 Good morning everyone or afternoon or evening depending on where you're tuning in from today. Thanks for joining us for this NCAR Explorer series conversation called Hurricanes, Clouds, and Wildfires, A Changing Climate and the Impact on Our Kids. Today we have our panelist Dr. Melissa Burt from Colorado State University, Dr. Emily Fisher from Colorado State University and NCAR scientist Dr. Rosa Marios Berrios. Hi everybody. Hi. Hi. And my name is Dr. Lorena Medina-Luna and I am an education designer and lead organizer for the Explorer series at the National Center for Atmospheric Research or NCAR which is a world-leading organization dedicated to the study of the atmosphere, the earth system, and the sun. And today we're all coming virtually from our homes so we're happy that you can join us in letting us into your own homes or wherever you might be tuning in from. Throughout the event you'll be able to ask questions and engage with interactive polls so I see some of you have already started doing that through our Slido platform. So if you scroll down this page you can join Slido and answer also some of our word clouds that we have and the polls. The word cloud currently is how are you feeling about climate change and we'll come back to this word cloud later in the conversation today. This will be recorded and available through our NCAR Explorer series website so if you'd like to share it with your family and friends or colleagues definitely welcome to do so in a few days. And let's go ahead and meet our panelists. Thank you so much everybody for joining us this morning here in Colorado. And Dr. Melissa Burt, let's go ahead and start with you. You're a scientist at Colorado State University and you work on understanding the Arctic. Can you tell us a little bit more specifically what it is that you've studied? Yeah, thanks Lorena. Thank you for having me and I'm happy to be a part of today's conversation. So in my research I look at the role of clouds essentially in Arctic climate change in particular kind of looking at the interactions that occur between the clouds and the sea ice during the fall and winter times because this is one of the strongest periods where we're seeing amplified warming in this region. I also look at you know the influence of clouds on the Arctic system, how Arctic climate change influences and impacts our larger global climate. And you know one thing that I guess I'll say here is that you know climate change is something that is really visible in the Arctic. It has been warming for decades significantly more than the rest of the earth and these these polar regions I would say are kind of the early indicators to what climate change is really going to look like for us here on the earth. And what I've learned a lot and I know this is going deeper than what you asked but what I really learned in talking with people you know who live in these communities is that they've had to really think through you know what does their environment look like, how has it changed over the generations? Thinking about the places that they love, the things that they like to do, even just their way of life has really been altered from climate change so far over the last few decades and that impacts you know the ways that they they hunt and they gather their food, it impacts the ways in which they transport either through boat or you know on sleds on the ice. I mean even having them think about you know how do they build their homes and so you know one of the things that I think is important to talk about here is that climate change yes we saw it starting to happen in the Arctic but it's no longer an Arctic issue at all. So it's something that we need to think about you know locally, regionally in the places that we actually live in here. Great thank you and if we go locally you know Colorado had a lot of wildfires last year there was a lot and I could see the smoke like outside of my house it was far away but it was close to a lot of homes and Dr. Emily Fisher you work on understanding the impact of wildfires at Colorado State University and I've seen you in action with the C-130 the NSF NCAR C-130 plane going out to to study wildfires can you tell us a little bit more closer to home how have the changes in our climate impacted wildfires and what do you what do you specifically work on in wildfires understanding wildfires? Sure hi everybody I'm Emily and I'm a faculty member up here at CSU for those of you who are in Boulder. So my research group studies a lot of different aspects of wildfires all the way from how our house climate changing the conditions that support wildfires and what will we expect moving forward through what's the composition of wildfire smoke how does that change with time what are you breathing when you're within hours of a wildfire versus two days downwind those kinds of questions where does wildfire smoke travel when areas are burning so what are the predominant transport pathways of smoke what regions are susceptible to other regions with extreme wildfires and then my team finds a lot of interest and joy in collaborating with epidemiologists and economists to try to understand who's exposed when that's the atmospheric science piece and then passing that information along to help us understand what the health impacts are of smoke and what are sort of the full suite of impacts when a community is impacted by smoke. So I like to study things that I can see and so my research group works on a lot of different air pollutants but it's really hard to ignore wildfires now and so so those of you who were in Colorado last summer right it was we had an extreme wildfire burn year by by any measure the fires grew very rapidly right and they you know at least the one up here by our house grew almost till it was fuel limited right the Cameron peak fire and became the largest fire in Colorado history so between summer 2018 flying around in the C-130 into wildfire smoke and then summer 2020 where my family was was directly impacted by the the smoke I was really rattled