 Hi everybody. How are you tonight? My name is Lorena Medina Luna and welcome to the NCAR Explorer series. We're all coming to you tonight from our own homes and we appreciate you taking the time to join us tonight with a special conversation with Dr. Adriana Bailey, which is one of our NCAR scientists. Usually for the Explorer series we highlight work that NCAR scientists and collaborators are doing and today we're having a conversation to learn more about the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, or the AAAS, if then ambassador program, the various diverse women in STEM who are highlighted in the CBS program Mission Unstoppable, and the work that our very own NCAR scientist Adriana Bailey, who's also an ambassador and was on that show, is doing at NCAR. So today, as before, we're going to be using Slido, which if you scroll down your page, you'll see we have some active polls and questions that you can interact with. So throughout the time that we're talking with Adriana today, you're welcome to ask questions and we'll be taking as many questions as possible. And in advance, if we don't get to your question, we apologize for that, but we'll try to do our best. So I'm really excited and I hope you are too. Dan Zitlo and Aliyah McCully Hartner will be helping us with this Slido interface, and we'll be recording this conversation and posting it on our Explorer series page, which if you haven't gone on it has a lot of the archive lectures and a lot more cool stuff that you can check out. NCAR or the National Center for Atmospheric Research is located in Boulder, Colorado, and we definitely miss seeing your faces up in the lab and look forward to a time when we can get back to there. It is a world leading organization that's dedicated to the study of the atmosphere, the earth system, and the sun. Today's speaker, Dr. Bailey, is an atmospheric scientist in the Earth Observing Laboratory, or EOL, and also works in the NCAR Research Aviation Facility. Her research focuses on understanding the processes that control humidity, cloudiness, and precipitation. And as part of the Research Aviation Facility, she supports measurements of water isotope ratios in water vapor, cloud droplet, and ice particles, and airborne measurements of wind and turbulence. So prior to becoming an atmospheric scientist, Dr. Bailey worked as a science news writer for the University of Colorado and NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. She credits writing about science, which requires asking lots and lots of questions, for stoking her interest in scientific inquiry, and for giving her the confidence to embrace what she doesn't understand. Adriana is also working to inspire young girls to pursue careers in STEM, which are science, technology, engineering, and math. As an if-then ambassador with the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, AAAS. Through this ambassadorship, her work was recently featured on the CBS television show Mission Unstoppable. And hopefully you guys have a lot of questions for her, because I know I'm really curious and interested in a lot more of what she does. So for now I'm actually interested. Dan, do we have participation in the word cloud about what do people think about when they think of the word scientist? So we have a few people who have started to put down their thoughts and definitely encourage you to put down your thoughts because we can always see before and after. What do people think about when they hear the word scientist? So somebody who's investigating, investigator, studied a lot and looks at different things, thinking of a better world, a super person. I like that one. A smile, smart, curious, creative, and so much more. Thanks, Dan. And as you're tuning in, just check in. Where are you coming from? We're definitely interested in that. But for now, should we get started? Maybe we can talk with Adriana and see. Adriana, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? What do you do at NCAR? Well, sure. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be part of this. This is the first time I get to say welcome to my basement laboratory, which feels like very stereotypically scientific. Those are the stereotypes we're trying to break through. So at NCAR, one of the things I'm, as you mentioned, a scientist in the Earth Observing Laboratory and I'm part of the Research Aviation Facility. And so that really creates this really, I think, amazing opportunity to be able to take instruments, put them on a flying laboratory, and go study the parts of the atmosphere that we're interested in very intimately. And so in my case, the parts of the atmosphere that I really focus on have to do with the water cycle. So I'm interested in how moisture moves around the atmosphere, because if you think about it, how moisture moves really tells us about where cloud patterns and precipitation patterns are going to set up. And so in the end, it dictates what our water resources or access to water begins to look like. So I'm really interested in understanding the water cycle from a very process level kind of perspective, but then also thinking about its bigger role in the climate system. And you mentioned an airplane, and you mentioned lab, and you mentioned clouds. So how does this all come together? Like, you do not sit in a room and do science? Like, what is these days? I sit in a room a lot. This room in particular. But yes, no, it's a great question. Thanks for asking that. You know, a lot of science is, frankly, doing analysis. And so it's a lot of time in front of a computer, which I think surprises a lot of people who might think, oh, you're in the field all the time making measurements. But on the other hand, we do go out and we collect data, which means going to different places, working with amazing teams of people to get the science done because there's no way you can go with