Fire is a necessary element in northern forests, but with climate change, these fires are shifting to a far less natural regime— one that threatens the ecosystem instead of nurturing it.

Boreal tree species, like black spruce, have co-evolved over millennia with a steady regime of low-frequency, high-intensity fires, usually ignited by lightning strikes. These fires promote turnover in vegetation and foster new growth. On average, every 100 to 150 years, an intense “stand-replacing” fire might completely raze a patch of forest, opening a space for young seedlings to take root.

But rapid warming in northern latitudes has intensified this cycle, sparking large fires on the landscape more frequently, jeopardizing regeneration, and releasing massive amounts of carbon that will feed additional warming. Here’s how climate change is impacting boreal fires.

Climate Impacts on Boreal Fire

In order for a fire to start, you need three things— favorable climatic conditions, a fuel source, and an ignition source. These elements, referred to as the triangle of fire, are all being exacerbated as boreal forests warm, resulting in a fire regime with much larger and more frequent fires than the forests evolved with.

Climate conditions

Forest fires only ignite in the right conditions, when high temperatures combine with dryness in the summer months. As northern latitudes warm at a rate three to four times faster than the rest of the globe, fire seasons in the boreal have lengthened, and the number of fire-risk days have increased.

In some areas of high-latitude forest, climate change has changed the dynamics of snowfall and snow cover disappearance. The rate of spring snowmelt is often an important factor in water availability on a landscape throughout the summer. A recent paper, led by Dr. Thomas Hessilt of Vrije University in collaboration with Woodwell Associate Scientist, Dr. Brendan Rogers, found that earlier snow cover disappearance resulted in increased fire ignitions. Early snow disappearance was also associated with earlier-season fires, which were more likely to grow larger— on average 77% larger than historical fires.

Fuel

The second requirement for fires to start is available “fuel”. In a forest, that’s vegetation (both living and dead) as well as carbon-rich soils that have built up over centuries. Here, the warming climate plays a role in priming vegetation to burn. A paper co-authored by Rogers has demonstrated temperatures above approximately 71 F in the forest canopy can be a useful indicator for the ignition and spread of “mega-fires,” which spread massive distances through the upper branches of trees. The findings suggest that heat-stressed vegetation plays a big role in triggering these large fires.

Warming has also triggered a feedback loop around fuel in boreal systems. In North America, the historically dominant black spruce is struggling to regenerate between frequent, intense fires. In some places, it is being replaced by competitor species like white spruce or aspen, which don’t support the same shaded, mossy environment that insulates frozen, carbon-rich soils called permafrost, making the ground more vulnerable to deep-burning fires. When permafrost soils thaw and burn, they release carbon that has been stored—sometimes for thousands of years—contributing to the acceleration of warming.

Ignition

Finally, fires need an ignition source. In the boreal, natural ignitions from lightning are the most frequent culprit, although human-caused ignitions have become more common as development expands into northern forests.

Because of lightning’s ephemeral nature, it has been difficult to quantify the impacts of climate change on lightning strikes, but recent research has shown lightning ignitions have been increasing since 1975, and that record numbers of lightning ignitions correlated with years of record large fires. Some models indicate summer lightning rates will continue to increase as global temperatures rise.

There is also evidence showing that a certain type of lightning— one more likely to result in ignition— has been increasing. This “hot lightning” is a type of lightning strike that channels an electrical charge for an extended period of time and tends to correlate more frequently with ignitions. Analysis of satellite data suggests that with every one degree celsius of the Earth’s warming, there might be a 10% increase in the frequency of these hot lightning strikes. That, coupled with increasingly dry conditions, sets the stage for more frequent fire ignitions.

Fire Management as a Climate Solution

So climate change is intensifying every side of the triangle of fire, and the combined effects are resulting in more frequent, larger, more intense blazes that contribute more carbon to the atmosphere. While the permanent solution to bring fires back to their natural regimes lies in curbing global emissions, research from Woodwell Climate suggests that firefighting in boreal forests can be a successful emissions mitigation strategy. And a cost effective one too— perhaps as little as $13 per metric ton of carbon dioxide avoided, which puts it on par with other carbon mitigation solutions like onshore wind or utility-scale solar. It also has the added benefit of protecting communities from the health risk of wildfire smoke.