sort of by these large wildfire seasons but at the same time these large wildfire seasons are really no surprise so you know the conditions for example in Colorado last year the you know very extreme drought warm temperatures right that that aridity has to has been over the last 30 40 years associated with extreme or burn area on the high end and so it really was no surprise what happened last year here in Colorado when you look at the historical context we just had to have an ignition source or a few of them so that's that's what my research has focused on lately with respect to fires and moving forward I'm really interested in in working with teams on communication around wildfire smoke how do we protect ourselves how do we protect our communities because they'll certainly will be more fires moving forward great thank you so much and Dr. Rosimar you're a scientist at NCAR but you're also from Puerto Rico who have been impacted by hurricanes and you know hurricanes are pretty devastating but can you tell us a little bit of more about what it is that you study specifically on hurricanes sure thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today my name is Rosimar Rios Berrios I am a research meteorologist in the mesoscale micro scale division of NCAR and like Lorena said I grew up in Puerto Rico I lived there until 2012 so most of my life so far was spent there in Puerto Rico and every summer who are always on the lookout waiting to see is there going to be a hurricane coming through how and if the if it doesn't come through will it get closed closing off to give us impacts or not closing off that we can still have a sunny day and go and enjoy a regular day right Puerto Rico being a small island means that just a teeny tiny change in the path of a hurricane can mean anything from very devastating winds and rain to just a sunny day with a hurricane just very nearby so yeah growing up and just experiencing that made me very curious about why we couldn't just say for certain like yes the hurricane will come in five days um just get ready and I thought well let me just do it better I'm gonna go there and stand in front of your tv and give you the perfect forecast and we all like quickly realize that it's a lot more complicated than just standing in front of a tv and giving you a forecast I have a lot of respect for those people who do it but behind the scenes what goes on is that our atmosphere is so complex that predicting it can be very difficult and when it comes to hurricanes if there is just so many factors at play and that's what motivated me to go into a research career where I am just behind the scenes trying to do the research that will lead to a better prediction of hurricanes and have it rainfall now I mean the future and so now I live in Colorado and I Colorado doesn't experience hurricanes right but all of my family is still in Puerto Rico so I'm in 2018 was a pretty devastating year around the world with many hurricanes but for my family in particular Hurricane Maria left them without power without communication I could not get in touch with them like for a month I believe it was in the end they did not have power for exactly a hundred days and right after Hurricane Maria a study came out telling us that maybe in the future we will see more of those hurricanes like Maria we don't know if we will see more hurricanes in total but we may expect to see more of the very strong hurricanes and that together with 2020 which was a record breaking hurricane season was really a wake-up call to all of us who study hurricanes to start learning more or not start because there is a lot of work going into it but really learn more about how our hurricanes will be affected in the future by climate change yeah so from the Arctic to the tropics there's an impact on what all you study and you've been scientists for a while now you've done research programs of students going into PhD programs postdoctoral and now research scientists and along the way you've also become moms and I'm curious how has it changed the way that you've thought about the impacts of the research that you're working and how that's going to impact the kids that you're raising in the war in the world today with these changes in the climate Melissa can you go first yeah you know and for me you know Rosie and Emily talked about our very local things that we experience where we live right now right and although I studied the Arctic you know in talking with people there um you know I've seen that the climate has been changing right for a very long time and I think for me as a mom you know you want your kids to have you know a better you want everything in your kids life to be better than what you had right you want them to be able to experience everything that you love and you enjoyed in your life so that they could really root the the full benefits of those activities and for I think in becoming a mom it's made me it's it's like fueled me in a way to want to continue to work really hard on solving these problems I think our kids look to us sometimes it's probably superheroes right like moms can do everything and we can do a lot of things right and we really will work hard to kind of solve these problems but we alone can't be the only ones to solve the problem and so I think for me it's just really challenged me to to want to continue to do the research that I'm doing but also to use my voice in a way to have conversations with people so that they know that they have a responsibility or even a role to play in trying to you know move things forward as we it was as we talk about like tackling climate change in that way so I think she has just given me this fuel in a way that just kind of makes me not want to give up even when I'm tired even when it's devastating to to hear about and to watch and to see but to really like give me the light and the hope to want to just continue to move forward. Thank you and how about um Rosie Maher or Emily? Go ahead Rosie. Okay so um my son is only a year old so um it's been quite