 Okay, Jim I thought we'd just start out with because this whole segment is really about how COVID is affected either climate change or the research into climate change. And I thought yours was a great example, but I think first, I don't know whether I would describe it but I'd rather have maybe you describe it just sort of briefly the purpose of your research, why you're up in the Arctic and what that means to climate change research. Sure. So I'm an oceanographer and a lot of my work centers in the polar regions in in the Arctic. Much of my work has been focused on the retreat of the seasonal sea ice and what that means for the overall system. One of my specialties is ocean surface waves and those waves are really increasing as the as the Arctic melts and as the sea ice retreats, leaving open water behind. That open water is real estate for waves to form and the waves are getting quite a bit bigger in recent years so I spend a fair amount of time maybe on average one or even two months a year in the Arctic conducting some of this research and making measurements and putting instruments in place and whatnot. And then, you know, the rest of the time I teach at the university and work on data analysis and trying to understand what all this all the data means. And what's the practical effect of this retreat of ocean sea ice. The retreat of sea ice which is happening every has been happening every summer for a long time and it is on increasing in its extent so that the sea ice is going further and further back to the north every summer. And also it's happening earlier in the season and persisting later in the season. That that signal opens up the ocean to to receive the sun's rays directly. So there's a lot of heating that's happening in the ocean because the ice isn't there to reflect the sun's rays anymore. And that of course has these feedback mechanisms because then the ocean gets warm and then once the oceans warm it can melt more ice or it makes it harder for the ice to be free freeze when the winter comes. And then the open ocean also. It means that waves conform whenever there's a storm and wind is blowing across the water now the water conform waves, whereas if the ice was there the wind would move the ice around it would cause the ice to drift and move around. And once those waves form they can they can do a few different things they can propagate and end up at the edge of the ice and then they can go into the ice and penetrate into the ice and they cause the ice to break up. And that can have feedbacks because once the ice breaks up a little bit it's more prone to melt and so then more ice can retreat and then more waves can form. There's one feedback mechanism. The other thing the waves can do is they can they can go to the coast and when they get to the coast they can cause erosion just like they do any other coastline around the world. It's particularly strong in the Arctic because the Arctic coast generally have been in a very low wave environment there have not been big waves, you know, historically, and now that the ice is retreating so fast. Now that these big waves and that when they make it to the coast they're much bigger and the coastlines are being pretty dramatically affected. The coastlines in the Arctic are also unique in that they're mostly made of permafrost. And so, as much as they can be eroded they can also just be melted and the and the coast will just sort of fall apart if there's any warm water that inundates the coastal region then the land basically just melts because it was only held together by by being frozen. And does this affect not to get us to steer us off course too much but presumably this affects indigenous communities to live along the coast. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean that's one of the most immediate impacts is those communities are already having to pick up and retreat and move their roads or move portions of their infrastructure, you know, roads being washed out and things like that and their, their access to the ocean boat ramps and things like that, which are really important for their, their subsistence harvesting. You know those kinds of coastal infrastructure are very vulnerable and there's a lot of change happening rapidly. The, the average rate of retreat of the Arctic shorelines is about two meters per year. And in some places it's 10 meters in a single year that the shoreline is just marching backwards towards the land. It's really remarkable. So, so how'd you get the news. Well, talk about how COVID-19 affected your latest trip. So, in the fall of 2019, we did an expedition along the Arctic coast and put out a total of 12 moorings to measure the water temperatures and to measure the wave heights throughout an entire annual cycle, a seasonal cycle from summer when there's open water in this retreating sea ice to winter when the ice comes back and then again the next summer we want to understand that seasonal cycle and how these warmer water and increased open water and less sea ice how that's all working together. And so before the pandemic we put all these moorings out. And then the pandemic hit, and we had plans for the fall for fall of 2020 to go and pick up all 12 of those moorings. And this is a case where if you don't recover the moorings you don't get the data. You don't, you know, it's a total loss if you don't get them back. These are below the surface so that they can safely withstand the winter ice. And so we have no connection. We have no remote connection to them. There is no telemetry. There's no way to get this data back. There's no satellite feed that goes up there. Exactly so without recovering them all that data would be lost and you know it's very unique data set, you know, very climate relevant data set and if we weren't able to go to pick up these moorings we wouldn't be able to get the data back and in fact we would never be able to get it back because these moorings each had a set of batteries that were separate from the instruments recording the data. Another set of batteries there for recovery. And the way it works is when we get close to the mooring we can send it a sonar signal and tell it to come to the surface. It actually releases a messenger line to the surface. And if that battery fails, then we're never able to trigger that recovery sequence or to find it again. So we have this critical need to get these moorings back this year. And after the pandemic had started and a few months into the overall response to the COVID-19 crisis, the National Science Foundation came up with a series of protocols for what research could still be done during the pandemic and what would need to be postponed. And they had a ranking system for what is the