Drilling Into Antarctica's Frozen Past (Polar Scientist)

A storm hits ten hours after the helicopter drop, tents bow under the wind, and the generators choke on spindrift—yet the drill keeps turning. That’s the edge-of-the-map reality behind a rare ship‑to‑helicopter ice core mission to West Antarctica, where we joined glaciologist Dr Peter Neff to chase air bubbles that hold the clearest record of our past atmosphere.

We dig into why tiny pockets of ancient air are such powerful climate evidence, how methane and CO2 stayed largely steady for thousands of years before spiking with industrialisation, and why that rate of change matters for heat, oceans, and sea level. Peter breaks down Antarctica’s “three buckets” of science, the stakes at Thwaites Glacier, and what coastal cores can reveal about storms, snowfall, and tipping‑point dynamics that satellites alone can’t capture. From improvising a hand‑controlled generator throttle to coordinating 15 sling loads back to a Korean icebreaker, this is science as endurance, logistics and teamwork.

Beyond the tent walls, we talk about trust: why posting raw field clips on TikTok and Instagram connects new audiences to public‑funded research, and how open communication strengthens policy conversations. We explore what new high‑resolution methane records add to climate models, why the biggest uncertainty is human choice, and how leadership across government and business can turn risk into opportunity. For students and career‑changers, Peter offers practical advice on joining the polar workforce and building skills that matter in the field and the lab.

Subscribe for more unfiltered stories from extreme jobs, share this episode with someone who loves science and adventure, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. What part of the mission surprised you most?

Research: 

https://swac.umn.edu/people/peter-neff

https://peterneff.weebly.com/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=f--szIYAAAAJ&hl=en

Socials: 

https://www.tiktok.com/@icy_pete

https://www.instagram.com/icy_pete

https://www.youtube.com/@icy_pete

linkedin.com/in/dr-peter-neff-6a4b7429

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Transcript

Stakes Of Antarctic Fieldwork

SPEAKER_02 0:01

The intensity dials up to eleven in the space of like two hours where you are, you know, you were on a ship for ten days, you hop on a helicopter, and then you're in Antarctica and there's a storm coming.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

In Antarctica, you don't wait for the perfect conditions. You take the window you're given, or you risk coming all this way for nothing.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Like, okay, well then you're gonna be on the ship for at least another four or five days, because it's gonna have to go all the way through the whole cycle of the weather being perfect again, and that can be two days or five days.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

But making it to the site doesn't mean you're safe.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah, we you know, we're more than a week from any help in this situation. We knew we were putting in our camp actually within 20 or within 10 hours of a storm coming in. Um so we willfully got off the ship to set up into a what was going to be a significant storm.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

No backup, there's no rescue, there's no second attempt. Peter Neff and his team take these risks for something that you can barely see, but has the power to change our future.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

That air gets trapped in the ice sheet as uh as bubbles. There's no other place where you can get past concentrations of carbon dioxide. So we're pretty motivated to go there for those little bubbles, they are a really unique archive of past atmosphere.

Meet Dr Peter Neff

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Hello everyone, and decent greetings. Welcome to another episode of No Ordinary Monday with a fittingly icy story to match. Thank you so much for joining us this week. I'm your host, Chris Baron. And each week I sit down with a guest whose stories about their job are far from ordinary. We explore what things are really like behind the teams, the lessons they've learned along the way, and then we're gonna relive the wildest, most unforgettable stories of their career. Now, before we dive into day, just a very quick note. This is our final episode of the year. Over the next couple of weeks, we're gonna be taking a short break. It's time to retard and refinery go as we had into 2026. We've got some really exciting plans for what's coming up for you guys, and I can't wait to share it with you all in the new year. And because it's that special time of year, I just wanted to mention one small thing. If you guys are feeling in the giving mode, there are three simple, easy ways that you can support the order of mode. First, you can leave it a nice review on your podcast app, it's quick, it's free, and it really helps the algorithm focus above the noise and get notified the letter. Second, you can go with a family member or friend if they can genuinely enjoy these out of stories. Your support is absolutely incredibly appreciated. And even a small country can also cover the cost of keeping the lights on and running the show. To find information on our website under the support show tab, or you can head to buymeacoffee.com for class No Ordinary Monday. Alright, so today's guest is Dr. Peter Neff, a police scientist, climate researcher, and university professor whose work takes up to some of the most extreme and remote places on planet Earth. Peter studies five cores from Antarctica for internet records of Earth's atmosphere to help scientists understand how our planet changed over time and what that might mean for our future. It's the human reality of this work, the logistics, the factor, the responsibility. And explains why doing this work and talking about it openly matters now more than ever. You're listening to No Ordinary Monday? Let's get to the show. Awesome. Um Peter, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah, good. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

No worries at all. Where where in the world are you at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 4:10

I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Twin Cities, right? Smack in the middle of North America. So uh yeah, at the University of Minnesota.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, I mean you're kind of smacking a little bit in the north. I've been to Minnesota in around November. It is freezing. Um The winter is coming for us.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

It's coming tomorrow, I think, actually. This first snow.

Why Share Science On TikTok

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Oh, really? I'm I remember being there for a shoot, and it was some of the cold like it it the the weather report wasn't that cold, but it felt so cold when we were out on the thing. And like you you've been to Antarctica plenty of times. Does Antarctica like really like when you've got like an icy cold day in Minnesota compared to Antarctica, like are they comparable? Or is Antarctica looking at the level?