the well right already but he was born in 2020 every interesting year by all means but one of the things that happened was that and that Emily mentioned was that we had record breaking like wildfires in Colorado and the smoke was very bad and I had a four month baby when one of the biggest when the biggest fire was burning and even though I wasn't very close to here the wind was transporting all the smoke here and I love taking my baby outside and that's something that I am instilling in him the love for nature and I think he's getting it because he was very cranky this weekend because he couldn't get outside slight note um the point being that it was just really scary the fact that it was so smoky and that the air quality was so bad and that his lungs were so delicate that I could not take him outside and that was just very scary to me and it made me think about like how is his future going to be like what is is he gonna be experiencing if we continue with the trend that we're going in terms of our global warming at the same time there were hurricanes and like unfortunately like making landfall in the United States making it close to Puerto Rico and I was just thinking about all the places where I would love to take him and that I may not be able to take him because they may be like affected by flooding or by very strong winds and so in a sense becoming a mom like Melissa said it it like in a way it made me think like I really want to keep fighting for him even when I'm tired and exhausted and frustrated but at the same time it really like brought the feeling of being scared for the future like a lot more intensely than it already was so um I also have two daughters my my kids are older um not that much older though six and nine now um so kindergarten and third grade so we're at a different stage um we so that last last summer we were backpacking um right right by where the Cameron Peak fire started and so we were we were scary close and had to run out um and so that experience you know really really has stuck with my children it's not surprising but it you know really has their nervous about going hiking this summer still um and then you know all summer sort of um having the smoke come over and change the light right and you know all the experience of of uh the the wildfires this summer you know I would try to time my runs this summer to go under the smoke right so I'm I'm looking at the air quality and I'm thinking all right we're in the yellow I'm gonna go for a run right now for my uh my mental health here and so you know you go running and you know you just come home and you look up right and I could see the plume every pretty much every afternoon right and there were many afternoons where I would just sit there and I just start crying on my front steps um because that's the feeling of climate change right so not that every fire can be blamed on climate change and you know but but this this feeling of more um natural disasters more risks for our kids the timeline of change is the same timeline um on which the three of us are going to be in our intensive parenting stage from from taking little kids up through high school graduation right that's the timeline for action that's the timeline for um expected very large changes in our in our world and so that's sort of the feeling of climate change and um so I would say um I don't know that my research portfolio is really changing because I have kids right I only have so many skills to bring to the table as a professor but but I'm certainly um crystallizing in my mind like to work on the most important things and to uh communicate uh what what the data really means right beyond beyond just numbers and axes what these timelines really are in terms of our lives and I think Emily you are saying that that feeling like you know we all felt that feeling of this past summer and I think also the visuals like we can look outside and see what it looks like sometimes it looks pretty right in a way and you can have a conversation about what's actually happening but also I think you know I know your story about what happened last summer and I was talking to my daughter who's five right and she said what were they doing they were hiking and even even Mia who wasn't there on that event that you all were experiencing she said is that going to happen when we go hiking right so our kids are asking those questions right and you can you can see it on their face that they're concerned even if they don't know how to say the words of what's actually happening but I think again that's what goes back to like wanting us to really think about what's important and fueling us in a way to have a conversation even like what we're having today because it can feel very sad but I think we also have hope because of our kids right and because of the next generations that we can do something about it right there's nothing that ties you more to the future than having kids right you're 100% in when you have kids so that's also you know that is how I feel too it's like alright let's fix this yeah and Emily I've actually seen that you've taken your kids to field campaigns so they're aware that you're doing studies that you're investigating scientific questions that have an impact and it sucks that you know they saw firsthand the wildfire smoke that you typically fly over or around um through the C-130 and I have a question um one from John and we won't show it exactly because I'm going to rephrase it a bit but it's kind of talking about you know the soils that are drying the loss of moisture and content and you talked about you know having that environment that would likely be prone to more wildfires and I guess I wonder do you agree that there is more drying landscapes that are fueling wildfires the question is if you can share your thoughts about about something like that or so um when you look back on sort of year to year variability or inter-annual variability in burn area for different western u.s. ecosystems the um environmental drivers that uh correlate with uh