Rogers, along with Senior Science Policy Advisor, Dr. Peter Frumhoff, and Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Kayla Mathes have begun work in collaboration with the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to pilot this solution as part of the Permafrost Pathways project. Yukon Flats is underlain by large tracts of particularly carbon-rich permafrost soils, making it a good candidate for fire suppression tactics to protect stored carbon.

The project will be the first of its kind— working with communities in and around the Refuge as well as US agencies to develop and test best practices around fighting boreal fires specifically to protect carbon. Broadening deployment of fire management could be one strategy to mitigate the worst effects of intensifying boreal fires, buying time we need to get global emissions in check.

What are ice wedges, and why are they important to climate change?

“I think ice wedges are what make permafrost interesting,” says Dr. Anna Liljedahl.

Liljedahl works on Woodwell Climate’s Arctic team as an Associate Scientist. She aims to understand how climate change is affecting water storage and movement. Much of her recent work focuses on ice wedges and how they are reacting to warming Arctic summers. But just what are ice wedges anyway?

Ice wedges are one of the three main features of the Arctic’s land surface. Permafrost, ground that remains below 0˚C for at least two consecutive summers, lies under a thinner layer of thawing and refreezing soil, called the active layer. When permafrost cracks during cold winter days, snowmelt and runoff water seep into the empty space. These eventually freeze and create a wedge-shaped spear of ice that extends vertically down into the permafrost.

Ice wedges actively re-shape the tundra. When they freeze, they grow and expand outward, pushing against the bordering permafrost and active layer. With nowhere else to go, permafrost and soil push upwards, and ridges form on the surface of the tundra. The ridges interlock and form distinct shapes, referred to as ice-wedge polygons.

The ridged borders of ice-wedge polygons form directly above expanding ice wedges below the surface, and are therefore more elevated. The lower internal portion of the polygon allows pools of water from runoff and snowmelt to form atop the active layer. These polygons are visible all the way from space.

Thanks to satellite imagery, scientists like Liljedahl are able to monitor ice-wedge polygons remotely. Satellite images date back to the mid-20th century and can be used to observe changes in the landscape overtime.

During unusually warm summers, the tops of ice wedges can melt, which removes underlying support of the ground surface, causing slumps along the borders of ice-wedge polygons. These leveling borders form channels that siphon the water from pools in the centers of neighboring polygons. The resulting runoff streams can drain small pools and even larger lakes that took thousands of years to form.

With the progression of climate change, these drainage systems have become more common. Liljedahl refers to them in the title of her manuscript, just published in the July issue of Nature Water, “The Capillaries of the Arctic Tundra.”

The increase in creation of new “capillaries” in the Arctic is impacting not only the topographical landscape of the region, but also the livelihoods of all beings that find their home there.

At first, the melt of these ice wedges can spark an uptick in the variation of vegetation due to moisture along the sides of the channel. This, however, is temporary. When the ice wedges stabilize again in the winter, this variation decreases once more.

Aquatic mosses— one of the most productive vegetal forms in the Arctic, equivalent in productivity to Arctic shrubs— inhabit pools formed alongside the edges of ice-wedge polygons. They lose their homes when bodies of water drain away. Major vegetation changes can alter carbon storage, availability, and emissions across the tundra.

Humans are also impacted. Homes become too dangerous to live in as the ground supporting vital infrastructure collapses. Roads connecting communities to important resources are destroyed by subsiding ground.

Despite their widespread impact, ice wedges are often overlooked in Arctic climate models. Historically, their inclusion “costs too much computer time,” Liljedahl says, to factor in. Many climate models take a holistic approach to the Arctic landscape, as opposed to focusing on smaller details.

To remedy this, Liljedahl suggests utilization of developing technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Classifying the Arctic landscape by type, for example, into high-center polygons, low-center polygons, and capillary networks, would factor ice wedge change into climate models. As AI advances and becomes a more common research tool, it could help decrease the human computing time that Liljedahl identifies as a barrier.

Arctic research is likely to change drastically in the coming years. With new technologies, and as we learn more about the Arctic landscape, research models will likely become more inclusive of the varied features within it, and much more accurate.

“There are exciting years ahead,” Liljedahl says, “I think we’re going to see some cool stuff coming out [of tundra research] in the next five to ten years.”