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Yeah, they're they're they're pretty uh similar at times, and it can be pretty frustrating when you're coming home from Antarctica in January and you get here and it's still snowing and uh and quite cold. But the thing about Antarctica is you're always dressed for it. So you're always prepared for it. You're not just like walking out of the grocery store with a with a you know, just a vest on or something and all of a sudden get blasted.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

But nice, nice. Well, I mean uh one thing that I think stands out about you more than maybe many scientists is um and it's the sort of reason I actually sort of came across you in sense, is you have an amazing social media profile. Um I just wanted to start there because you know most scientists might be known by, you know, their paper and their journals, and I'm and I'm you've done lots of amazing work there as well. But a lot of the public know you from all the stuff you post on TikTok and Instagram. I think you've got is it like 200 over 200,000 followers on TikTok at the moment, which is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, somehow.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, it's amazing. Um and I wonder, just starting with sort of how and why that started and and why you think it's so important to continue it.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, I you know, my my participation in TikTok in particular um came at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was actually uh contacted by a talent agency through Instagram, and you know, my talent is dubious online, but um TikTok was was looking to bring educational uh content creators over to their platform as all of the schools were locking down in the United States and their and their platform was blowing up. Um so certainly happy to dilute the sort of craziness of TikTok, the zeitgeist of humanity, with a little bit of icy science. So, you know, at that time I was probably the only person on TikTok who had content of you know videos of field work in Antarctica, and of course nobody was traveling. So it was a bit unique. And um yeah, you know, I figured out how to balance, I guess, sharing some of the more exciting clips we have from Antarctica that that can pretty easily go viral and and then mix that with some more actual uh depth of you know, talking about what we do with ice cores that we drill in Antarctica and the records of climate that we get from them. So I think people really appreciate the sort of direct view, like like everybody, you know, nowadays I I have an iPhone in my pocket all the time so I can collect videos of what I'm doing. Um and yeah, it's sort of no frills and and simple, but important to document, you know. It it I think with you know more and more going on these days, I don't know that people really understand exactly how we do research in the United States and and that you know, as a university professor, I get funding from the federal government from the National Science Foundation to go do research on behalf of the American people. And um, you know, if we just uh sum that all up in a three-page paper in the journal proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, I mean nobody's gonna see it, right? So outside of the Ivory Tower. So I think it's a great way to write social media for for better or worse has really democratized being able to say what you want and show folks what you're up to. And um, so I mean, if I'm one of the few professors doing that, I feel okay about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

No, it's brilliant. And you and you do as you say, it's um TikTok is an interesting place, and um but at the same time, you you you're directly linking yourself to a younger audience, which I think is phenomenal because as you say, a lot of scientists would do their journal work, their journal work will go into you know journals and publications, and then maybe a science mag, and then maybe a popular magazine may pick up on it. But like again, yeah, your audio your demographic is completely different. And um and the the work that you guys are doing is actually ironically probably going to impact the Gen Z population more than it will impact the the older population, you know? Um it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah. Um well so yeah, basically, you know, yeah, you're you know polar polar scientists, Antarctic scientist. But the I guess the big question is what questions are you guys going down there to answer? Um I guess that is the it's one thing explaining to someone, oh hey, I go to Antarctica and I do a lot of work work and research down there. And the next harder question is probably keeping it simple for a lot of listeners out there, is what are you guys going down there for?

Antarctica’s Three Buckets Of Science

Ice Cores And Ancient Atmospheres

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I can get into what we're what we're at uh questions we're asking and trying to answer um with ice cores, but but from sort of larger Antarctica perspective and and United States activity in Antarctica, um, you know, we do sort of three three buckets of of science in Antarctica. We do science that's about the place, helping us understand the you know 8% of the Earth's land mass that is Antarctica, how it works uh and why it matters. We then also go there to uh try to understand Antarctica and its context in the broader world, how it interacts with global ocean currents or climate on the ice core side of things, um, and how processes in Antarctica really matter for the for the rest of us because our uh you know, through our atmosphere and ocean, our climate is really linked globally. Um, just like society. It's a big complex uh planet that we're lucky to live on. Uh and then the third bucket is uh using Antarctica as as a scientific laboratory. So, what about the conditions in Antarctica might be ideal for particular science experiments? So those are the sort of big three buckets that um motivate the science we do under the U.S. Antarctic program and other national Antarctic programs would be much the same. Um and then those of us who are joining ice cores, you know, we're taking advantage of the fact that when a snowflake falls in Antarctica, it's so cold that it never melts basically anywhere in Antarctica, although around the coast, around the edge of Antarctica where it's near the ocean, you do get some melt in the summertime. So it tends to take us far inland, where we then have 500 meters, 1,000 meters, 2000 meters, 3,000 meters, even 4,000 meters of ice um thickness to extract information from because that ice only uh it only forms through falling snow. So uh the entire continent of Antarctica, which is on average, you know, something like a mile and a half thick ice, um, all of that started as snowflakes falling from the sky. And that is is a huge archive of information. So in addition to be to that amount of fresh water locked up on a continent being important because it's a big control on global sea level rise, it also is layered information. I don't know why I went from bottom up here, but from top down, it goes from today back. Uh, you know, the ice core record as as published right now, we have continuous ice cores going back from today through 800,000 years. It's a group of European scientists called the Beyond Epica Project that have just finished drilling last season, uh, and they think they have 1.2 million years of continuous time. And then I work as a part of a very large project in the US called Codex. Um, it's 15 different universities, and we go to Antarctica, we we map places where we think there'd be old ice, and we also go uh and we've recovered and recently published the oldest ice, so not continuous, but a sort of odd stranded pocket of six million-year-old ice that we are uh we have a team down there right now working to drill more cores and trying to find the best quality of that sort of six million-year-old ice. It's in a place where it where it really truly was preserved in an unaltered way. Um pretty fascinating. And you know, not only is it ice and snowflakes, but right, a snowflake uh you know catches a lot of air space, right? A pile of snow when it's fresh, it's nice and fluffy, you jump into it and squishes down. That's that's air. That air gets trapped in the ice sheet as uh as bubbles, and those are samples of the past atmosphere that are um very direct, our absolute best record of past atmospheric composition. Um there's no other place where you can get past concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Um so we're pretty motivated to go there for those. Those little bubbles are a really unique archive of um past atmosphere. You know, climate change is a tricky thing, people get all freaked out as soon as you talk about it. Um, you know, we're not going down there assuming that there's some screaming increase in in temperature over the 20th century. Antarctic climate is is really noisy, really complex, and really hard to observe because it's so large and our presence there is so limited that we don't have a lot of of on-the-ground observations um that are very long. So we have to use things like ice cores to fill in the gaps. That's one of the most fun parts of of ice cores, I would argue, even just in the modern era, is okay, well, you know, people weren't at this spot that we find now is really, really important. So how can we go back in time and learn about the climate of that place? The only way is to drill ice cores, and we're lucky in Antarctica that past information that fell out of the atmosphere, that snowfall, it's all there. Um, you know, and we you know can have to go to great lengths to go get those samples. And unfortunately is to do the chemical analyses, to to go from a a snow core to a climate record, you gotta bring the ice all the way back to labs. And that's a big expensive operation.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, I can't I mean it that's I think that kind of comes to the the crux of it is that it costs a huge amount of money to go out there and resources and infrastructure and people and and all those kinds of things, to go out there and get these essentially little bubbles of air, you know, six million years or a few hundred years old. And the value that you have in I mean, basically the your ability to answer questions that are really big and complicated from those little pockets of you know, little time capsules from past climates and stuff, because I think a lot of people listening is like climate change is extremely complex. You know, it's a complex thing to try and understand and a lot of controversy around it because it's you know no one's got one clear-cut answer. And you guys are going out there to try and you know uncover a little bit of that. Um is there a simple way of sort of explaining how those little pockets of air can sort of translate into you know usable answers for like policymakers or whatever that might be?

