Ice and Fire
Listen to climate change in Alaska through place-based narrative.
Ice and Fire is a podcast that uses audio storytelling to share cryosphere change as the global climate warms. The cryosphere is all of Earth's frozen surface water including frozen freshwater lakes, glaciers, permafrost and sea ice -- frozen saltwater.
It only takes a small temperature increase for water to melt or thaw from solid into liquid form, yet a cascade of impacts result when we lose ice to fastly flowing liquid.
Season one emphasizes the significance of glacier melt, and connects listeners to distant glaciers rapidly responding to anthropogenic climate change through dialogue with researchers, traditional knowledge-bearers, and by sharing audio of ice-melt in real time.
Season two, available now, is all about permafrost thaw.
Ice and Fire
roping up
In mini-episode four, we listen to part of the glacier travel story shared in the book Do Glaciers Listen? for a second time. Frank Olive from the University of Alaska Fairbanks shares risk mitigation strategies, like roping up to avoid injury during crevasse falls.
topics and purpose: safety, why we rope up for travel on snow-covered glaciers
terms defined: crevasse, snow bridge