your personal plane and do this by yourself, unless you really are kind of a super person, as was indicated in the cloud, in the word cloud. And in addition, you know, I would say that those kinds of contacts with individuals are really part of what stokes I think are greater thinking about scientific questions. And even though I'm stuck here in my basement right now for the time being, every day I'm on the computer in like a zoom call like this, talking to colleagues who might be in Switzerland or in New Mexico or other parts of the world. So there's the, there's definitely the computational component. There is kind of the field and observation component. And then most of us are also trying to really evaluate how well we understand the water cycle and climate system. And the way we do that is by putting forward models or predictions about how we think the system works. And then we test those models with our observations to say, Yeah, this is this is the right idea or no I need to go back to the drawing board on this one. So you're constantly thinking about where does water come from. And you're, you mentioned that you work with a lot of people, and you go to different places. And a question was asked was, what is an air field campaign like, do you get to travel, do you travel on these planes or I do I do so as part of NCAR part of my role is helping support field campaigns that other scientists in universities and other institutes might propose through the National Science Foundation. And so that's really exciting because I get exposed to certain science questions that I might not be directly studying. One example of that was a couple years ago, I was part of a campaign that was flying over those really horrific deadly fires over the Western United States, looking at the impact that it has on air quality, and what that means for communities in the fire zones and then also downstream or downwind. But this past winter, right before the coronavirus pandemic started in in this part of the world. I had an opportunity to go to Barbados, and I spent three weeks there working with collaborators from Europe, the Caribbean and the United States to try to understand the processes that control the low level clouds over the ocean. The reason for that is that these low level clouds are awfully good at reflecting sunlight back into space. And so, if they disappear in a warmer world, we're going to have much more solar radiation being absorbed by the very dark ocean surface below. So we're really trying to get an understanding what controls the cloudiness in these types of regions. And actually I'd love to show a couple photos of that because I have a couple that I brought up from this recent field effort. So let me see if I can share this with everyone quickly. So this is a picture of, let's see, let me just pause I realized that this is actually moving ahead hopefully that stops for a second. Okay, so this is a picture of those low level cloud fields over the Western tropical Atlantic that we were interested in studying. I'll jump back to this picture to show you that this was the airplane that we actually flew on. In this case it was not one of the NSF airplanes that we have at NCAR, but it was the NOAA plane which you might recognize from the logo. This is one of their P3 or hurricane hunters. So this was a little bit of a different mission for the hurricane crew. They felt like flying through these really, you know, tame clouds was kind of boring. So this is my instrument right in front of the plane. And then I'll show you even though we had we were flying through this beautiful environment all the time. This was actually my view for the three week period. We had to remove the window at the seat where I was sitting in so that we could actually place the panel there and put the inlet to the outside. So that what you're looking at this this tube that's kind of coming in and then wrapped in insulation is feeding right into the analyzer that I was using to look at the water in the atmosphere. And finally, I'll show this one last picture because I think that, you know, for me part of science and fieldwork. One of the things that I'm always super appreciative of is the, all of the people and all of the hard work that goes into these campaigns. This is just the support staff for the NOAA P3. We have a tremendous support staff here at NCAR. Then there's also all of the scientists on top of this. So every time you go out in the field, you're constantly meeting a whole group of new people, learning from them, sharing with them. So that's really part of what makes it such a tremendous experience. Wow. And somebody did ask, what was your favorite field campaign of fly and why. What was my favorite one to fly. I think in some regards this this last one really was perhaps favorite is a funny word to use. I'm still one of the newer scientists at the research aviation facility. So I haven't had nearly the same opportunities as many of the more senior researchers at NCAR. But I think because the mission in Barbados was something where I was intimately involved in setting up the instrumentation, designing some of the science questions. It's about water cycle processes. For me, those three things really made it stand out. And one quick question about like you showed a picture of the, the screen of the window and there was a tube, and it was coming in and you said you get data from the cloud. What specifically are you collecting is it water molecules or like the particles that are in the cloud or how does that work. So we can actually do both. In this case, we were looking specifically at the molecules of water vapor. So not necessarily the cloud droplets themselves, but you can collect those in an airplane, which is very neat. And we look not just at the number of molecules of water that are in the atmosphere how much moisture there is. But we really