has a different narrator, but we are privy to their thoughts and perceptions of the world.  We only know as much as they do.  These parts are gripping.  I wanted to figure out the mysteries that each character confronted as much as they did.  And Jules is great – a female hypercompetent mechanic turned detective?  Sign me up.  The last two parts, however, begin opening to more points of view.  The events aren’t as grounded in one particular characters’ experience, but we see what happens from multiple places.  Suddenly, the book feels a lot less like a character pushing through obstacles to figure out a mystery, and more like there are Important Things Happening that the author Wants to Happen.  Plot takes over, at the sacrifice of a strong character worldview.  And everyone in the book club immediately lost interest.

I think a lot of authors and stories do this.  The Hunger Games is a perfect example.  I loved the first book.  The second book was good, if repetitive.  The third book, however, no longer felt like Katniss's story.  It was the story of Panem, and it is difficult to identify with an entire nation.  Suzanne Collins is hardly alone, though.  I love Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos books (and Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille).  But one of them I refuse to re-read, because its…well, there’s a revolution, and Vlad’s wife is heavily involved, and the whole story is very plotty.  Nothing is untrue to the characters, but I still could not quite buy into the premise.  And I like revolution!  I grew up in a good Marxist household, after all.  

Revolutions are hard to pull off.  In the real world, or in writing.  I just re-read Guards! Guards! By Terry Pratchett – another all time favorite – and there’s a quote by the Patrician that I think is fitting. 

“You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people.  And you’re good at that, I’ll grant you.  But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at.  One day it’s ringing bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one’s been taking out the trash.  Because the bad people know how to plan.  It’s part of the specification, you might say.  Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world.  The good people don’t seem to have the knack.”

I don’t necessarily believe this – I’m cynical, but not quite that cynical.  But Pratchett has a point – the plan for what happens after the aristocracy or tyrant or plutocracy is displaced never quite coalesces.  I cannot think of a story where the author sells me on this.  And it tends to be particularly weak when the story starts as centering on one character, then tries to expand.  Dystopian stories, post-apocalyptic narratives, social upheaval.  They’re amongst my favorite premises, but too often feel unfinished.

A counter might be George R.R. Martin’s books.  You can hardly get more plot-driven than those.  I need post-it notes to keep track of events and characters.  Those work, though, because we are never wedded to just one viewpoint.  There are multiple strands that we follow from the very beginning.  Martin never tries to get you to buy into what is happening from just Tyrion’s perspective, or just Dany’s.  He also includes Arya and The Onion Knight and Cersei and Brienne and Stannos and dozens of others.  It is a big picture view of the world, told through many smaller stories. 

And that is where Wool falls flat, ultimately.  We buy into one person’s world – Holston, Jahns or Juliette.  Then we lose our connection with one character, and are asked to expand to multiple at a time.  Our expectations are no longer met.

Two conclusions, then, that I think are applicable to all writing.  First, character rules all.  People want to read about people, and they want a sense of who those people are.  Even in science writing, write about a person, and imbue them with personality, ambition, choice, goals.  Readers will forgive much if the characters stay true.  Second, the writer has a contract with the reader.  They set up certain expectations of narrative, approach.  Breach the contract, and there are no guarantees the reader will stay with you.    Twists and turns in plot are forgivable, even appreciated.  Abrupt, unexpected changes in voice are not.

I promised birds

This weekend is the annual Port Aransas Whooping Crane Festival!  There will be guided tours of the Port Aransas birding suites, boat rides out to Aransas Wildlife Refuge to see the cranes in question, talks about conservation.  All sorts of good things, for the bird nerd in you.  How about a couple of brief birding stories, to gear up?  I don’t have any long, drawn out adventures the way some birders accumulate.  But, the Texas Coastal Bend has some of the best birding in the nation and I’ve seen some cool things.

Imagine a whole field of these guys.  Image from Cornell's All About Birds, because I'm not that good a photographer.

The best birding sometimes occurs during the worst weather.  Right smack dab of the spring migration in April 2013, a cold front hit Port A.  All the birds heading north for the summer hunkered down in Port Aransas for a few days, to wait out the weather.  We were treated to some truly spectacular birds.  The best part: the cold front made them stop, but the weather cleared it up almost immediately.  We strolled around town, peeked out our office windows, and watched with glee as Painted Buntings, Black-and-White-Warblers, Blue Grosbeaks, and all manner of pretty little birds rested for a couple days.  I was (and still am) a novice birder, and had never seen a fallout like this.