The exhibit “In Flux: Perspectives on Arctic Change” sprawls across two floors of one of Cape Cod’s oldest summer-home mansions— Highfield Hall.

When they first walk in, visitors see two of Woodwell Climate Board Member Georgia Nassikas’ encaustic paintings flanking a banner with the name of the exhibit. Woodwell Senior Geospatial Analyst Greg Fiske’s maps light up the entry hall. Sounds from Michaela Grill and Karl Lemiuex’s documentary film cascade down from the staircase to the second floor. Tall windows illuminate Gabrielle Russomagno’s small, detailed photographs of the Arctic’s durable vegetation and Aaron Dysart’s reflective sculpture, which invites us to tread with caution.

These six artists’ works have been on display in Highfield Hall since May 21st, and will remain as part of the “In Flux” exhibit until July 14th. On July 11th, some of the artists will participate in a panel discussion with their Woodwell scientist collaborators, Dr. Jennifer Watts and Dr. Sue Natali.

Connecting to a new perspective

The exhibit’s goal is to connect a distant community to the reality of Arctic change. Many of us may never have the opportunity to visit the Arctic, or study it like Woodwell Climate researchers do. Art can help communicate the reality of an unfamiliar place.

Woodwell Climate’s Arctic research informed every piece of art on display at Highfield Hall. Each artist has had the chance to travel to the Arctic alongside Woodwell researchers Dr. Jenny Watts and Dr. Sue Natali. According to Watts, traveling with an artist brought a new perspective to a landscape she had visited so many times before.

“They are looking through the lens of the artist,” Watts says, “They’re kind of seeing it through this fresh look, and then we’re able to see it through their eyes.”

Russomagno calls herself a “student of the Arctic.” Like some of the other artists, she had never been so far north before her 5-day trip with Watts to Alaska. She recalled the whirlwind experience of creating while acclimating to her new surroundings.

“I was able to be making art while discovering,” Russomagno says, “I was looking at the same material [as Watts] and understanding it completely differently.”

The exhibit assumes visitors might come in with certain assumptions about the Arctic, but hopes they will soon throw their preconceived ideas out of Highfield Hall’s many windows. One of these false ideas, Watts says, is that the Arctic is a barren wasteland.

“In the summer especially, it’s brimming with life, and we wanted to show that part of the story because it’s often overlooked,” she says.

Bursts of life from the summer tundra— small shrubs, mosses, lichens, and grasses— are featured in Russomagno’s series of photographs in “The Quiet & the Mighty.” Nassikas’ encaustic paintings uniquely depict color, horizon, and change. Fiske’s maps teleport us from Highfield Hall to the tundra. The entire “In Flux” exhibit displays unexpected dimension.

Why combine art and science?

The experience of the art at Highfield places the viewer in the atmosphere of the Arctic tundra. A quiet place with unexpected vibrancy, the uptick in frequency of deafening crashes as ice melts, breaks, and shifts. These elements would be much harder to glean from traditional methods of communication in the science world. A graph, for example, would likely not evoke such a strong emotional response.

“I think Woodwell and other science organizations struggle with conveying their data, and hard facts, and things they’re discovering to a general audience,” Nassikas says, “Art is another way to change the world for the better.”

Dysart echoed this message: “If research does not connect with people and culture, nothing’s going to change. Art can make that connection. Art has strength that words don’t.”

Our shared home

Part of the power of this exhibit is its setting. We have the opportunity to experience the Arctic’s dynamic changes outside of its natural barriers, and Highfield Hall is the tether.

Dysart says it is “A call back to [our] normal life as opposed to the gallery aesthetic.”

Highfield is a home. It may not feel familiar to everyone, with its extravagant furnishings, stained glass windows, chandeliers, and many rooms, but it was built by humans, for humans. The house has withstood the test of time, though it has changed greatly since its construction in 1878. The Arctic, too is a home for many people, animals, and plants— one that is threatened by climate change. The exhibit at Highfield Hall brings the changing Arctic home to our own changing landscape.

I am a woman that lives for adventure, mud, and heat. The Caribbean sunshine, warmth, and humidity of my island, Boriké, hug me every single day. That’s why many people find it strange that in the summer of 2022 I ended up on the other side of the world from my Carribean Island home, willingly experiencing freezing temperatures.