From Air Bubbles To Policy Clarity

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Yeah, I mean the fundamental uh you know eye-popping uh result that that international ice core science, you know, I I sort of tend to speak we as you know, royal we for all ice core scientists over the last 60 or 70 years we've been doing this sort of work. But you know, the community has produced eye-popping results from those air bubbles in the ice. And what that shows, you know, in a rational world, you know, a polymaker would see, okay, well, what is the last 2,000 years of carbon dioxide or methane, the most the two most important heat-trapping greenhouse gases, right? These greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, it's like a blanket over Earth. If we didn't have any greenhouse gases, we'd be like the moon, we'd be freezing and bro and boiling, uh, depending on where the sun is. And if we have too much greenhouse gases, we're like Venus and it's like 400 degrees and whatever. So we like greenhouse gases, right? This is all this all of these things can be true at the same time. Greenhouse gases are amazing. We really like the amount that we've had uh over you know the the last 10,000 years of human civilization, um, because this is what a policymaker would see, right? The last 10,000 years, um the Holocene, it's when you know we came out of the ice age, sort of entered a relatively stable climate, people started to band together and and uh you know start growing crops, and um, and here we are 10,000 years later. Um, and you know, CO2 over that time from these air bubbles is basically flat. There's some variation, there's some early blips from human activity altering the the greenhouse gas concentrations, and then you get to the late 1700s into the 1800s, right? You get industrialization, um uh, and the concentrations of CO2 go from about 300 parts per million and they just start rocketing up, you know, if this is if it's you know 10,000 years, it's essentially flat, and then you increase the concentration of of carbon dioxide by something like 40 or 50 percent in about 100 years, uh, and you increase the concentration of methane even more than that, like 200%. And it's um, you know, so you put that on the last 10,000 years and it's it's really abrupt. So the rate of change um that we're imparting is is really consequential, and and you know, that we we then are very confident that it's um heat being trapped, additional heat being trapped by those greenhouse gases that otherwise was able to leave the atmosphere. Um, you know, we sort of exactly know what the problem is, uh, and ice cores really do provide a critical direct perspective on that. There's no other way that we would have known what CO2 concentrations were before the year 1957, because that's when we started atmospheric measurements. Um and since then, you know, it's just a straight up and up and up and up every year. Um so you know, we're the ice cores and and the sort of other, you know, aspects of the body of evidence there present us with with real clarity on um the problem of global warming and the climate changes that it caused. We know exactly what is causing it. We know exactly what could abate it, right? If we stopped um largely burning fossil fuels, we would not end up with warming. So then you get onto the cascade of of arguments trying to wiggle your way out of the problem, just like when your doctor, you know, tells you you gotta change your behaviors to get your blood pressure down or your cholesterol. You know, I don't know why I'm saying this. Um, you know, um, but right, we can try to wiggle our way around it and and just argue with with the evidence, but the evidence is there and clear. And it's uh you know really frustrating to be an American climate scientist because we simultaneously um support the vast majority, uh, you know, a huge part of our global understanding is funded by all of our U.S. federal investments in Earth observing systems and greenhouse gas monitoring and the world's largest Antarctic program that gives us um you know the capacity to work with our international colleagues to build that body of evidence. Um, but then to be the most uh the most unwilling to, in an organized way, deal with this problem. Um it's just really incongruous, right? You know, we're at the peak, we're at the sharp end of all of our human societal development, we have all of this great information and understanding. We're not wondering why uh the planet's warming. We're just wondering when we're gonna get serious and start dealing with the problem.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Wow. So your your job is basically to provide the hard evidence, the hard facts for the policymakers to make decisions on everything from, you know, I don't know, like fossil fuel consumption to, you know, everything that affects, you know, quote quote climate change is. And it's up to them and all the other factors involved to make those decisions. And so, yeah, as you say, my only looking from one perspective.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Right. And I you know I would want to be clear too that it's not it's not as though we would, as ice core scientists, keep continue to say to policymakers, okay, we need more ice cores to make this even clearer. Uh you know, we keep trying to clarify our understanding of how particular regions are going to change or how particular processes are working when we're looking at the detail. Of those data. So we're going to keep chipping away at that. And we always need to have, you know, a body of, you know, we're a small community. There's a couple hundred ice core scientists in the world. But we need to be, you know, around and still moving our research forward and being able to talk about it. So people aren't just wondering about this past thing. Like, oh, at one time these people produced ice cores and we learned this stuff. You know, we are here and we we need to continue to make sure that our basic research, which is sort of foundational to our understanding of the problem of global warming, and we need to be speaking for it. And that again, you know, is why I and try to be out uh, you know, having conversations like this, but also on online. You know, they don't want people to have to go to a textbook or a journal article to look at ice core data. It needs to be present. Um, it's not what's going to solve the problem, right? At this point, what's going to solve the problem is figuring out how you incentivize um building a global economy that that can move away from heat trapping greenhouse gases and fossil fuel burning. Um But yeah, we you know, we will be here talking about our understanding so that people are uh clear that we're not just wondering why this is happening.

Targeting Thwaites And Coastal Records

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Absolutely. I mean, one of the big things we love having guests on for is to share, you know, a big sort of no ordinary Monday story. And you know, we chat before the call about yours and I wonder whether you whether you could share them with us.