highest priority. And we were designated at the priority one because this data would otherwise be lost and it's long term data, right? It's a whole annual cycle. And so that allowed us to begin the process of trying to plan how we would do this research during COVID. It didn't mean it would just automatically, you know, we'd get to be able to do it to go get the moorings. And it at least put us in a position to start the planning. And then we spent the next several months working with the research vessel and the captain and crew of the research vessel that we had planned to use to establish a set of protocols for how we would do this. In the end what we did is we did successfully go get these moorings and get the data back. We flew to Alaska and when we arrived in a lot, we tested before we went, arrived in Alaska with our negative tests that allowed us to enter the state. And then we went to the port where the ship comes in and out and where they get their supplies and fuel and everything. And we quarantined there for two weeks. In quarantine, all the members of the science team were quarantined separately so that if any one person had a positive test, then it wouldn't take the whole mission down, right? That person would just go home or it won't be quarantined until they could safely go home. So, I was a lot of time just sitting in and we rented these apartments and we just sat there for two weeks. And for the most part, we're able to continue some of our regular jobs, you know, do things by zoom. And I spent a lot of time looking at data from our previous project. We got three series of tests during the quarantine to make sure that we weren't developing something. And then we were able to board the ship and everyone else who was going to board the ship who were the ship's crew, the professional mariners who run the ship, all the way down to the cook and the dishwasher. They had all been doing the same thing separately from us, everyone separate from each other. So we finally can board the ship. And that was in the middle of September about how we can do that. And then we actually start the trip. The trip was much, much longer than it would have been. Normally we would use the Port Gnome, Alaska, and that's in the Bering Strait and it's the furthest north that a large ship can come into port. It's the furthest north deepwater port in the state of Alaska where you can get fuel and food and provisions. And Gnome had closed this year during the pandemic because they didn't want to introduce COVID-19 to that community. In the end they did have a few cases. There is air travel to Gnome and they were being very careful, but they still had a few cases. But they asked us specifically not to use the port and not to come up. So we had to honor that. So we had to drive all the way around and we started the port of Seward, Alaska instead. This added 10 days on to the front of the trip going around and it's another 10 days on to the back of the trip. So in the end, the way to just encapsulate is in the number of days this was originally planned before the pandemic to be an 18-day trip. In the end it was a 50-day trip with all the quarantine and the extra transit, all this extra time. So it really turned into a much, much longer expedition. Are there any other ways in which COVID is affecting other research you plan to do? I think you mentioned something about studying hurricanes on the east coast. Yeah, I've had several projects postponed and in the end the decision to postpone was largely made as to whether there was already equipment that was deployed and collecting data that would be critical data that would be lost if we weren't able to go out. And if that wasn't the case, if anything could be postponed, then the guidance was to postpone it. So we have a project that was supposed to be this year that was studying the hurricanes arriving on the east coast. And of course it was a really dramatic hurricane season, right? We made it all the way through the alphabet very quickly. A lot of activity at times there were three or even four systems, three or four storms moving and swirling around out there. It was a very active season. And so it would have been a great one to study and, you know, there's a clear need to understand how the warming climate is really driving these really active hurricane seasons and, you know, where and how they make landfall to understand all that. But we had to postpone that entire project because it was a new start. So it wasn't something that, you know, we had already put out equipment, already had a data record started. And so we just moved the whole thing to the right a year. We'll get started next year. And, you know, next year might not be every hurricane season is different. I think the overall trend is that it'll be a very active hurricane season again next year, but it could be quite different. Anyway, so on the one hand I was disappointed to have that, to have lost that opportunity. On the other hand, you know, I don't think the hurricanes, they're not going to shut off anytime soon. So we will get a chance to, you know, do that project. I think in the end that project will be successful. But we had to postpone that. You know, I wanted to turn a little bit to sort of this, this idea of the political controversies over COVID-19. I'm just wondering whether, whether you've seen an increase in what we might call the politicization of science. That has come about either because of COVID-19 or climate change. Do you see any impact there? I think there's a lot. I know a lot of people have been talking about it and there's a lot that's been written about it. I certainly feel it in my specific area of work. You know, I've long felt that if people were able to go to the Arctic and experience it in person the way I've been, that it would really change some minds. It's remarkable. You know, I've only been working up there about 10 years. And in those 10 years, I've seen really dramatic changes. And to go to those communities and the villages along the northern coast of Alaska and talk to people and talk to them and hear what they've seen in just a generation. You know, what their grandparents and what their parents grew up with and what they see now for CIS. The change is so rapid and so dramatic. And it's just not something you can deny. And so to see all of that and yet know there are people out there who still refute and deny climate change is really frustrating to spend so much time working up there to be away from my family to be, I don't know, just putting all this effort in and know that for some people it's just not registering for them. You know, the urgency of the situation. So that that is frustrating and I do think that I imagine