Karen, another MSI grad student, and I decided to walk to happy hour that Friday, from work.  Normally, we would get there in about five minutes, but I think we took half an hour there were so many cool birds.  An empty lot filled with Indigo Buntings.  A small flock of White Ibis.  Baltimore Orioles flitting back and forth.   About halfway along our walk, we came to a tree that was chock full of birds.  Mostly warblers that I couldn’t get a good look at, orioles, and then a very distinctive little bird that I’d never seen before.  Small, black, but with bright orange wing and tail bars.  We stared at it, racking our brains.  Neither Karen or I were particularly well-studied birders – we just thought they were cool.

American Redstart, from the Houston Audobon.

Luckily, we live in Port Aransas, where every third person is obsessed with birds.  We continued on to happy hour, ogling other birds as we went.  Shortly thereafter, we described the unidentified bird to a visiting professor, who promptly named it: American Redstart.  Any birders out there probably guessed that immediately, but new to us at the time!  Anyway, that’s the biggest fallout we’ve had here in Port A since I moved down here, but we see lots of cool birds at other times.

I’ll be going out on one of the guided boat tours to see the Whooping Cranes.  I have seen them before, but always from a distance.  In 2011, myself and a postdoc (who is much birdier than I!) traveled up to Inuvik, CA to sample the Mackenzie River.  We saw lots of very cool birds while there – a gyrfalcon, grebes, bald eagles,  lots of ducks, sandhill cranes.  On bright clear evenings, which were wonderfully frequent, we would sit on the porch of the house we stayed in, drinking beer, talking science and hanging out with the few other scientists stationed in Inuvik.  This particular evening, it was just us, flipping through Jorien’s bird book to figure out what we’d seen today.  A long shadow passed over, we looked up, and saw huge crane-like birds overhead. 

Whooping cranes had been officially sighted in Inuvik a couple years before.  These seemed too big, and a very bright white, to be sandhill cranes.  Most likely, that’s what they were.  These days, though, I like to think they were whoopers, though.

Sandhill cranes at the Aransas Wildlife Refuge. 

Ice wedges - the science of frozen cracks in the ground

There aren’t that many memorable papers.

I mean, there are thousands of decent or even good papers published every week.  But they all sort of blend together after a while.  I have a hard time keeping them straight sometimes.  Just today, I told my advisor the wrong thing about a paper I included in a literature review I’m writing.  It was not a good paper, and I had confused the methods from the not-so-great paper with those of a much better paper.  My point is that most papers are forgettable to an extent. 

Occasionally, however, you’ll read something that’s like a bolt through the sky.  You’ll sit up and say, “I want to do THAT.”  This week, that paper presented data from ice wedges in Siberia, then reconstructed winter temperatures.  Esoteric, yes.  But also really cool. 

Ice wedge formation

First, what are ice wedges?  As much as a quarter of land in the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost, ground that is below freezing temperatures for two or more years in a row.  During winter, the extreme cold temperatures cause the ground itself to contract, forming fissures and cracks.  Once temperatures rise in spring, snowmelt fills those cracks.  The water re-freezes – after all, the soils around it are well below freezing!  Freezing actually causes water to expand, and the new ice wedge widens the gap slightly, and pushing surrounding frozen soils upwards.  Think a tube of toothpaste – you squeeze the sides together, and the toothpaste comes out the top.  The following winter, the permafrost contracts again, opening a crack in the ice and starting the process over again. See the little diagram I made to get a better idea.

These can get massive, and very, very old.  Meyer et al. (2015) just published a paper taking advantage of the age and sequential way ice wedges are formed.  They went to the Lena River delta (right), one of the largest deltas in the world.  Permafrost abounds, and previous work established the age of different parts of the delta fairly well.  Ice wedges are also common.

Figure S2 from Meyer et al. (2015).

So, Meyer et al. went out a few times, to quote the study, “ice wedges have been sampled by chain saw.”

Yeah, science!  And chain saws.  When we sampled ice wedges on the Kolyma River, we used an axe.

Anyway, they cut out sections of the wedges, melted them and preserved the water.  Later, they ran isotopic analyses which told them a) the approximate age of the water using radiocarbon and b) the relative temperature using oxygen isotopes.  I’ll spare you the details of how the isotopes work – don’t worry, I’ll go into excruciating detail on that some other time.  For now, just know that higher oxygen isotopes mean warmer temperatures.  Using this, Meyer and his colleagues re-constructed 8,000 years of winter-spring temperatures. 