Building A Ship-Helicopter Ice Core Mission

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if we have targeted science questions in Antarctica um that are about the place, uh we often need to get to a particular part of Antarctica. And uh, you know, there's no time to go into the Antarctic Treaty system. There are uh you know, there are no official territorial claims in Antarctica that are not um put on hold by uh the Antarctic Treaty system. Um but for a multitude of reasons, different countries have have sort of access to different parts of Antarctica going by longitude around the continent. Um so there are times when we need to work, particularly with international partners, to get to places. And particularly if you're if you're me and you're interested in studying the coast of Antarctica in uh along the most remote coastline of Antarctica, the very southern end of the Pacific Ocean, it's a place called West Antarctica, and it's where there are some really large glaciers, Thwaits Glacier, Pine Island Glacier, sort of the main two, um, that are changing. And uh as we've understood them over the last four or five decades, we see that they're in a state where if they start to retreat, if the front of the glacier starts to pull back, there's no place where it can stabilize and that retreat can stop. So we're really worried about that being irreversible, a possible climate tipping point. And so we've been trying to get a picture of this. You know, this glacier is the size of the state of Florida, so it's no simple feat. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think to to bring an ice core to a glaciology party, uh, you know, if you're trying to, you know, understanding physically and the geophysics of uh what this system looks like and how it how it moves. Uh you don't necessarily need climate information for that. But increasingly, if we want to understand a system that's hugely complex and changing in time, uh, it'd be great to know anything about it before we started looking at it. And you know, we took the first picture of Thwaites Glacier in 1947, U.S. Navy flying aircraft uh down there in the first Navy operation in Antarctica. Um, and then we've gotten a pretty good view of it from satellites since the 1990s, including satellites that can show you how fast it's moving and things like that. Um, but before then, we have no information, we have no climate observations, there's literally no research station along this coastline that's the length of the west coast of the United States. Um, so ice cores then to me become really important. And so I've been trying to be the one ice core person that's sort of rushing towards this problem. It's like, okay, how can we gain some clarity by having 100, 200 year-long records to start due to how how challenging it is to operate in that region, um, that can tell us, you know, how did this state of retreat for Thwaites Glacier begin? So we've been trying to get that. Um the downside of the coast of Antarctica is that uh unlike the sort of headline for Antarctica, the coldest, highest, driest, flattest continent, the coastline is actually not flat, not dry, barely even cold. It's actually some of the wettest, uh, snowiest parts of the world. So your layers of snow are are more than a meter thick every year. So to get back 100 years, you're drilling a hundred meters, a hundred meters plus. Um so I I've sort of been talking about this this challenge of needing better climate records from Thwaites Glacier, and I've been talking about it for about 10 years and managed to get it on paper about sort of six years into that. Um and colleagues in South Korea who have a really capable research vessel, um, the RV Iran, which um almost always has two light helicopters on board, um, they reached out and and asked how I was doing with this idea. And my response was, well, not not great, haven't really done anything. Um and uh, you know, through many conversations later with my my colleague there, young Chol Han, who leads their ice core program, uh, we found our way on board that ship and positioned a U.S. drill and got drilling support from the National Science Foundation and and our uh ice drilling program, experts in drilling ice cores that are based uh just across the other state, University of Wisconsin. Um yeah, got it together to get on that ship so that we could hop off and as fast as possible drill 150 meters deep, which is about as deep as we can drill with ice cores before the conditions start to get challenging for drilling and you need to upgrade to to more complex systems that are heavier and such. Logistics crazy, yeah. Yeah, and logistics are always crazy in Antarctica and they tend to be uh sort of really slow, steady plotting work. Where if we're going through McMurdo station, the largest research station in Antarctica, it's sort of, you know, we're flying commercial to New Zealand and then on to McMurdo. That takes about a week. Then you're in McMurdo for a week to 10 days getting all your equipment. It's like a sort of scavenger hunt and getting all your safety certifications, and then you move on, you know. So you're already three to four weeks in before you even get to your field site. You know, go back to the icebreaker situation. You're flying off a ship. Um, you know, any science cruise in Antarctica might start with a maximum of 30 days of science time. You know, these ships tend to only be able to go out for something like 60 to 90 days before they need to come back to port. So you're you're um you're confined by that the capability of that ship, uh essentially uh how much diesel it can keep on board, unfortunately. Um but then you know your science time quickly starts getting whittled away from 30 days down to something like you know 20 days. So there's a lot of things that a you know the the leader of a uh Antarctic research cruise has to be thinking of. And getting an ice core team off of that ship actually has never really been a part of that. So we were the first group um to to really fully try to go for it and get ice cores of consequence, and we had not only a U.S. drilling team, but the Koreans um were ready to collect a core as well. And so we hopped on that ship in in Littleton, New Zealand, which is a port on the South Island of New Zealand that supported uh Antarctic expeditions going back to the you know very early 1900s. Um transit there across sort of diagonal across the South Pacific for oh eight or ten days.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And I'm guessing a lot of seasickness for for some of the newbies on board?

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Almost everybody, yeah. I am pleased to tell you that I, at least in that case, did not get seasick at all. So I I was feeling great. Um got very much.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

It's the roughest season in the world done that way, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah, you often have to choose whether or not you're gonna try to go in front or behind a storm system. And um we our crossing was not particularly uh dramatic, but still, you know, it's still big waves, and icebreakers are not made for the open ocean. They are made with a shallow keel so that they can ride up on ice and uh and break it. Bob and all of the rocky. Yeah, so you want to be on the lower decks that you know that often unfortunately goes by seniority, so the senior people are up at the top and they're going back and forth, getting real real sick. Um, and so we went with this ship. I mean, there are pictures behind me if you can see of this red ship, and you can sort of see the edge of the ice behind it. And that's that's how close you get. You get within one kilometer of our targets, and then you um you know you open up the the heli deck and and put the put the blades back on the helicopters and um and you get ready to to go.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

So we might as well be a million miles away because you with a helicop I know from experience with a helicopter, you need pretty much perfect conditions before that thing's gonna go in the sky. And like you imagine that area's not not particularly conducive to nice flying conditions for heli.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Aaron Powell Yep. And yeah, not only do you need it not to be sort of stormy, windy, snowy, um, you need it to be basically blue sky. Um the images behind me are all quite bad, actually. You so you can sort of see the fuzziness there. If there's cloud above snow, um your pilot's not going to have good ground reference, and that's incredibly dangerous and has led to a lot of the aviation incidents in in Antarctica. Um and yeah, we you know, we're more than a week from any help uh in this situation. And so flying with the helicopters like this is uh yeah, really, really a high consequence work. And so the uh Korea Polar Research Institute, everybody on that ship had has pretty good systems in place for that uh and great pilots that they work with. So we were able to yeah, get our equipment off the ship without too much difficulty. I we got very lucky with the weather, and we knew we were putting in our camp actually within 20, well, within 10 hours of a storm coming in. Um so we willfully got off the ship to set up into a what was gonna be a significant storm.