some health care workers have felt the same thing, you know, during during COVID-19 they felt like they are working themselves to the bone as hard as they can and yet there are others who are not not taking it seriously and not taking precautions. And the other analogy that's been made that I think really resonates for me is is how, you know, a small amount of individual inconvenience and have this cumulative effect right so I mean what we're being asked in COVID if we're, you know, we're not first line responders and we're not, we're being asked to wear a mask. Not very hard, right. You know, there are lots of jobs you do where you might have to wear protective equipment anyway right if you're working a shop you have to wear eyeglasses and you have to wear gloves and you have to wear ear protection I mean you know so we're being asked to do something simple like that and I think we climate change some of the solutions are just to drive less and to be more thoughtful and efficient about you know how we use energy and what we do and you know those small things. Not a lot to ask for an individual person and what an individual person does doesn't always have a huge effect but altogether the cumulative effect can be enormous can be really meaningful. So, it's been frustrating to see another arena, you know I've seen the climate change arena where we haven't been able to get there we haven't been able to have collective action that that gets us where we need to be to see that play out again and another arena like COVID-19 is has just been really frustrating and downright depressing honestly. I'm wondering whether there's even a compounding effect of one upon the other, but the same people who, you know we're downplaying climate change or also downplaying COVID and what effect this has on, you know on science on our, on our, you know, on the community's desire to pursue scientific research. I think there's still a strong desire from someone like myself who's already dedicated, you know a career to this that to keep going and I certainly you know I see a lot of bright spots and the students that I get to work with who are really motivated and really engaged to do science to do it, you know, for the greater good. You know that there's a real, I don't know there's a lot of energy in some of the young people I'm working with and that's wonderful to see and a lot of people who see, you know climate science and climate justice as being very intertwined and talk a lot about scholar activism and so I think there are some I guess I'm not worried that we're going to lose the pipeline of new scientists because of this but I am worried that we're, there's a whole, maybe even half of the public in the US that are not coming along with us as we, you know, we learn and try to figure out how to come up with solutions. And you know if you can't acknowledge a problem. It's really hard to come up with a solution. That's sort of the first part right is just to say we have a problem here and then and then you start trying to figure out how to solve it so that I agree it just it gives one sort of a lot of concern for the future for where we go from here. Are there any, is there any, I had to bring this up but are there any bright spots here. I was talking to a scientist, an oceanographer in Hawaii. And what they were saying was they've noticed that some of the tourist spots where people used to go snorkeling a lot, all of a sudden it really come back there's fish in the sea and the reefs. Are there any, and you know and other people say well we haven't been driving as much so there's less you know pollution. Is that a fantasy or are those real. No, those, those things are real and I think they, they are playing out at the local level, very dramatically in some cases you know less noise pollution less air pollution less, you know less activity and displacing wildlife and those things. And it's great I think, you know, it's going to take a little while before we know just how long the effect stays after you know if we go back to business as usual, once the vaccines are all rolled out let's say I has to even guess but let's say mid 2021, you know much of the US population is vaccinated and business as is back up and running. I don't know if we'll see long term benefits from in the in sort of the overall environmental space and the climate system from having this brief pause in human activity or this brief slow down in human activity. It's unlikely I mean that you know the, the problem that we've created the, the greenhouse gases, the, you know, carbonates in the atmosphere and it's taken us so long to do that it's been such, you know, well over 100 years of that accumulating that, you know, one year of slowing down a little is unfortunately not appreciable in that I know people are studying this and it is it is nice to see some little rebounds here and there but I don't think that in and of itself is going to be appreciable. I do think there are some other bright spots just in terms of this has caused a lot of us to slow down a little bit and and to spend time closer to home to spend more time with our families to reconsider when and why we travel and how much we travel. You know, air travel definitely is a big contributor. You put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere that way. I still travel by air a lot I am definitely guilty as guilty as many others are in terms of my air travel but to realize that you can do an interview like this and you can go to other meetings, you know, remotely I think that and I hope that that will persist that we will do a bit more of that. And we'll just be make some sort of wiser choices or prioritize when we when we actually travel and and when we do not and we're just more efficient with how we do things. And some of the, the actual field work that we just did and had this really long trip, you know, I think it's forced us to think a little bit more about how can we most efficiently do that. The climate data that has been able to keep going during the pandemic that data, these, you know, there's so many data records out there that are really precious in terms of understanding the climate system because they're long term records that keep going. And the ones that have been the easiest to maintain and keep going are the ones that are most automated during during this time in the pandemic where it's hard to send people to see to replace a mooring and it's hard to send people to the remote regions to make measurements. The ones where automated systems are in place that are basically robots and in my arena we work with ocean robots a lot and we've been working on developing them and improving them for many years now. And there's been