So, here’s my story: I grew up in Puerto Rico, a couple of Caribbean islands that are very vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests are causing Arctic ice to melt which, in addition to affecting the climate of the planet, is affecting Boriké. Rising sea levels, more frequent and stronger hurricanes, and constant landslides are some of the dangers I am already experiencing on my island.

Although I do a lot of environmental work there, a few years ago I decided to visit the Arctic to fully understand how climate change is also affecting other types of ecosystems. Because climate change is a global phenomenon, I sought to learn how to properly support and collaborate with other at-risk communities outside of the boundaries of my islands, even if that meant stepping outside my comfort zone in another part of the world.

The problem was: I’ve never lived in polar temperatures. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles of coastal and humid tropical forests to conduct research, yet visualizing myself as an Arctic scientist in an environment so different was nearly impossible.

But as I said before, I am a woman that lives for adventure, so if I was going to experience a new environment I was going to get the full experience.

So that summer I packed up my giant backpack and joined eight other young researchers for Woodwell Climate’s Polaris Project— a two-week long research trip in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska. Polaris gives students the chance to design their own studies and gain experience conducting Arctic research. It was with Polaris that my battle against the cold began.

I spent my time in remote areas of the Tundra, a carbon-rich ecosystem lacking mountains and trees, yet full of life and history. I had to live in a tent to conduct my research on how the groundwater system is changing. My usual day in the Arctic looked like lots of hiking in the mud, carrying pipes and drills in my backpack, wearing mosquito nets, and taking water and soil samples in temperatures as low as 48 degrees Fahrenheit. Although 48 degrees might not be cold for many folks on Turtle Island— the original name for North America — as someone from the Caribbean, anything below 70 degrees is already too cold to handle.

Add onto that, the rainy days, the lack of access to communications, internet, electricity, and water service. Needless to say, my first experience with cold was an intense one.

But you know what? I loved it.

I loved working with new friends, colleagues, and mentors. I loved getting to know the Yup’ik and Cup’ik communities guarding these lands. I loved doing science projects that served a common good.

I loved fieldwork in the cold.

However, when I went back home and felt that rich Caribbean sunshine and heat again, I began questioning myself.

How could I have enjoyed working in the cold? Could I really be a scientist in the Arctic even though I didn’t grow up in the Arctic? My Polaris experience lasted only two weeks, and they were the most challenging two weeks of my entire career. Could I endure weeks, months, or even years in these conditions?

Would I let the cold win this battle?

Well, I would have to face the cold one more time either way. Polaris students present the results of their research each year at the American Geophysical Union conference in December. To give my research presentation, I had to travel to Chicago— in the middle of winter.

Have you ever felt the chilling winds of Chicago? It’s known as the windy city for crying out loud! I guess it was time for me to get back to the battlefield.

I packed all my coats, got on a plane, touched down in traditional Potawatomi lands, and tried not to freeze to death.

The wind and snow was strong the day I had to present my research. It was actually my first time experiencing snow falling from the sky, so I bundled up warmly. But as I was walking to the convention center, going over in my mind the speech I had to give, I felt the most chilling cold I had ever experienced in my life. When I looked down at my feet, I realized that I had packed the wrong shoes! In thin flats, my feet were totally exposed.

This was the moment you might conclude that the cold finally beat me. Yet, when I looked back down at my exposed feet, I just couldn’t stop laughing.

After so much effort to “win the battle”, at that very moment I realized the battle doesn’t exist. There is no battle against the cold.

Living in the cold is a lifestyle like any other. Just as my ancestors taught me how to live in harmony with the tropical climate, there are entire communities that apply their millennia-old knowledge to live in harmony with polar temperatures, and in fact depend on it to keep the ground they are built on from thawing and collapsing.

It wasn’t until that moment in Potawatomi lands that I fully realized how much I loved working in Yupi’k and Cupi’k lands. I learned that, whether it’s in the Arctic or in the Caribbean, to become a responsible scientist I need to rethink and rework my perspective and relationship with the land.

Valuing and protecting cold lands, using guidance from the communities that live there, is critical to maintaining a stable climate. For me, embracing the cold gave me a strong step towards stopping climate change.

The rapid warming of the Arctic has caused substantial sea-ice melt, increased ice-free area, and enhanced evaporation from Arctic Marginal Seas (AMS). According to a recent study, the resulting increased atmospheric moisture and latent energy have profound implications for precipitation patterns over Northern Hemisphere land areas.