Weather Windows And Storm Calculus

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Um geez, you knew it was coming, but it was your only only it was your only weather window to actually get off the ship.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yep, yeah, because if you then if you want to wait and like, oh well, you know, we don't want to have a stressful time out in a storm, you're like, okay, well then you're gonna be on the ship for at least another four or five days because it's gonna have to go all the way through the whole cycle of the weather being perfect again, and that can be two days or five days. Um ruin your mission. Yeah, and that yeah, there goes all of your time. So um we managed to do it, and and you know, we knew that if we got off, we would have something like 10 days to work with, which is just enough to do our drilling. Um, so we did take 36 hours weathering the storm, and uh, you know, my team had a graduate student with me. We were in pretty very light mountaineering tents where which were almost too light, um, but but they they survived, you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Um and we just sort of explain what that's like being in that kind of tented environment, obviously, you know, in in an Antarctic storm.

Riding Out The Blizzard In Tents

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Yeah, I mean it's not it's not great even if you've experienced it before. So, you know, I've been in in these uh settings or in the mountains in British Columbia uh drilling there, and uh, you know, I've experienced that being at the point where you're worrying about the structural integrity of your tent. Um, and you know, that was one of the the failures that I made as as a leader on that, you know, where my graduate student was coming into that experience for for their very first time and and went in in this mode where your the intensity dials up to 11 in the space of like two hours where you are, you know, you were on a ship for 10 days, never having been to Antarctica, you hop on a helicopter, and then you're in Antarctica and there's a storm coming. Um so that time experience is very different. So I know that uh you know that was really impactful. They were you know more or less confined to their tent, and actually their tent got clogged up with snow, so um, we ended up keeping them in there. And I rather than dig them out and and have you know bring them into another partially collapsed tent, uh, you know, I elected to just have them stay in their tent. But yeah, our larger tents, you know, large tents have large surface area, and so they really struggle in in significant storms. So our bigger tents got pushed over and then covered with snow. Um which you know is not great, but it's better than them uh breaking and blowing away and all of your equipment getting buried or scattered into the wind. So um you know, we ended up with from from one of these big domed tents that's very large, we ended up with sort of a half moon of of tent poles that were holding it up, and so most of us sort of just crawled in there and and managed to have some hot cups of coffee and and just hang out waiting for the storm to to get better. And uh that sounds intense. Yeah. And you're wondering, you know, am I gonna even get anything out of this? Are we gonna, you know, we're gonna have time to get the samples and and all of that. Um but there's nothing, you know, you don't have anything else to do. So as soon as things start to clear up, you know, you start to pull your your cargo out, make make your cargo into a big pile for a storm like that, uh, and you just start putting the pieces together. Okay, well, how how choked with snow are our generators? Let's start working on those. And um, we very quickly were able to move into drilling mode uh, you know, within the next day. Um and this is yeah, that the sort of sprint style. So we knew we were only gonna be there for something like 10, 12 days, ended up being 13. Uh, and that's barely enough time to get the drilling done. So you just get on with it. You don't have to worry about anything like downtime or what are we gonna do to entertain ourselves. There's there's none of that. We're gonna be, if we're not drilling, we're gonna be eating or sleeping. Um, and there was plenty of time. You know, we ate all that we needed to. Uh our Korean colleagues brought boxes and boxes of food from actually from Costco in in South Korea. Um, they kept that for us, it's a really recognizable thing, the the Kirkland brand, and anyway. Yeah, um uh yeah, so we you know quickly got our tents uh knocked up for drilling and um drill set up and and it was just sort of off to the races. So we set up the US drill, and then um the Koreans set up their their drill and and got to know their that their drill is actually brand new. Um, and it's then just that you know tedium of working with the system, but doing everything as precisely and intentionally as possible so you don't break anything, uh, you don't drop anything down the borehole, you don't um and and you're you're just drilling and then we you know logging the length of the ice cores and bagging them and boxing them and just getting everything's geared around like okay, get the samples and let's get ready to get out. Yeah. Um and so luckily things proceeded without much drama on the on the drilling front. Drilling 150 meters deep is not that wild for us on on the spectrum of what we do with with ice cores. Um, it's we just needed to have enough time to do it. And so for seven days straight, we just do that, and um really just troubleshooting generator problems that were caused by by having our our usual five kilowatt Honda generators. Um, they don't like being bathed in snow in snowstorms, so they had some electrical issues the whole time you were using them. But um you become an expert in generator maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Yeah. I was about to say is someone because there's like I say, there's barely any support, so everyone's got to be multi-talented, multi-operational. You know, you've kind of got to be chef one minute, mechanic the next, scientist the next, you know, mentor the one after that.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

I'm I'm pretty handy with a Honda 5 kilowatt generator now, so I better get one for my house, you know, if anything ever fails. Um yeah, but you know, and we're lucky we did, you know, we had that equipment, the generators from the U.S. Antarctic program, uh, and we had a satellite phone from from the Antarctic program. So I could call up Tony in the machine shop at McMurdo Station uh you know and try to describe to him what's going on. But we also have entered, and I've unfortunately contributed to this, entered into a new era of communications in Antarctica where we use Starlink now. Um actually I'm the first one to have brought Starlink to Antarctica. I worked with SpaceX just before it went commercially available. Uh and so now uh we can just use our phone and just uh Google it in on YouTube. I'm you know, watching troubleshooting videos. You know, how do I remove the ground fault uh interrupter on on this generator because it's not working with our drill equipment and um you know describing issues and you know in the end we figured out that our the electrical the electronic control computer controlling our throttles was just faulty because of the snow and the moisture. So we had to just unplug the computer part of it, and I ended up just using my fingers by the end and controlling the throttle. Wow. So, you know, in the end, the biggest challenge we had was was generators and not any of our you know specialized joint equipment or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Yeah. It'll get to that point where you could just live stream and you know be like, hey guys, this is the problem, and someone someone in the comments be like, oh hey, you know, I you know, this is what I'm doing in real time, telling you what to do.