want to try to fingerprint that water and know where it's come from. And so one of the ways we do that is we look not just at sort of the more traditional H2O molecule, the two hydrogens and oxygen that we think of as water. But we also look at HDO and H218O. So these are these flavors of water we call them water isotopes. And by looking at those, we actually get a sense of when we look at their relative proportion to the normal water. You know something about how much evaporation and precipitation the air we're looking at has been exposed to. And because if you think about the way the atmosphere works, evaporation might happen here, rain happens here. It's transport that kind of makes the connection between those places. So when we're able to fingerprint these sort of histories of evaporation and precipitation in water, we actually know something about where this air or this moisture has come from. Oh, wow. So there's a lot to it. There's like all these different flavors of water, like not literally like Gatorade and stuff, but just a different isotope. So did you have to do some sort of like chemistry degree in order to get into this type of research or what is what was your track into this? So my whole path towards being a scientist was incredibly twisted, not straightforward at all. I did very badly in freshman chemistry and so didn't take any more chemistry until grad school. I basically had the same reaction to math and I never took physics in college. So I sort of made all these wrong choices about what classes to take given the career I ended up in. But I think the reason for that is, you know, like other people that I have heard from, this is one of those realizations you get later in life. You're sort of not alone in this imposter syndrome of thinking, you know, I'm just not good enough. I'm just not smart enough. And so what it took was several different career steps. As you mentioned, I at some point was a science writer at the University of Colorado. It's a joint institute with Noah and through writing about science somehow it felt easier to ask people questions about their work. You know, like why did you do this and what is the point and oh, I need to translate this for the public. So let's really bring this down to a basic level. And it, that's what allowed me to get comfortable asking all those questions. And I finally realized in asking all those questions that I too wanted to ask my own questions and go out and answer them. So again, it took steps. I am, I actually did a masters before deciding to go into a PhD. And I changed fields even there. I did my master's in geography, and then went into atmospheric science. So CU Boulder has an atmospheric science program. So that was the twisted career path. That's awesome. And now you are a scientist at NCAR you work on all these different cool things, but you recently became an ambassador for the if then she can like the triple AS ambassador program. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is, because somebody has actually asked how the being an ambassador has like how has your role as an if then ambassador changed the way you approach doing science. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what this program is, and then kind of we'll come back to that question. Great. Thank you so much for these questions. So the triple AS, if then ambassadorship is part of this larger if then initiative. It's really this incredible partnership between triple AS, which is the science organization. And also this initiative that's being supported by the Lidahill philanthropies. And really the whole purpose of this is to try to inspire girls to see themselves as the next generation of pioneers in STEM fields, which is science, technology, engineering and math. The ambassadors, they basically last summer decided to select 125 ambassadors through an application program to be this kind of face of science for this next generation of young women. And so part of what the program has allowed me is more of a platform to share stories like my kind of twisted, you know, circuitous route to becoming a scientist, some of the many failures along the way, right. And then also the successes and, and I think in addition what it's trying to do is is allow young girls to see themselves to imagine themselves in these kinds of positions. So, as far as, you know, how has this program sort of changed the way that I do science. I would say it has convinced me that we need to be doing more to make the environment in in science institutions and in science in general as a field, more inclusive. We need, you know, it's one thing to say we're going to basically take these 125 women, white women, women of color and put them out there so that people, you know, girls can see themselves in these roles. But what we really want is just simply more women, more people of color actually in science fields. And, and I would actually I would love to take this opportunity to share something that I was looking at just the other week. I was looking at some numbers. Basically, these are from surveys of PhD recipients in the United States. We share that. So these come from the. Let me stop this again. I didn't realize that this is going to take off on me. Let me see if I can get this up and not moving. Well, I'm not sure I can do it right at this moment. Okay, I can. Here we go. So essentially I was looking at the surveys these come from the NSF looking at how many they do demographic surveys of PhD recipients in different fields. And so on the top of my screen what I'm showing is the total number of PhD recipients in 2018, and the number of us citizens. So this is the breakdown of all fields about half of the recipients are women. When you dig into the US citizen numbers, only 14% of those recipients identifies Latinx black or Native American. Now, this is all fields. So this includes the sciences English