During the cold season (October to March) from 1980 to 2021, the sea-ice area in AMS declined by nearly 30% (approximately 2 million square kilometers), accounting for 32% of the increase in AMS-sourced precipitation on lands in the Northern Hemisphere land. This means that for every one million square kilometers of ice loss there was a 16% increase in the contribution of water evaporated from AMS to precipitation over land.

“The study reveals that the enhanced moisture supply has a surprisingly pronounced impact on high-latitude land precipitation,” stated the corresponding author, Dr. Qiuhong Tang. Despite AMS-sourced moisture accounting for only 8% of the total high-latitude land precipitation, its dramatic increase owing to ice loss contributed 42% to the overall precipitation increase. “This additional moisture has also contributed to increased extreme snowfall in high-latitude land areas,” added the lead author and Ph.D. candidate Yubo Liu, “which could help mitigate the impact of climate warming on melting of the Greenland ice sheet.”

“Our findings highlight the important contribution of Arctic sea-ice retreat to Northern Hemisphere land precipitation through moisture cycling, which underscores the many impacts of rapid Arctic change on the global climate system,” added co-author Dr. Jennifer A. Francis. “These insights help inform decision-makers striving to manage impacts of the climate crisis.”

“Why not float the aquatic greenhouse gas chamber on a surfboard?” Tropics Program Director Dr. Mike Coe suggested in one of our team meetings, and I could feel the gears in my brain begin turning. I started a sketch… If mounted on a surfboard, we would need a method to open the chamber, flushing it with outside air. Back in my office, I asked Google “what turns electrical energy into mechanical energy?” Google was quick to respond, “Motor.” Right, thank you, Google. Next, I typed, “motor that pushes something up.” Google replied, “linear actuator.” Three clicks later and I had ordered my first linear actuator for 35 bucks.

Three days later, that linear actuator sat expectantly on my desk. One red wire and one black wire, “12V DC” printed on its side. I turned back to Google, “How to wire a linear actuator?” Opening the first hit, I skimmed through the photos and diagrams. None of them striking my fancy, I moved on to the second hit: Step-by-step instructions, clear photos, even open-source code to program my Arduino microcontroller board – nice! Within an hour, my linear actuator was extending and retracting on command, ready to be mounted in an autonomous greenhouse gas chamber.

Adding the actuator to my sketch, I popped into Senior Research Scientist Kathleen Savage’s office to hear her thoughts. Savage always has new ideas brewing, and she suggested adding a feature that would allow the chamber to function on water and on land. The chambers are the product of a Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) grant led by Savage to quantify carbon dioxide and methane emissions from small water bodies like lakes, ponds, and reservoirs. Because there are no low-cost and auto-sampling tools available on the market, we have been developing a new instrument to measure these emissions.

DIY science

“Chamber” is a fancy word for the upside-down buckets we use to measure how fast greenhouse gasses are released from different surfaces. By resting a bucket upside-down on a patch of soil or grass or water and measuring how fast gas concentrations increase or decrease inside the bucket, we can calculate a “flux” of gas over a set area and time. Common methods of measuring fluxes require manually collecting gas samples from a chamber to be processed in a lab, or connecting the chamber to a high precision analyzer that can cost around $40,000. These methods are costly in salary time and equipment, limiting where, when, and how often people can sample—usually daytime and in accessible areas and times of the year. We need new low-cost and autonomous systems that can measure around the clock to improve carbon emissions estimates. The recent commercialization of cheaper sensors and control systems to operate them, like the Arduino microcontroller, now make these developments possible.

I’m building a new floating chamber that measures aquatic fluxes autonomously using a $15 methane sensor and a $78 carbon dioxide sensor, improving previous designs published by Dr. David Bastviken’s group at Linköping University in Sweden. Powered by a solar panel and battery, the sensors measure gas concentrations, temperature, and humidity inside the chamber every 30 seconds. The data is stored on an SD card and transmitted within 50 meters via radio. The radio transmission allows us to check that the chamber is functioning properly from the shore and to see chamber measurements in real time. When gas concentrations have increased enough to discern a flux, the linear actuator extends to open the chamber, flushing the interior with outside air before retracting to close the chamber again for another flux measurement. Calibrating the chamber with a high precision analyzer in the field shows the low-cost sensors perform well, with an accuracy of approximately 1 ppm for methane and 3 ppm for carbon dioxide.