Seven Days Of Precision Drilling

Generators, Starlink, And Improvisation

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Yeah, there's a frontier. I could do the first Antarctic Ice Corps project on Twitch or something. Yeah. You're gonna break the I don't even know anything about that platform, but amazing. Yeah, so I mean this is a really it was a really in-member experience doing the work from the South Korean icebreaker and um you know, just a lot of newness. I'd you know, I've been to Antarctica seven times before that or whatever, but um, you know, the understanding how to operate from a ship environment and and the you know multilingual, uh multicultural aspects, you know, we're are really exciting, but also can be challenging. And um, you know, so so luckily for me that the pilots were both native English speakers, and so we we worked together closely on the aviation side of things. Um and uh yeah, you know, the timing worked out that the ship was able to continue doing science relatively nearby while we were drilling off um at our site. And so we were just in regular contact with them about when it made sense for them to come back, and um yeah, we all just worked as hard as we could to get to our 150 meter targets, and both teams did. And then, you know, quickly, you know, high five, take have an have another meal, and then after after a sleep, you know, start packing things up immediately. Yeah. Um we were drilling for seven days, we were on site for 13 days. Um and you know, you're just right back to the ship. So as soon as they came back, we also managed to get a really nice weather window where in four or five hours we um we pulled everything back, and you know, each each of these is swinging. You have two helicopters flying simultaneously, something like 15 flights back and forth to the ship. Uh you know, it takes about 15 minutes to get back. So it's just this constant three or four hours, and I'm I'm running around. I mean, I was managing the helicopter operations down to I was slinging every load of cargo uh you know underneath the helicopter, connecting it, and long lines being shocked by all the static electricity under the helicopter. Um and you know, just the absolute most most gratifying accomplishment in you know, with my partner Young Chol, just his his willingness to stick his neck out and and convince his colleagues that they could do this mode of ice coring from the ship, which they had never done. And and um, we are the first fully icebreaker and helicopter supported ice core project in in Antarctica. And um, the whole ship you know contributed once we were we were slinging back boxes and boxes of ice um actually cut down to a half meter. Usually we ship our cores in one meter, but all the corridors of the ship and the freezers are quite tight. Um no. But everybody on board, we actually have no photographic evidence of this that I'm aware of. Everybody made fire chains from the helideck down to either freezer, which one is in the front of the ship, uh the other's in the back. You can tell I'm not a sailor, you know, the the bow of the ship or whatever. The bow on the stern. Um but you know, everybody maybe. A fire line of these boxes are like 50 pounds full of ice. Um, but to to as quickly get them from the helideck uh into the freezers, and then the ice cores stayed in the freezers actually for about five months before the ship got back to South Korea. Oh, damn. Um well traveled ice. And uh and yeah, we're still, you know, we're just just at the stage where we're about to learn what the the chemical records from analyzing the first core, the Korean group um has measured the chemistry of a lot of these already. Um and and we're about to figure out what we have. We know the uh the timeline that we have. So the cores got back to about the year 1920. Um and again, you know, back to that that high-level question of like what information are we producing for policymakers? One of the things that they measured first in the core, which we didn't really plan to, was um was the greenhouse gases, or at least methane in the air bubbles in the ice. Our sites are not really optimized for that, but because uh it's so snowy on the coast, you get really high resolution trapping and fast trapping of the gases. So our cores now are are the highest resolution and newest records of methane from Antarctica. And again, they show you know just this rapid rise in methane that's says the same thing. Yeah, that's trapping heat, and it that's it's our that's our issue. And you know, we go back to that. I've worked on other projects where we're we're trying to study that same problem. Actually, the methane, methane is luckily uh removed from the atmosphere about on average uh in 10 years, which is really good because it's an even more potent greenhouse gas than than carbon dioxide. Um yeah, so you know the unseen human effort and stress and you know trauma, frankly, that goes into collecting these samples is never really well represented by the final publications that we provide. And that's you know, it's a challenge, and I you know, I understand why, but um that again you know feeds into my uh my continued desire to sort of show what it takes, show, you know, so people can see themselves in in the work. Like, yes, obviously, not you know, not everybody's there on the ship, but everybody can relate to the different jobs and you know connect with with people online. I have a guy I follow who's a captain of of one of some of the the Great Lakes um cargo vessels, and uh, you know, he sees my videos, and when he sees the ships, he's like, Oh man, I gotta get myself down there sometime. I want to do a rotation on one of these ships. But right, yeah, you know, he he sees his career, his specialty in in what we do, and it really does take all sorts of folks. And um, yeah, I I just can't believe it's my business to be doing this work, but um it's pretty exciting stuff.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

I mean if you had to distill it all down into sort of one singular potent message of what you're trying to get out there on TikTok or to the policymakers or you know, through your work and and social media stuff. What is that sort of most important singular message to get out there?

Airlifting Ice And Team Triumph

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Yeah, I mean, maybe you know, I use I use videos of Antarctic field work uh quite a lot in my social media, and um maybe part of the point of that is is you know, we are all humans and we're all working together. I mean, in the best case, on this collective project of our global society, um, or in my specific case, on our collective desire to go ask difficult questions and hopefully answering, answer them in Antarctica. Um but we're you know, we're all of the work that we do as scientists is is designed for the public. You know, science serves society. We're not um serving a subset of society. We're at we're trying to understand the earth like in the most cynical way so that we can take the most advantage of it, so that we can um use our understanding to our advantage to have stable societies that provide all of the basic needs for all of their citizens and that are not only doing that today, we're planning on how to do that next month, next year, next decade. Uh and so that, you know, our our scientific understanding feeds into that portfolio of information that you need. You know, if you're the leader of a city, of a state, of a country, you need to be worrying about people's day-to-day needs. And certainly I don't expect that climate change really ranks highly on anybody's day-to-day needs, right? People are trying to feed themselves, people are trying to um, you know, make sure they're they're in good health, but their leaders should certainly should have information from um, you know, the scientific community so that they're not only thinking about today, they're looking down the road and using all the information we have from our you know, world-leading scientific uh research and innovation engine in the United States. Um, and you know, we do that with public funding, with federal funding in the United States, where the federal government, through agencies like NIH or NSF, fund university researchers to do that, you know, applied and basic research, the stuff where we don't know where the applications are necessarily going to come in and where it's much more applied. You know, all my colleagues at the medical school doing cancer research and vaccine research. All of that, you know, is also out there publicly funded so that um people can commercialize it and and businesses can can act on that information as well. So it's not, you know, that public funding is really key so that nobody's hoarding the information just for themselves, you know, so that Amazon is funding our climate and health research so that Amazon can make the most profit of it of it. Um, it's public funding for public good. And I think people are uh are not fully seeing, you know, what they're getting, the return on investment for um all of these federal investments, but it's designed so that, yes, we pay for it, which is tough to stomach at times, um, but we pay for it so that it's ours to act on and and ours to um to take advantage on of, you know, and and use um for whatever we need. So it's you know, uh it's a it's a challenging time as a scientist right now where um trust in experts and scientific information is uh is being eroded. And so I think you know a solution to that is certainly not to just keep doing what we've been doing for uh for the last few decades. Clearly we need to be engaging with people in in different ways and um not just staying staying in our lane or on our campuses, but at least getting out on social media. It doesn't always feel very real being on social media, but you know, talking talking to you. I mean, this is where the real conversations come in, and I think that is an antidote to a lot of our challenges right now is conversations.