larger burn areas vary depending on the location so in some areas um winter precipitation the prior winter precipitation is really important in some areas you know it's spring and summer temperature that's really important in the Rockies in particular in the rock that the sort of the our ecosystem that runs you know from Montana down south of us here right in in our area in the best predictor of the inter-annual variability in burn area is aridity and so that's when I say um for Colorado for last year it was sort of right in step with what you would expect so there's we don't understand everything how everything will change moving forward in a warmer world but one thing we do know is that we are likely to have for the united states a more thirsty atmosphere and so so um if all the same um relationships hold so between year to year um changes in burn area and environmental conditions we expect to have drier years moving forward and we'd expect more extreme burn area in the Rockies based on that and so that's where that's coming from it's a it's a paper by my student Steve Brie that was published in Earth's Future last year but each ecosystem is different and you have to you have to look ecosystem by ecosystem and right Cumans also start fires we also try to put them out um there's also different land management choices that can be made right and so it's not the only driver of changes in burn area but it's certainly one of them. Great and thank you John for that question and I know we're talking about a lot of the feelings that come about with or changing climate and we actually have a word cloud about it and then followed by a question um but Paul or Dan would you be able to share with us the word cloud of um how are you feeling about climate change we have the biggest one so as a word clouds if there's many people that put in similar words then we have um the word get larger and they see we're trying to troubleshoot but essentially the biggest one is concerned there's people that are anxious they're scared they're frustrated they're worried um change needs to happen so we can do a lot better and then I want action some people are heartbroken and I've heard you all on the panel also say some of these words and you know one of the questions that we have is you know it says um from Layla it says I'm terrified about talking to my son about climate change because I'm afraid that I can't without scaring him I'm an expert do you have any suggestions and Melissa you kind of started to talk about this already and thank you Paul and Dan for sharing that word cloud um but you you guys started talking about you know talking with your five year old it's like am I gonna get caught in a wildfire if I go hiking you know there's already these fears they're young but they understand so how do you all talk with your kids are you coming off me Emily okay I'll go first I guess I'll say you know um like I said my daughter is five I think you know I guess the first thing that I would say I believe that was Layla who asked the question is that we have to talk about it because it's important right it's an important issue that our kids need to be aware of and from for my daughter who's five you know we we go out kind of similar to what Rosie was saying we go out we explore the outdoors we talk about um you know the beauty the creatures that are out there like what are they experiencing you know how they do different things and I don't go into the deep dive as to like the devastation about climate change right now but I think just getting her to have a um an understanding of how we can be like better stewards of the earth is something that's really important in the conversations that I have I'll say there are a number of different like books and resources that actually kind of get at some of that angst like if you are worried or not if you are because you are worried about climate changing your kids are also worried about climate change um there are ways that you can talk about it just in an overall perspective just to get them to think about it and to ask questions and then there's a good way to have a you can say that we're working on it right we we know what the problem is we have solutions in a way we just need to make sure that these solutions are enacted right and so giving our students or giving our students giving our kids um the notion to know that we can do something about it I think is something that's really is is really important I'll pass it to someone else. Thank you Melissa your little one's already having these conversations as you're having the conversation with us so yeah Emily um yeah I can I can speak to this a little bit so um you know my older daughter right when she she was and it was probably a year and a half ago you know she learned about climate change in school and she came home and she said this is real no it's like this is real and and she started crying right and and that's the right reaction that is the right reaction to what's happening right and and not to sort of to wallow in sadness right because it's not exactly my personality but but um it's real right and and like every other important thing that's real death puberty like you have to talk to your kids about them right and and so whether that's hard and you might mess it up the first time you still have to talk to them about it so um so my daughters I explain climate change to them and I explain the cause right so I say we burn fossil fuels when we do that we emit gases they stay in the atmosphere for a long time they build up like a blanket now we're sweating ice caps are melting sea levels rising and there's more likely to be fires right but I but I so I explain the the where where the problem comes from right and then that we because we understand the problem and we cause the problem we can solve the problem just like other problems in our household if you cause it and you understand it like you've broken something often you can fix it right especially with the parents help and so that how I reassure my kids is to