The winter-spring temperature reconstructions are almost unique in high-latitudes.  Most of our long-term temperature proxies – tree rings, for instance – are based on annual growing seasons.  Great, we need to know this.  But much of the recent anthropogenic climate warming in the Arctic has been during winter and spring.  We need to know – is this different than in previous natural climate changes?  What impact will winter warming have on carbon sequestration in permafrost?  How will winter warming impact hydrology, weather, the length of the growing season?  These reconstructions are a first stab at answering those types of questions.

The reconstructed climate from ice wedges reveals winter warming, opposite of other summer-biased climate records.  Again, I won’t delve too deeply into these mechanisms right now, but this was likely driven by changes in orbital forcing.  The shape of Earth’s orbit changes through time, on cycles of ~20,000 – 100,000 years.  These changes impact how much energy we receive from the sun, and its distribution.  Meyer and colleagues used models of past climate to show that winter warming was likely driven by these changes in our orbit around the sun.  At the same time, there was a significant increase in carbon dioxide concentrations during the 8,000 year record.  Reconciling this increase in greenhouse gases with a cooling in summer temperatures is accomplished by including these warming winter temperatures.

Figure 1F from Meyer et al. 2015.  The take-away: winter temperatures have a long-term warming trend, that has jumped up dramatically in the past 50 - 100 years.

Alaskan ice wedges received similar analyses a couple years ago, but we have much less data of any sort from Russia compared to the North American Arctic.  I originally got involved in Arctic research as an undergraduate on a project aiming to correct this.  We went to the Kolyma River in northeast Siberia, and conducted all sorts of research on carbon cycling (see www.thepolarisproject.org).  I returned in 2013, and would love to go back again.  I work mostly on modern carbon cycling, these days.  But I’ve always found paleoclimate fascinating – reading about ancient climate and cultures launched me towards my present career when I was a sophomore in high school.  I want to do paleoclimate, and I want to get back to northeast Siberia.

The Kolyma River is home to a great science station, lots of good researchers spend their summers there.  And guess what else it has?

Ice wedges.

Meyer et al., 2015.  Long-term winter warming trend in the Siberian Arctic during the mid –to-late Holocene.  Nature Geoscience, 8, 122-125.  doi:10.1038/ngeo2349

"That's too many syllables!"

I can’t remember who told me this, but it’s emblematic of the responses I get when I tell people I’m a biogeochemist.  So, what do I actually do?  What is biogeochemistry?

The Global Carbon Cycle, from the IPCC 2013 Working Group I (http://www.climatechange2013.org/)

Biogeochemists study how elements cycle through different parts of the Earth system.  Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and many other elements are essential for life.  Of course, they aren’t just important because of how they’re used by life forms, but also what role they might play in the physical-chemical environment.  Carbon, for instance, can be energy for organisms as part of a sugar molecule; a greenhouse gas when in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide; it influences the acidity of waters when dissolved at bicarbonate; or might be stored away for eons as calcium carbonate in limestone rocks.  We study how that one element moves through different systems, and interacts with the biology, chemistry and physics of its environment.  We do the same for other elements – nitrogen, calcium, oxygen, iron, and plenty of others.

As you might guess from my example, I mostly am interested in carbon.  It’s in the food we eat, and the air we breathe.  It’s in our water, it’s the energy source for most of our electricity, and the structure for many of the rocks we stand on.  It’s important.

Humans are also changing where carbon is found.  Hundreds of millions of years ago, during the Carboniferous Period (get it?), wetlands and lowland swamp forests covered vast regions of the continents.  Temperatures were warm, oxygen was high, and life was big: this was the age of giant dragonflies and towering tree ferns.  The carbon that formed the tree ferns and other plants in these swamps was eventually buried and preserved in sediments.  Add time, heat, and pressure – the result is coal.  Coal is largely 300 million year old dead plants.

And, as you know, we’re burning that coal.  Other fossil fuels – methane/natural gas and oil – have similar histories.  Stored away for millions and millions of year, now combusted and turned into CO2. 

For now, I won’t get into the science of climate change beyond this: it’s real.  It’s not a hoax.  And humans are driving it.

The really interesting bit, to me, is that these fossil fuels are not the only potential sources of carbon to the atmosphere.  Look at the tropics – how much carbon do you think is stored in the Amazon forests?  And how much of that is released when you slash-and-burn it, or during a drought?  How much carbon do you think is released when the Indonesian rainforests are replaced by palm oil plantations?  Hint: it’s a lot.

Yedoma soils in NE Siberia, with ~30,000 year old plant roots exposed.  Photo courtesy of Chris Linder.