New Methane Records And Meaning

SPEAKER_01 46:54

I think a hundred percent. And what I do love about your social media is that people are asking you questions and you are very diligent in giving them you know clear answers. And you know, that's great as a as I say, you know, to immediately get uh you know information out to the public and have their trust and science um you know rejuvenated. But then hopefully they then spin out and find interest and find conversations like this to have a deeper dive and and understand really more behind the scenes of of what's going on and stuff, you know. So I think I think it's admirable what you guys are doing. Um but I think one one thing that kind of came to mind there. I don't know, are you familiar with the Isaac Asimov foundation series? It was just uh I might cut this out, but it was just I mean the the Isaac Asimov a big science fiction writer, but um it's a very similar thing. It's kind of it kind of reminds me of the the climate change aspect of things, which is you know, there's this problem coming to the uh in in the in the Galactic Empire you can see it coming a thousand years in advance and trying to tell the leaders of uh of this about the problem. And they're kind of going, uh it's it's it's imaginary. You know, it's uh they just need to be some sort of very interesting parallels uh with uh a problem that you can foresee in the numbers but people don't always see it necessarily tangibly in their everyday lives, and they just continue as they go forward and uh it just seems to be a a very difficult thing to get people to think in century scale rather than you know election term scale.

Science, Trust, And Public Funding

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Yes. Yeah, yep. And those those different timescales of decision making and having a lot of decision making in our uh certainly in our national elections be about um how to how to win the next election, it certainly feeds into our uh inability to to deal with those tricky longer term problems. Um you know, I d not naive to the fact that just focusing on all of our problems and challenges is not gonna be good politics. But um, you know, there's a lot of of pressing challenges out there that we're not being very serious about. And um, at some point we're gonna have to deal with it. It would be nice if we dealt with it before it comes right up on your front door and all of a sudden is an irreversible pro irreversible problem. And you know, the last thing that climate scientists want to be saying is is we told you so. But um, you know, we have the information and and we're we're out, we're not uh we're not giving up. It's never too late to be, you know, changing our our habits around um working with with fossil fuels and and carbon emissions. Um but the time the time is now, so you know, we have little punchy ways of of summing all this stuff up. But you know, we know what the problem is. We also know that it's it's never too late. So you know, if you're if you're veering off the road, you know, there's not really an appropriate moment to ever just like throw up your hands and and let let Jesus take the wheel or whatever. You know, you we're we're we're in the driver's seat here. Yeah, we uh you know I think a lot of people also have have a problem maybe considering that we're like fully in the driver's seat when it comes to Earth's global climate, but like no, we really have globally impactful uh uh you know imprints on on Earth's climate for better or worse. And that that's disappointing because the the impacts are are negative right now, but it's also an opportunity. We know you know, if we're modeling climate change out to the end of the century, it's sea level rise or temperature increase or any of those things. The biggest uncertainty right now by the end of the century on how much sea level rise you're gonna have, it's not are the models working or is our understanding of sea level rise good enough? It's what are humans gonna do? You know, we are the biggest uncertainty in that modeling right now. Um and again, that's that gives us agency. We we are in control of our of our destiny there for the coming centuries. Um and I hope that we get we get real organized leadership around that sooner rather than later, because we just certainly are are devoid of of real serious leadership on um dealing with that problem right now. And it you know it needs to come not just from politicians, but also um, I mean, just from my my US view, it needs to come from from corporations and and leaders across the board, you know, university leaders, um, our our Fortune 500 companies, you know, it's a large part all of these organizations that are struggling to to all work together to to agree that we need to tackle this change and and make an opportunity of it. You know, it doesn't have to just be a negative and you know what I think somebody said recently, you know, climate scientists want to kill all the cows or you can't eat your hamburgers or whatever. Um you know, obviously we want to do things in as uh organized of a fashion and and but uh but it needs to be done at some point in a way that's gonna make our future less less challenging for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

I mean, as I said, you know, this is a this is an issue that's gonna outlast our lifetimes, you know. And so I guess in terms of a message to uh the next generation, you know, kids that might be listening to this who you know are interest interested in becoming a polar scientist. I mean, what advice do you have for them? And I guess uh as a second part of that question is, you know, what advice are getting into the into the industry or into the software work um uh line of work? But like also how do they break through to those people in a way that you know that um we have been struggling to so far?