tell them that I'm working on it I'm doing everything I possibly can to get society to pay attention to this this issue the other thing that I talk with my kids about is that um that we can't solve it ourselves this is a society problem this is a community level problem this is something that we'll have to come together to solve but that people do hard things and this will be one of the hard things that we'll have to do soon um and the other thing I do is I just remind them of it all the time I'm like shut the lights off for climate change you care about climate change shut the lights off right I remind them I remind them in a mom way uh sort of daily thank you and Rosimar you have a little little one I know you mentioned kind of he loves to be outside and that conversation you know will happen but do you still talk a little bit like how do you how do you approach that so yeah my my baby I still call him my baby when I was into toddlerhood he's barely learning to talk now but you know that the thing with children is that they understand way more than we think and that's why we need to have these conversations and so yes I'm learning as I go but like just like Emily said let's turn off the lights for climate change we also do things like let's go for a walk instead of like playing with electronics and let's um play outside let's enjoy the sunny day right and those are individual actions that I'm starting to take with hopes that they will like inform him but something that it's very important to is that we listen to our children right mine is barely talking so not much to listen there in terms of how they feel about climate change but for those older ones we need to listen to them because we may think that they're feeling scared and that may be very true I mean we saw it in the cloud but in the world cloud we also saw things like we need to take action we need to do something and maybe that's how they feel too maybe they will ask us well like I'm scared but I'm wondering if we know that this is a problem why aren't we doing something about it right um you would be surprised by how much wisdom there is in our little ones thoughts and so I would say that well we may be like afraid of scaring them when we talk about climate change we also need to listen to them and ask them how they feel about it thank you and we do have a poll that people were responding to um Paul or Dan if you can put up the poll question that says what percentage of people in the US talk about climate change at least occasionally so we have 35 percent as the one that most people have selected 10 percent 50 percent and 75 percent and I think um the the assessment that has been done says that it has that it is at 35 percent that people will talk occasionally at least about it and then can we see the other poll we see the other poll that asks how many people in the US are concerned about climate change and I know that people here have been saying that they've been concerned as well as we've seen with the word cloud and 63 percent is the majority of people who have voted 42 percent 27 and 71 percent and indeed it is um according to the assessment that's been made it's 63 percent are concerned about the changing climate which is it's important because we have it as a way to be able to communicate if people are aware of it then we can feel reassured that hopefully we can all as a society be working towards making these changes um thank you can I add um one of the reasons that you know the three of us are here and we kind of co-founded this new initiative called Science Moms is that yes we know that you know 63 percent of people in the United States are concerned about climate change but when you specifically ask moms about it it's 80 percent of moms are very concerned about climate change and so we know that this is a group that really would take that would take action if they feel as though they have the resources to do something about it right they don't have to understand everything about climate change like the nitty gritty details but even just that simple example that Emily uses to talk with her kids about climate change is enough information to get people to want to do something about it and so we've really kind of wanted to provide moms and parents or whoever is listening with those tools that they need to be able to have a conversation because using our voice is just so important um in in this in this way to really think about this issue yeah and thank you for bringing that up so one of the other things you know Mother's Day is coming and we kind of we're strategic about working with you all since we work with you as with NCAR works with CSU NCAR works with scientists scientists are at NCAR and we've had some of you in our panels in the past but we haven't actually touched upon the personal side of the science that you do so I appreciate that you bring up Science Moms because it is a campaign that's starting just imagine you're one of the newer people that are there also Latin ex Hispanic so you have that connection with another community like I'm Latina so it's a community that we don't really talk about things so it's like how do we bring this conversation up and we have a video if we can play it in a bit um and because Emily you kind of talked about you know while you're all raising your kids this is the prime time and by the time they're older you know this is the biggest impact that that they're going to face is the changing climate and the environment that they live in so I'm going to have my t-shirt ready because I've watched this multiple times and it still gets to me because now I'm expecting to be a mom in mid-summer so it's it's it's touching me definitely a lot more than it would I think otherwise even though I do have nieces and nephews and cousins and everything it's just it's more impactful as it's happening now now I have to like watch out for somebody else um but Paul or Dan can you please share the video by the time as a scientist I know by the time she takes her first breath nine billion more