Field deployment

I first tested chamber prototypes last July on agricultural reservoirs at the Tanguro Field Station in Brazil. At the end of our field campaign, I left one chamber deployed to see how long the electronics would last and which components might eventually fail. After helping me deploy and calibrate the chamber, field technician Raimundo “Santarém” Quintino monitored it, checking its “vital signs” via radio every few weeks. In January, he noticed the linear actuator had stopped pushing the chamber open.

During a follow-up field campaign in March, I brought a couple of extra linear actuators and five more chambers to deploy on additional reservoirs at Tanguro. Tanguro staff and I worked together to modify chamber components that didn’t function well in the first deployment. These modifications included swapping the materials of the floating foam bases and improving the mounting mechanisms of the linear actuator and chamber hinge. Our adjustments were informed by recommendations from a Laboratory Operations Manager at the University of Maine in Orono (Christopher London), whom I met while doing fieldwork at the nearby Howland Research Forest. Woods Hole locals, such as John Driscoll and Fred Palmer of the Woodwell Climate Facilities department, kite foiler and carpenter Tad Ryan, and employees at Eastman’s Hardware, have also offered transformative recommendations on building materials and techniques to stabilize the floating chambers.

Working hands-on with the floating chambers on the reservoirs, Santarém, Dr. Leonardo Maracahipes-Santos, Tanguro’s Scientific Projects Coordinator, and Sebastião “Seu Bate” Nascimento of Tanguro Field Station have made invaluable improvements to the chamber design and deployments. A few of their contributions include advice on safe deployment locations, monitoring and collecting data from the chambers over time, and constructing aluminum and galvanized steel components for the floating bases. They also designed a new mount for the most recent chamber addition—a bubble trap that uses an inexpensive pressure sensor to autonomously measure the volume of gas released as bubbles.

Freshwater ecosystems worldwide emit nearly half as much carbon dioxide and methane as fossil fuel combustion. On the Amazon-Cerrado frontier, where Tanguro is located, there are hundreds of thousands of small agricultural reservoirs, which are important, yet overlooked, greenhouse gas sources. These artificial ponds—installed to provide drinking water for cattle, facilitate road crossings, or supply energy at the farm scale—can persist for decades, creating low-oxygen conditions that drive methane production. Monthly sampling of six reservoirs over a year by Water Program Director Dr. Marcia Macedo revealed high methane and carbon dioxide emissions, varying with season and reservoir size. But these measurements did not capture the significant variability that can occur on daily, monthly, and annual time scales, including transient “hot spots” and “hot moments” of high greenhouse gas emissions.

This lack of frequent measurements hinders climate scientists’ ability to integrate emissions at the reservoir scale in order to estimate cumulative greenhouse gas emissions at the landscape scale. The autonomous floating chambers will address that gap, enabling comprehensive carbon monitoring and modeling of the reservoirs.

From the tropics to the Arctic

Additionally, these chambers are versatile tools that can be used across different environments. Funded by a subsequent FCS grant, six new floating chambers will accompany me to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska, this summer to measure greenhouse gas emissions from Arctic ponds. The chambers will supply the frequent data necessary to constrain the LAKE model utilized by Arctic Program scientists Dr. Elchin Jafarov and Andrew Mullen. The model predicts variations in carbon emissions from ponds, providing insight into processes regulating methane and carbon dioxide. By applying the LAKE model to both Arctic ponds and Amazon reservoirs, we can gain a deeper understanding of their impacts on regional greenhouse gas budgets.

“Deploying floating chambers will streamline the process of gathering aquatic data and enhance the temporal resolution of the data, which is vital for modeling and currently absent in existing datasets,” notes Jafarov.

Problem-solving and collaboration

While calibrating the low-cost sensors in our boat one March afternoon, Santarém and I noticed the linear actuator on another nearby chamber wasn’t retracting and extending as it should. Expecting another replacement was in store, we tuned into the radio and popped open the electronics case to check for “symptoms.” Blinking lights and radio silence revealed an entirely new and perplexing issue causing the malfunction.