there's been a lot of progress and I do see, you know, a real role for autonomy and autonomous platforms and robotics to to make a has made a big difference this year and make a big difference going forward and how we sample the earth system and sample the climate and so this moment where we're really restricted has has been a moment for those systems to shine and there's a lot of data that we've still been able to collect because of these autonomous systems and I guess that's been a bright point. In a way it sounds like because of, I don't want to overstate what you're saying but almost because of the limitations that COVID has imposed on us, we see perhaps ways to do research that actually will lower impact on climate change on pollution. Yeah, that's definitely true. It is one of the irony is it's not lost on me that, you know, in order to do some of this climate research we we have to burn fossil fuel and we have to. That that is how we get to some of these remote locations. You know, I, and some cases it just has to be done and you know I think of the analogy in the medical profession where you know sometimes you need to to take a pinprick to get some blood to get the information you need to know what's happening with the patient and so you have done a very small and temporary amount of harm in order to do. Do good to have, you know, to have the information you need and so I hope that the research is the way we do the field work is is in that category but it is a concern and we do look for ways to make our. Our field work as low impact as possible and I agree at this moment is encouraging us to think even harder about how to do that. And it's, you know, forcing us to do it right then necessity being the mother of invention that we are inventing some some novel ways to get this data this year when we otherwise otherwise the option would have been to not get the data at all. Yeah, yeah, you talked about and you touched on a little earlier about the sort of the push and pull between individual and communal risk and responsibility. Have you thought any more about that. Certainly thought a lot about, you know, how, how people make those decisions, you know, for for this trip we went on, I was the chief scientist and so I'm in the leadership role, helping, you know, put together protocol for how we're going to do things and then explaining to people you know here here is here's the program and explaining in a way that you know made it clear that this is these requirements but also this is the reason that we're doing it. And that's pretty easy to do on a smaller scale where you know there were a total of 30 people on board that ship and and you know, explaining to them these are the requirements this is how we're going to do it. It's their job and so that was relatively easy to do but it still was a responsibility to figure out what the protocols are. And I think about how do you get a larger population how do you get the entire United States of America to, to, to get on board with a set of protocols and programs and I think that, you know, that's the role of government and it's a very simple thing than, you know, a leader of a small group of people saying here we're doing this, you know, government is this vast thing, especially the US but it does really need that kind of just simple communication and decision making leadership and I think it's been noticeable that we haven't had the leadership to, to explain to the general public like this is, you know, what needs to do and we're all doing it and let's get on board and let's get this done and I because I think these things where you have, you know, relatively low individual risk, but large collective risk and a relatively modest set of things that can be done by individuals that would make a big difference to the whole community. So the things where you do need these, you know, societal cultural pressures and leadership and you need, you need government to step in and I think that's exactly what we need to respond to the climate crisis and we could have had enough of it, right, there's so much more to be done. And so I am not a policy person, you know, I'm, I'm a scientist, I do the calculations and the measurements and the numbers but I do see this huge role for policy and leadership that has been lacking. But any other issues you'd like to raise about climate change or the Coronavirus and how that's affected you and what you want to do. I would just say that it has certainly taken a lot of the things that we were planning to do this year and and force them to be postponed or paused. It has given me a lot of frustration and a lot of head scratching to try to figure out how to get the most critical things done, you know, data that would otherwise be lost or measurements that we've been making for decades that need to keep going that we wouldn't be able to make. We've been uplifting to see the community of scientists and my colleagues come together and try to find solutions and figure this out. There is a separate from the Arctic work we've been discussing there's a research station that's in the middle of the North Pacific that has been there since World War It was originally a weather station, a weather ship to help with the all the aviation that was happening World War two and it's one of the longer records we have in the ocean, you know, it goes back, you know, the 40s right so the, we were going to lose some data from that system, and there was another group that was able to get out there that really unrelated to our group completely on a volunteer basis without any money changing hands they they installed our whole new system for us and they were able to do they really helped us out. And they did it just because it was the right thing to do. And, you know, it just felt like okay, you know we can we can rally around important things and get things done together so you know, there is though there's definitely plenty of hope and I've had new students to work with this year's new graduate students starts to start and seeing the students really have all this enthusiasm to get started on new projects and to work on these issues and and to start to really build in ideas about climate justice and social justice into their science that that does give me a bunch of hope and I think the crisis that we're in this moment wouldn't have brought that out of some of these people certainly even myself as much without, you know, without having it without having the crisis bring everything to a focal point so there has been some there's some silver linings there. Yeah, yeah. Well Jim, I want to thank you for for Dr Thompson I want to thank you for the time that you've given us here today, really appreciate your thoughts.