tons of carbon pollution will be in the air when she takes her first steps wildfires will have burned millions more acres she could have explored the day she gets her first pet there are thousands of newly extinct species she'll never meet the night she forgets to call the night of her first heartbreak her future home floods for the first of many times by the time a child born today goes to college it may be too late to leave them the world we promised our window to act on climate change is like watching them grow up we blink and we miss it it gives you something to think about in terms of the images that you might have of your own family or if you have kids or your neighbor's kids like what it is like to have these big things happen in life and they're correlated with the changing environment because yeah but Lorena when I even just hearing the words you know if those of you in the audience were able just to hear those words and just imagine you know the first time I watched that video Mia was sitting in my lap and I literally just started crying right it's that moment where it says in a blink of an eye and I think about these first five years have been literally a blink of the eye and so to think that from you know the time that she's born or Lorena you know you're expecting in you know the time your baby is born to the time that they reach adulthood like this is the time that we have in order to truly take action on climate change that's not that that's not that much time right and we probably should have been doing this yesterday right and so you know we really talk about this is that later is too late like this is the moment that we have to act right now and if we can all collectively come together to to use our voice and to you know interrogate at the local the state the national levels to ask not even just ask to really demand for action on climate change like this is what we have to do and to really just you know have those conversations with our friends our family members at our children's schools at our you know our government or with our with our mayor of our town that we may be in or whatever I think it's just really important to have those conversations and that can be really intimidating to reach some of those levels but I think the more and more people that we can have this conversation with and and just thankful for all of you who are here today that's really just the start of how we can really work towards action and to get rid of the gridlock that we've been facing and that we've been feeling as it relates to climate change. Yeah thanks Melissa so you know when I think of motherhood right the the days are long but the years are short right and so it's it's you know you think about it the same as our as our timeline for action here and I think this is what you know putting it in this this framing right is important for us to communicate by you know starting the science mom's initiative I think one thing I've learned is new ways to communicate accurately so that people understand the timelines that we're talking about here with respect to you know changing our energy use and slowing down climate change. Thanks Emily and Melissa and Melissa touched on like the collective action that we need to take and I want to emphasize that a lot of us have mentioned small actions that we take at home right like telling our kids let's shut up the lights for climate change but in reality climate change it's not a me problem it's an us problem and we really have to come together to demand action to demand a transition to more clean energy and that's one of the things that we're trying to convey with science moms is that we really need to all come together we're we're targeting moms right because moms are especially concerned and because just moms have this special ability of getting things done but this is something that really really really affects us all moms that's parents non-parents everyone. And we have another video and hopefully the video will work well for everybody and if not this will be available on the science moms website and you can check out more more videos and also links on our explorer series website but I'll hand it over to Melissa if you can play that one real quick. Humans have been on earth for about 300,000 years but we've only started polluting like this in the last 60. Our pollution stays in the air for thousands of years creating a thickening blanket that traps heat in the atmosphere. That heat causes stronger hurricanes, bigger fires, more frequent floods and the extinction of thousands of species but there's good news to stop the pollution blanket we just have to stop polluting. Go to sciencemoms.com to learn how. Awesome and there's a lot of resources on the web page and I'll just read out loud one of the comments and questions you know that we got one from Kevan. It's very difficult for Thai parents to talk to their children as they're not informed so how do we change that culture here? And I think for me that's that's also a thing it's like we just don't talk about anything we don't talk about that my family much we don't talk about puberty you just kind of kind of just happens and you have to figure it out but climate change is something that's you know it's it's out there it's it's it's an everybody problem but do you guys have any ideas or thoughts on how to talk to change the culture? Well so that is one of the goals of science moms right is for for us to work with professional communicators to craft information that's accurate right like the video you just saw 30 seconds that's the story right that it's it's short it's accurate it is digestible we have a we have some of those videos that are funny right and so that's one of our goals is to help that gap because it is very hard I think you know not just you know there's shade on on on people in my community but we've done a bad job as scientists communicating right and we're not really good at that you know historically and we you know but we need to get better and we need to get better very