humanities history. If you dig into atmospheric science, which is my field, what you see obviously are much lower numbers. It's not quite as popular there aren't as many programs. But when you look at the breakdowns of total number of recipients, what we see is only 30% are women. And then as we look at the US recipients now only 11% are Latinx black or Native American. I'm going to point out that only 1% are self identifying as black. So we, I think, really need to work, probably on in two areas. I mean, I think it's tempting to say, Okay, you look at this. And maybe it suggests that we need a better pipeline to bring people into these fields. But I think it does go beyond that. And, and I think what we need to be doing is really creating more of an inclusive environment, so that once people receive their degrees in these fields, they decide to stay in them and really contribute to them. Yeah, I'm like one of the few Latin latinas that has a PhD, geophysics, not an atmospheric science, but it's always really like sad to see the very few, but I'm looking forward to like supporting and continuing to hopefully engage. And with events like this kind of get an inside view of who are these scientists they are people and you know anybody can be a scientist. We just need to make sure that we support each other. And we do have a question about what was your favorite part about being a science writer. I love being exposed to lots of different science fields. I got to work with geologists people studying earthquakes in Nepal. People looking at the the micro organisms on your fingertips and sort of, you know, how, how they differ among different people and what that means sort of for your, you know, larger health. And I think the other part that I really liked about being a science writer was I liked, I liked feeling like I could help share science with the broader public. I think too often science comes across as, you know, jargony, we're down in the weeds, we're not really telling the plain language story, we're not necessarily showing people how what we do has a meaningful impact on their lives. So it was empowering to be in a place where I felt like it could help scientists tell their discoveries and also more than that show people how how science is done how sometimes there's a lot of failure, or sometimes there are serendipitous discoveries. So all of that, I think were those were my favorite bits. And we did have a question about what it's like filming a TV show since you were part of the mission unstoppable which if, if anybody hasn't heard of this program and CBS has, they highlight all these different women all these different backgrounds of careers and also they're very diverse women. So check it out. But yeah, what was it like to be part of such a big movement. So in terms of like that the actual show itself that the CBS show. The first thing it was for me was really tiring. I think I think I was there in the hangar at seven in the morning with my instrument setup. We started filming not long after, and I'm pretty sure they didn't stop filming till six in the evening. So it was a pretty, it was a pretty long day for about a three to four minute episode that's for sure. In a little more seriousness, it felt you know I watched the episode I've seen other episodes to I love what they're doing by showing a variety of different science pathways. You know that's kind of another thing that I'm starting to realize is, is that you know you don't you don't necessarily have to want to be a scientist right science has incredible value in teaching us about creativity and problem solving and critical thinking. I love, I love that we're putting science in this place by showing all the different and very creative ways that it shows up in people's careers. And of course, you know, one of the really great things both about the ambassador program that I'm part of and then also the show is that they really are showcasing women who come from a variety of different backgrounds and are of a variety of different races. It is amazing. It is just wonderful to see these really different faces in science, being showcased as experts in their fields. That's awesome. And we do have another question about what is like being a woman in a mostly male dominated field, which leads me to two polls that we currently have on Slido. We haven't already participated we have a poll that asks how many stem characters in the media are women, and also in America's 10 largest cities, plus DC and San Francisco, how many statues on public display represent real women. So it kind of trying again. We're back to that question. It's a male dominated field, the atmospheric sciences and science in general. Sure. Well, I do feel lucky that my colleagues are wonderful. There are a lot of men. But, but they have been a pleasure to work with I've learned a lot from them. I feel like it's it's just it's it's great. That's a great environment for me. As far as the kind of broader question about you know what is it like being in a male dominated field. Perhaps you know the biggest thing is just realizing that when that kind of imposter syndrome keeps creeps up on you which I think it does for most of us, you just need to have a bit of extra kind of confidence and grit. And you know I don't think that that's the way I'm not saying that that's the way it should be. But that is what helps in those times where you just feel like wow, I feel very outnumbered or I need to make sure that my voice has heard this time around. Yeah, and that's definitely imposter syndrome is a thing and it's hard to get over it, but it's definitely helpful to have people that are supportive around us. And Dan would you be able to show us what was the results for the poll about how many stem characters in the media are women. And we'll just wait until he can put it up on the screen, and we'll see. And most