Building this system from the ground up over the last year, the one constant has been mind-bending electronics puzzles that keep me up at night. As a biogeochemist by training, these problems usually require some tinkering, a dictionary, a lot of Googling, and sometimes bugging electrical engineers down the street at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Lane Abrams) and Spark Climate Solutions (Bashir Ziady), whose advice and contributions have substantially improved the chambers’ electrical designs. Each problem can usually be traced to a perfectly logical, satisfying solution, leaving me feeling wiser and excited to tackle the next one. I’ve tracked this new problem down to something potentially involving a “memory-leaking variable declaration” in my new bubble trap programming code. I might’ve fixed it with a “watchdog timer.” Both are new words for me, too. If the watchdog timer doesn’t pan out, Santarém and I will try another fix.

Designing, building, and testing these chambers has been an iterative and constantly evolving process. What works well? What doesn’t? How can we do this more simply? Using less energy? For a lower cost? How can we improve the design so that other researchers can easily build these floating chambers as well? Soon we plan to publish open-source instructions detailing how to build and troubleshoot the floating chambers—I have already sent preliminary instructions to three interested research groups. I’m lucky to collaborate with many talented people from Woods Hole to Maine and Brazil, many of whom are as new to chambers and fluxes as I am to engineering. Nevertheless, these floating chambers incorporate a brilliant flourish from each of them.

Study pinpoints links between melting Arctic ice and summertime extreme weather in Europe

New research shows how last year’s warming melted ice in Greenland that increased flows of fresh, cold water into the North Atlantic, upsetting ocean currents in ways that lead to atmospheric changes.

Arctic ice floes

The Arctic Ocean is mostly enclosed by the coldest parts of the Northern Hemisphere’s continents, ringed in by Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, with only a small opening to the Pacific through the Bering Strait, and some narrow channels through the labyrinth of Canada’s Arctic archipelago.

But east of Greenland, there’s a stretch of open water about 1,300 miles across where the Arctic can pour its icy heart out to the North Atlantic. Those flows include increasing surges of cold and fresh water from melted ice, and a new study in the journal Weather and Climate Dynamics shows how those pulses can set off a chain reaction from the ocean to the atmosphere that ends up causing summer heatwaves and droughts in Europe.

Mandala Pham

Mandala Pham studies geophysics and history at the University of Texas at Austin. As an undergraduate researcher, she has explored the caves of central Texas, studied marine geophysics in Corpus Christi Bay, and peered back in time to past climates through geology. Her experience in different lab groups spurred her interest in field work, driving her to pursue graduate opportunities to continue getting up close with geology.

During her Polaris experience, however, Pham’s research focused less on geology and more on ecology. Inspired by her father’s affinity for beautiful, rare, and sometimes poisonous mushrooms, Pham studied the response of Arctic mushroom species to wildfire, comparing biodiversity between burned and unburned areas of land.

As part of Polaris, Pham saw a glacier in person for the first time, which reinforced her commitment to dedicate her career to studying and fighting climate change.

“From childhood anxieties to professional aspirations, I’ve taken tackling climate change as my personal direction in life,” says Pham. “I want to be part of the solution rather than spending my time ruminating on the worst-case scenarios.”

She hopes to get her Ph.D. in geophysics, studying glaciology. After that she has aspirations for either full time research or a career in the National Parks Services. Pham is also interested in screenwriting, pig farming, and perhaps one day, becoming a lighthouse keeper.

Aaron MacDonald

Aaron MacDonald’s passion for ecology began during his childhood spent on long family camping trips. Through his studies at University of Toronto, MacDonald has gained experience in oceanography and fisheries science through the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program (PEP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Inclusive Fisheries Internship. His field experience bolstered his confidence to pursue a scientific career.

With Polaris, MacDonald studied the role of willow ptarmigan, a common Arctic ground bird, as drivers of ecosystem dynamics on the tundra. For his career, he hopes to pursue a graduate degree and get involved with mentorship programs like Polaris. MacDonald firmly believes everyone should have the opportunity to study science, and is grateful for the support he received that has allowed him to pursue this career.

“Everyone who wants to is capable of scientific research and everyone has a place in STEM,” says MacDonald. “I have questioned many times if there is a place for me in STEM, but with the support of those around me I am determined to make it.”

In his spare time, MacDonald enjoys running and video games with friends.

Both recipients will receive funding to continue their education and pursuit of science, mentorship, and equity, encouraging a new generation of Arctic scientists working to change the world.