very fast right so that is the goal of science moms is to make this information on this issue as clear as possible the essentials are there you don't have to understand every nuanced bit of climate science if you do wonderful come join me into a phd in our department I would love to have you but but if you don't have that kind of time and you need to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and you still need to talk to your kids like we have some nuggets here we have myths and facts we have videos we have interviews we have selected sets of books right things that we feel as scientists are education tools we feel comfortable using and so that's one of our goals is to help bridge that because I I agree that it's hard right I have a hard time with my own kids but but that's our goal that's all I would say is that we have put together a lot of things with that in mind and I think we also you know as moms and even as parents you know we ask other parents for advice on so many things right this should be one of those questions this should be one of those areas that we should be asking questions to so we like to think um we like you know moms trust moms for for advice on like the best stroller you know where to take my kid for this you know what's the best school for that or you know whatever it may be and so like just the only way that you can change the culture is to really start having a conversation right and our language and our experience and our communication improves with that practice and so you know I think our videos are also really relatable right it's relatable to the things that we do um as just people and parents and also with with our work it's like it humanizes us as scientists right you know I had a conversation the other day and someone was like wow you're so cool you're just like us and I was like well what were you expecting me to be like you know and so just saying you know we're ordinary people who happen to be scientists as our profession we're moms just like any other moms or parents just like any other parents and so if we can come together on that shared value that we have which is our kids or future kids or whatever it may be like people are so happy to talk about their children right it's the first thing you do is show pictures of your kids right um and so like if we can think about the future of our kids we want our kids to have a better life and here are the steps that we're going to take and we need all of you as people parents whatever it may be to want to be a part of that change and it's not too difficult to ask people or to to really ask our elected officials to do something about it that's their job right you know we're not politicians so we're not making politics we're not doing anything like this right but we can get people to use their voice to ask for that we're asking them to do their job we have the solutions we want we need a more clean energy you know space for all of us yeah and going back to the question we wish we could have the the content in all of the languages so that for example thy parents could like be informed about this right now are all of our content is in English and Spanish so we're hoping that we're bringing this educational message and this powerful message across audiences not just English speaking but Spanish speaking for now as well and we hope that this can help multiple communities and diverse communities in our country especially those that are being affected the hardest to comprehend this information and you know in simple digestible ways and also to inspire action yeah there's a lot of resources out there just a matter of like finding some that that work for you and work for your families and friends and now we have the ucar side the ucp side of ncar has the globe program which is nasa funded program and they have they have books it's called elementary globe books and there are multiple languages not just English and Spanish and they talk about different like air quality climate clouds soils water and they have activities that you know you can do with your kids too um and then we had a comment in the idea as part of the slide or saying you know Denver meteorologist you might not like you might be aware mike nelson he's a co-author of a new short book titled the world's literalist book on climate um so there's a lot of people that are scientists who are publishing they're using their voice to to get like the story aspect so i myself am a scientist geophysics i studied earthquakes but now i do science communication and i think one of the things is how do we tell a story to engage with communities to to make it personal to make it feel like i can connect with what they're saying and that's part of what we do with explorer series is try to work with scientists to talk with general public and to have general public and everybody to be able to to have this engagement in a virtual world it's been through the slide or platform so i appreciate everybody logging on and asking your questions and comments um you know and we'll be back in person hopefully by the by the new year um but i think that's that's the importance is how do we make these connections build stories and share our personal like things that we do as scientists and how it impacts the societies that we live in the communities that are most impacted like you were saying drosimash um and i think you know one other thing that i want to say is that it's important and you know as science science moms we are a diverse group of moms because sometimes it's really important we don't have to know the individuals but if they see someone who looks like us who's providing that information that makes sense to them i think that's one of the most valuable things that can come out of this because you see that this the issue of climate change is something that should matter to you right and so if you see someone who's credible or who you know has similar experiences to you really being able to kind of communicate this message to you that's one of the most important