participants are saying that they think about 20% are stem characters in the media that are women. Brianna, do you want to respond to any of that. I think the answer was about 37%. That's right. That's right. It is about 37%, according to the Gina Davis Institute on gender representation in the media. So, so I probably painted maybe a prime to people to thinking it was worse than it is. That's actually if you're interested in reading more about that go to see Jane.org. There's some great data and statistics on just representation of women people of color and what kind of barriers we can help break down by by kind of getting rid of that that sense of role in congruity in the sciences. Yeah, I'd love to see the one on is there also the poll on the number of women statues in major US cities. Yeah, um, Dan, would you be able to show us that poll. We have about fewer than 10. And that's about right. So, um, so one thing we didn't have a chance to share yet, but was a really neat program or activity that we did as part of the ambassador program we had a summit in October in Texas. And they 3D scanned all of us to create statues of the 125 ambassadors, which will be in Dallas at some point I think the pandemic has created a little bit of a rescheduling of that. But the whole purpose was to finally have this sort of one collection of statues which increased by several orders of magnitude. The number of real I should say female statues because my impression is that there are some that are fictional characters that are statues but in terms of real females in science or in science related careers. This will be the first time that there will be 125. That's so amazing to imagine that I one day could be a 3D printed statue. Okay, and I do want to acknowledge that it is 730. In case anybody does need to head out. But we did have a question about What is the most unexpected result or finding from your latest research field trip in the Caribbean. Oh, yes. Oh, great. It's a little too early to know we are still crunching through a lot of the data. So, you know, one of the things you have to do is you go out there and take a measurement. You really need to make sure you understand what it is that you have measured right how representative it is of the broader environment, the clouds out there, the precipitation patterns. So we're still in that phase. But, but certainly I think one of the things that so far just looking over the data in a very preliminary sense one of the things that really surprised me is how much incredible heterogeneity there is. I mean this area of the tropical Atlantic, you have these fluffy little clouds forming all the time over a pretty uniform ocean. So I think, well, you know, things will just kind of look the same no matter if the airplane flies here or flies there. And what we found, or what I was seeing in the data as we were collecting it is that there's just incredible variability. And so I'm trying to understand what causes that is it important for the cloud systems. Is it controlled by the clouds themselves, or is it controlled by larger scale circulations in the atmosphere. That's some of the direction of the research questions were asking. It was exciting to see what the results are that you guys get. And a question, because we are all at home, and you have your lab in the basement was, what is the chart behind you on the wall in your basement laboratory. So these are my stickies that remind me of long term goals that I don't want to forget so they don't often change. But the other day I did pull down a couple so that that felt pretty good because, um, yeah, this is, I'm sure for many people this has been a very unusual time of working at home and balancing life work family, everything. And so it's nice to feel like you've made some small accomplishments. And just to wrap it up, I wanted to ask, do you have kind of something you'd like to tell people out there watching that they've been interested in this type of field what is some advice that you'd give them. Yeah. So, you know, I might have already mentioned this but I feel like it's important enough to reiterate. I feel like it's important to to recognize that succeeding in science is about working hard, being creative, kind of letting your ideas shine, right. And you are going to face lots of obstacles, if that's the path you choose, partly because some of your ideas will fail. You know, you might struggle with certain tools you need. Maybe your ideas will be discounted, which is unfortunately what we hear happens for our colleagues of color. So, I think, you know, systematically, we can do more to make it a more supportive environment, and also make it more inclusive. At this time, if you are interested, I would say, you know, don't let people tell you you can't do it. It really is about a passion for creativity, a passion for problem solving, and then what is going to get you to that level of success is just continued hard work and diligence. Great. Well, thank you so much. That's our time for today. And you talked about so much, your research, precipitation moving through the atmosphere, if then she can ambassador program. And there's so much more that you probably have research on the horizon that we look forward to hopefully getting you as a speaker for an explore series talk. So you can tell us a little bit more about like in depth your research and stuff like that. For everybody who has tuned in tonight, we really appreciate your support and continual support on this venture. So we'll send out a survey if you can share any feedback, we really appreciate it. And thank you, Adriana for talking with us tonight. Thank you so much. There are some virtual programs and resources available through your car science education, and we'll have the links up on the closing out slides. But for now we wish you a very good evening and we look forward to seeing you again.