Agency, Uncertainty, And Leadership

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Yeah, again, I mean if if if we could have serious conversations with our leaders, you know, I would say that um it it does a massive disservice to to disparage our our expert scientists and uh you know federal workers across the United States. Um I think you know, thinking of future generations, people wanting to get to get into this, it's obviously a niche area to get into, but you know, the polar workforce is uh you know probably tens of thousands strong in the United States. So think about your expertise and and it's probably needed uh in some area of um the polar workforce. If you, you know, if you are particularly motivated for for any aspect of polar science, you know, I'd say it's gonna be more uh your your passion, your motivation, and your focus that that gets you into a career rather than being the most brilliant person in the world. I am not the most brilliant person in the world, but I um you know put together these experiences and I maintained focus and uh you know didn't make too many mistakes along the way to you know to remain in in the career. Um and again, that that theme of like don't get don't go to don't get trapped in your in your shiny rectangle here. Reach out to people. I have people reach out to me all the time on social media, and uh, you know, the only the only the only downside of that is I don't know how to track all of it uh to you know to make clear to my employers, you know, right, I still have to do work to stay in this career too, of like, hey, you know, this time I'm spending on social media is not um for nothing. And you know, I think there's a large uh you know, I already have students who want to work with me and people coming to me who who convey that they they know about ice core science and polar science from my social media. I mean, I have been doing it now for that's great, you know, five, five plus years. Yeah. Um it has an impact. So yeah, you know, and I think too, you know whether or not our mode of of funding science in the United States, if if so much uh coming from the federal government is is not how it's gonna happen going forward, we will need to find other ways and and ways to um you know, in the private sector support continuing to to be leaders in the polar regions. But um, but I I'm hopeful that we'll understand that that our long-term investments in in Antarctic science in particular, which you know are roughly 70 years long of continuous high-level operation in Antarctica, that um nobody's proposing even changing that. You know, there's no proposed change to our ability to operate in Antarctica. There are uh very impactful proposed changes to our um our university researcher access to funding to pursue science in in the polar regions. Um, but our ability to operate down there has you know a a lot of commitment. It needs more resources because it's it is aging and falling behind a bit, but um, but nothing that's not not insurmountable yet at this point.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Absolutely. Amazing. Um Peter, I think that's an amazing place to leave it. And um I I always at the end just like to offer guests a chance to sort of plug what you what you're up to, where people could find you. Obviously, your social media, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Yeah, I am IC underscore Pete on social media. So I share on Instagram, TikTok, and uh a little bit on Blue Sky, a little bit on LinkedIn. Um, you know, that's another one where I would encourage folks to to network on on LinkedIn if you're interested in polar science. You know, follow folks who are in polar geopolitics, polar affairs to sort of learn what's going on. Um and uh yeah, the biggest project we have going on in Antarctica is the NSF Cold X project, which is on Instagram and and LinkedIn. Uh we got uh actually an employee of mine, Martin, Martin Froger, who's down there. He's also sharing personal content on Instagram that is uh incredible. Oh nice. He'll be down there for the next six or seven weeks until January.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

Are you kind of training some of your colleagues in the social media skills?

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Well, yeah, and I'm trying to convince my my colleagues that we need to resource the social media side of it. So Martin actually is the first time we've sent somebody to the field who's nominally, you know, 50% a part of the team working with ice cores, 50% capturing content, creating content, and putting it out as they're down there. So, you know, I've always done I've done that on the fly as I'm trying to lead teams, but my focus is not on that. Um, so we're trying to give it good focus, and especially with, you know, we have very few science projects going on in the US Antarctic program right now because of how tight budgets are. Um, but NSF Codex is is sort of uh one of well, it's one of our two ice core projects in Antarctica right now. It's a very big project and one that we hope continues uh if it's renewed for the next five years. Um waiting to hear on that decision. But you know, six million-year-old ice, they're they're right back there with better drills, actually with some of the world's best ice core drillers, uh, and they're trying trying some new things this season to get better quality samples and find nice clean old ice. Um, that'll give us, you know, each time we we do this, six million-year-old ice, six million-year-old air, six million-year-old temperature estimates, those all end up being uh tests for our models of climate. If they can't reproduce what we observe from the Antarctic ice, they're not they're not fully working. And so we use the ice core past climate data to train our models to make sure that uh if they can replicate what we understand the past conditions to have been and the present, then we trust them as they try to project into the future what what conditions are likely to be.

SPEAKER_01 57:59

Amazing. And and obviously now not only better science and better data, but people can now follow it more closely with all the social media stuff, you know, with someone more dedicated, which I think is fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 58:11

Yeah, yeah. So look for Coldex STC on uh Instagram, and there's lots of great stuff coming out. And I, of course, I try to share reposts from any of my polar colleagues as the field season's going on. There's a drilling team going at uh Dome Fuji, our Japanese colleagues, there's uh our European colleagues who are mostly doing lab work these days on the core they've already drilled. Um but yeah, I try to I don't know, I try to be a hub to just share everything. You know, I'm not making money on on my social media, I'm just trying to make sure people see what we're doing in the polar regions. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

Absolutely. Awesome. Peter, listen, thank you so much for for taking the time today. Uh and I really enjoyed the conversation, super fascinating. And um I'm wishing you and your colleagues all the best down in Antarctica.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Yeah, thanks, Chris. I've really enjoyed talking with you as well.

Advice For Future Polar Scientists

SPEAKER_01 59:04

And that's to wrap on this year's final episode. A huge thank you again to Peter for taking the time uh to share his incredible work and experiences in Antarctica. And of course, a big thank you to you guys as well for listening and watching, not just today, but throughout the year as well. I really need to appreciate you guys being here first. We only started a few months ago back in August, but the so many audience has grown up all that already. I'm just delighted to keep bringing you guys these amazing stories week after week. If you'd like to dive deeper into Peter's work or follow what Keena's colleagues are doing down in Antarctica first, you'll find all the links in the show notes and over on the website, nullordinarymunding.com. First, you can also find extra clips and the Julesonist episode across our socials or on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and of course the No Ordinary Monday community page on Facebook, where you're always welcome to come and join the conversation for ask questions of go. Now, just a very quick reminder that we'll be taking a short two-week break over the holidays. It's gonna be a chance to recharge and refresh and also prepare what's coming next for you guys in 2026. When we come back next year, we have already got some incredible guests already lined up for you guys, including a Bush pilot from Papua New Guinea, a Medson Sans Frontier doctor who's worked everywhere from South Sudan to Sierra Leone, and a mortician, just to name a few. So if you're not already subscribed, make sure you are, and we'll be back with new episodes in January. And finally, if you enjoyed today's episode and feel like doing one small good deed before the year wraps up, you can leave a quick rating or review, you can share the show with a friend or family member, or if you're feeling especially generous, you can support the show via the Buy Me a Coffee page on our website. No matter how you decide to support us, it genuinely helps keep the show going and keeps us motivated to making great stories week after week. And that's it for this year. This show is independently produced, hosted, and edited by me, Chris Barron. Thank you so much for listening. Enjoy the holidays, take care of yourselves, and we will see you next year.