You know, I have been working with glaciers for decades now, and I'm going back to the same glaciers in the Arctic. These are glaciers that I have come to know year after years, as friends, as physical bodies. I can close my eyes and tell you how these glaciers smell and sound and feel. That was scientists Dr M. Jackson, who has made glaciers her life's work. Glaciers, she says, are
our global library. They reveal Earth's past and future. But while glaciers are in trouble, Dr Jackson isn't ready to give in to pessimism, and she tells us how we all can help. I'm a land vere and this is senecas on women to hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women. You need to hear. Dr M. Jackson is an expert on glaciers and the Arctic for the National Geographic Society. She's written two books about glaciers, including The Secret Lives
of Glaciers. Glacier, she says, are vital to protecting the world from climate change, and she's going to give us a whole new way to think about them. Listen and learn why Dr M Jackson is one of Seneca's women to hear. I'm speaking today with Dr M Jackson, geographer and expert on glaciers. Welcome, Dr Jackson, thank you so much for having me today. Now you're a self described glacier nerd as well as an arctic expert. So tell us what is a glacier? That is, what makes a
glacier a glacier? And why are glaciers so critical to life on Earth? That is a great question and a huge one. So we have our classic scientific definition of what a glacier is, which is a perennial body of land ice that exists, right, But what really is that? What is land ice? What does it mean to exist perennially? Right? So we have this scientific definition, but across our whole planet, glaciers means so much more to many many different people.
And from a scientific lens, I think about what is a glacier? It's our global library. These are snowflakes that have fallen over the last hundreds of years, thousands of years, millions of years. That has each one falls, it records what our planet is doing, what our pollen county is, what our temperature is, what our sentiments are and it
records it for a global library. And that's what I think about every time I interact with a new glacier, because the glaciers they're not only record, but they influence. Why are glaciers crucial to life on Earth? Because of how they impact our global world? Glaciers they influence our
local weather patterns, They make weather, Isn't that crazy? They influence how much water is on our planet today, whether our planet is as it is right now rather wet, high ocean levels, lots of rain and precipitation, or when we look in our past we can be much drier. The weather you experience when you walk outside of your house, it's brought to you by your local glaciers. Wow, it's
just so fascinating to hear you talk about this. So given how important glaciers are for all the reasons you just stated, what is the condition of the world's glaciers right now and what does that tell us about climate change? Yes, so lots of different ways to look at glaciers and what their conditions are right now. We can say we have about two hundred thousand glaciers, then it wide and if you start including smaller glaciers like little glacier ats.
We could say we have about four glaciers and that number it can be important in some ways because when we look at our glaciers, we can say we're losing our mass. Our glaciers globally there are exceptions, but globally are getting smaller and smaller as they respond to increasing climatic changes and decrease in size. Our number of glaciers, though, it is actually increasing because our larger glacier systems are
breaking down. So when you see headlines in the future that say, hey, we have more glaciers on this planet, always be skeptical. We are losing mass as our larger glacier systems are breaking apart. So we have so many glaciers melting now correct, we have the majority of our planets ice is melting. And what that tells us about climate change is that the impacts of climatic changes are increasing.
So tell us about your work. How much time, for example, do you spend on actual glaciers, What do you love about it? And what was your most memorable or uninspiring moment on a glacier? So those are all big questions. Are glaciers tend to be located in pretty remote places on our planet, and so for me to go out there and work on those glaciers, UH is no small commitment. It's not a day trip. When I'm working on glaciers in Antarctic, I've to get there, or in the Arctic,
i have to get there. And so if you're there, you're going to be spending some time. In an ideal world, I'm out in the field several months of the year. COVID has made that really really difficult, UH, And in the future, I hope to get to spend more time. If you're in places like Iceland, where you have a glacier in your backyard, you could go out, as I have done countless times, go out do what I need to do on the ice, and then come home and have a hot, hot cup of coffee and that lovely.
But that's pretty pretty rare. What's it like to be an Antarctica doing this work? You know, I have been working with glaciers for decades now, and I'm going back to the same glaciers in Antarctica. In the Arctic. These are glaciers that I have come to know year after years, as friends, as physical bodies. I can close my eyes and tell you how these glaciers smell and sound and feel.