things that i for me that i see as part of this activity is just um it's just getting my voice to to other to other women to other black women who are out there so that they know that climate change is something that does impact their specific community or our specific community yeah and same for me with the hispanic and the spanish speaking communities as well um we we as any other people like have so much information out there and it's just very difficult to discern like what's true what's not and sometimes it's not relatable to us or it's sometimes you know we don't understand it like my parents i don't speak english right so if i were to show them the videos maybe they would not understand all the audio but if the content is in spanish then it's accessible to them and for me that that part is very important as well and i've already received comments like oh it's it's so nice to see a familiar face even though they don't know me but the fact that i look like them that i speak like them that i speak in the language that they speak then they they call me a familiar face and at least some of the feedback i've gotten is that then the message speaks to them and they can feel more connected and more informed and more empowered to take action yeah thank you so much and you know we had another comment from the ideas on slido and they said you know many projections on climate change i look forward look forward until the year 2100 and look far away but when starting my courses i often ask my students whether they might have children in the future and most of these children will they'll be alive in 2100 so thinking about you know you all are scientists right now and whatever our kids decide to do in the future you know i wonder if you have some advice for people who are interested in pursuing careers in atmospheric or related sciences um that you can give us since we're kind of coming up to the top of the hour go ahead Emily let me jump in so um think about it depends on your stage don't shy away from your math and physics and chemistry that's the first one but you also need to be able to write and you need to be able to um see the big picture so yeah so you if if that's if you're interested in pursuing a career in one of these fields you should do it these uh earth sciences are incredibly relevant to society um i can't think of a i can't think of a an earth science field that that doesn't matter very very deeply for society and so we also need all kinds of brains right all kinds of brains um so because these problems are hard and they'll really only be solved by a diversity of perspectives so i'll stop there but yeah be a scientist it's fun it's pretty fun you know and as i say by nature you know we we're all scientists right especially when you think about us as kids right we're so curious about what's happening in the world around us but then sometimes that just gets shut down or shut out for some reason and i would say you know try out things that even just seem this much interesting to you right like don't close doors in a way because you don't know what may come out of that i'll say you know seek out internships right n car has a number of internships that that are pretty awesome and i know changed my life um in an amazing way and i'll specifically shout out the source program for that um but i'll say you know they can be life changing experiences and really opens your eyes up more um broader than anything that you would ever experience typically in school so i think just be open to opportunities um that are out there and and have conversations with people like i get emails all the time that says i just would love to learn more about what you do and how you got here but also understanding that there are many different pathways to get into our field as well so there isn't one right way um to be able to go at it so so to be curious um to be open and to be willing have willingness to actually learn and something i'd like to add is that our field intersects with so many other fields right we heard emily earlier speak about working with epidemiology oh sorry epidemiologists and economists um there is so many people in private industry in wall street in the shipping companies in in so many fields that they come to earth scientists for uh collaborations for um work on like or advice on uh topics that matter to them like if there is a truck traveling across the united state transporting your mayonnaise they need to know about the weather right they need to know about the weather conditions and and so uh our field um intersects with so many other fields and that is something that in my opinion makes it so beautiful because it can appeal to so many of your other interests that you may have right you may like um transportation banking news whatever you want to call it it more than lively intersects with earth science earth sciences and you can make a very unique career path with those intersections of different interests yeah and we'll get bored people get bored yeah and you know i do the science communication aspect of it but there's people that do journalism and they go into news reporting there's artists who will draw like comic books about science you know there's a lot of different mediums to be able to connect with people in different ways um so keep reaching for the stars and you know everybody can have a voice everybody has a voice to be able to share what it is that they need from from their communities and people who who who represent us and with that i just want to say thank you to all of our panelists and thank you to everybody who participated um we had a lot of comments um as we were going through the conversation and i will be sharing all of these with our panelists so thank you so much um and thank you dan and paul for supporting this event um so thank you melissa rosy mara and emily for joining us today happy mother's day yeah thanks for having us and happy mother's day happy mother's day we'll see you all for the next explorer series event and we'll talk to you all soon see ya