Or, go to the poles.  Look at the soils.  That soil has been frozen for thousands, tens of thousands of years.  Since the last ice age, in some cases.  Some places, you can look at the soil and see roots and plants that have been preserved for 30,000 years.  Many of those soils are peats, sphagnum moss piling on top of each other and compressing and degrading for thousands of years.  Maybe you’ve heard of how in Ireland or Scotland, people would burn peat to heat their homes when firewood or coal was scarce.  It’s the same idea – compress peat for a few million years, and you’d end up with something very like coal.  In fact, the UN classifies peat as a fossil fuel.

Frozen northern soils – permafrost – hold about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.  Thaw those soils, free them up so that the plants and moss and roots and all the little bits of organic matter can start to rot, and what starts to happen?  Where does all that carbon go?

That’s what I want to know.

And I’ll let you know how I’m trying to answer part of that next time!

Writing Goals

When I want to procrastinate, which is all too often, one of my top strategies is to engage in “career development.”  Looking for jobs that I might be qualified for, poking around www.sciencecareers.org or the Earth Science Women’s Network (www.eswnonline.org), or reading columns on Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle.  And the blogs.  Oh, the blogs.  So many.

Of course, the advice in many of these resources on becoming a successful academic, or really any type of scientist, boils down to one thing:

Write.

Write more.  Write every day.  Every single day.  Treat it like a meeting – have at least a half hour of your day blocked out to write.  Just get in the habit.  Practice, practice, practice.  Don’t get distracted.  Turn off your internet.  And WRITE.

I know this.  I’ve known this for years.  A couple of years ago, I went on a kick of consuming a bunch of books about writing.  I read everything from Anne Lammott’s Bird by Bird to Josh Schimel’s Writing Science.  Stephen King’s On Writing and William Zinsser’s Writing Well.  Strunk and White.  Science Writing and Communication.  And guess what they said you should do?

Write.

When I was 17, I tried to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for those in the know).  Hundreds of thousands of people participating, trying to pound out 50,000 words in the month of November.  That’s 1,667  words a day.  Up through this sentence, this post is 240.  I made it about half way through my novel, then stopped for a couple days and could never pick it up again.  I still argue that November is a terrible month for this – how does anyone write during the chaos that is Thanksgiving?  Nonetheless, every few years I try again.  But I have never been as disciplined about it as that first time.  Sure, I can pound out that much pretty easily on any given day, but not day in and day out.  Establishing that habit, that pattern, is key.  I learned that in high school through my failed novel, and it still holds true.

Writing science is different, of course.  Getting a paper done is not so much about hitting a word count every day, as it is about finishing an idea or section.  That might be the entire methods section (which I did a VERY rough version of yesterday for one paper) or it might be just a short paragraph in your discussion.  Or the carefully phrased research questions in a proposal.  Or the abstract as the cake topper to your (mostly) finished work.  The point is, though, to get through something.

So, that’s my goal for 2015.  Not to write a novel.  Not to get ~1500 words a day.  But just to write.  Every day.  At least half an hour.  For now, it can be anything – a blog post even!  But, especially as I really get down to writing that pesky dissertation, more and more of it will be science.  

Birds, Books, and Biogeochemistry

Welcome to Birds, Books, and Biogeochemistry!  I'll be using this space to talk about, well, birds, books, and biogeochemistry.  Expect stories from the Arctic, tales from Texas, and thoughts about whatever I have read most recently.  

A little about me:  I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, only I don't live in Austin.  I'm at the Marine Science Institute, about 200 miles away, in Port Aransas, TX.  The South Texas Riviera.  

No, really, sometimes it's called that.

I work primarily in the Arctic on river chemistry.  There will probably be lots of talk about Arctic climate change in this.  I'm in the last year (hopefully) of my graduate work, and I figure writing regularly - of any sort - will be good practice as I gear up towards writing that dissertation.

My friends, back in high school, accused me of being an old lady at 16.  This was all too correct. I like to cook, and read.  I have a cat.  I drink copious amounts of tea.  I go birding.  I knit and crochet.  I want a rocking chair for my porch, to sit in the sun and drink mint juleps.  Mint that I grew, because I like gardening.  I don't understand Snapchat.

On the other hand, I'll go on a road trip at the drop of a hat.  I love traveling, be it to northeast Russia or just to get a couple hours away from Port A.  One of my life-goals is to spend at least a month in the Arctic of each arctic country - USA (check; Alaska), Canada (check; NWT); Russia (check; NE Siberia), Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark/Greenland.  Iceland would be great, too, although it's below the Arctic Circle.  

Well, I believe that's enough directionless ramblings about myself.  Next post, whenever I get to it, will be more substantive!