And I'm going back each year, and they are deteriorating faster than I have ever seen, and a lot of times it reminds me really strongly of what I experienced my family. My parents passed away from cancers and watching their bodies respond to cancer and slowly deteriorate. I have seen how similar that is as I watch these glaciers I have known for decades physically deteriorate and dwindle away. It's one of the most amazing places I have been is ice field environments. But it is also the hardest
because they changed so rapidly today. What a metaphor? Do you have a favorite glaciers? Is that a legitimate question? Does one have a favorite glacier? You know, oftentimes when we say the word glacier, we are failing for the phenomenon of ice on our planet because it's this one word that almost homogenizes ice. Most of the glaciers I work on are so dissimilar from one another that I've had to come to know them as as individuals with their own unique sounds and smells and response rates on
the coast of Iceland. There's glaciers lined up just like the teeth of a comb. But each one of those glaciers is different and responds differently. So if I'm if I'm looking at say they any glacier in South Georgia down in the sub Antarctic, that glacier, I love it, but it is so different than if I'm on Hanniberg Jocolt in Iceland, or if I'm on the Mauth Subpoena
glacier in Alaska. Every one of them is so different, and I I try to remember and keep in the front of my thinking how lucky I am to experience these glaciers as they are now, because if you and I go out there a year from now, all of this ice will be different. Senecas one hundred women to hear will be back after the short break, Can we go back for a moment, because I just love listening to you and hearing your enthusiasm for what you do. What was your childhood like did you always want to
be a scientist? And you know what was the moment you knew that glaciers would be a big part of your life's work? Mm hmm, you know, I didn't grow up knowing that I wanted to be a scientist, nor did I grow up knowing I could be a scientist. Uh. When I was young, I lived very rurally and I'd never met another scientist, let alone a female scientist. That just wasn't part of my world. My father was a
welder across the state of Alaska. He built a lot of infrastructure and worked on the pipeline, and my mom was a farmer. I grew up very surprised that I'd even encountered The next year, the next year, the next year at school, UM I was going to be a firefighter in a medic in Southeast Alaska. That was the career I had out for myself. I didn't know that I can imagine more than that, and I didn't know
what was possible. And in my late teens early twenties, I started working as a backcountry guide in Southeast Alaska, which has huge eye systems, and I wanted to be a better guide. I wanted to be able to explain the ice that I was working on to our clients. And I googled things, and I looked on Wikipedia, and I read books, but so much of what I was experiencing with boots on the ground, crampons on the on
the ice I could not find explanations for. And right about that time I was called out to work as a guide for a bunch of National Geographic borders. They were doing photography work, and if you can imagine when you're young, I was in my early twenties. All I knew about these photographers was that they worked for the National Geographic Society, and in my mind I thought they must know everything. And so I asked all of these bird specialists about things I saw on glaciers. I didn't
understand the distinctions and science, I didn't understand disciplines. And what I still today think of as a big stroke of luck is that these particular bird photographers were incredibly kind and they did not tell me that they couldn't answer my questions and ended the conversation. Instead, they told me these questions I was asking, those are great questions, and that I had the ability to go answer them. And then one person in particular, a man named Ford Cochrane,
he continued to email with me. He continued to encourage me, and the year after year he encouraged me to go get to school, to get an education, to get a master's degree, to get a doctorate degree. When I needed work, he could help me with jobs to pay for schooling. I can tell you today I am the product of incredible mentorship. A lot of it tie back to the
National Geographic Society. I today think a lot about that as I spend time working as a basically as a science communicator and an outreach scientist, because when I was young again, I didn't know science was an option for me, and so it's really important that I spend time with young children and show them what a scientist can look like.
Everyone doesn't have to be a scientist, but I want them to know it's an option, Especially in a field like mine, which is so predominantly filled with white men. There aren't that many female scientists that study glaciers, and so I want to change that. Well, speaking of females scientists, I know you've said that you put a feminist lens on what you do. What does that mean and why is it so important to do that? Yeah, I do put a feminist lens on all of my work and
how I want to be in the world. What that specifically to my science is really that more voices are welcome, and more diversity is welcome, and I take a very broad view of that. When you think about the history of glaciology, this is a field of science that has been dominated for over a century by Western, white male practitioners, and that has given us amazing information and science, but it is also severely limited. Who can talk about ice and in what form. Most of glaciology today still lends
itself to measuring, monitoring, and predicting glacier ice. But what happens when you ask a bunch of artists to come out and paint ice, to do incredible different views of ice? What happens if you ask indigenous people who have been living with glaciers for millennia what their views on that science is? What happens if you ask young women what their views are? What happens if we incredibly in span
this field to include as many different perspectives. We're losing our world sies right now, and so for me, I don't think we have the time to have a limited view. We need as many voices at the table looking at
our eyes because that's gonna walk us towards solutions. You know, it's been very tough listening to the realities that we confront with climate change, as you've articulated them, just from the perspective of your work on glaciers, and given how rapid and overwhelming climate change is, what can our individual listeners do to improve things? Because I'm sure they share great concern but are frankly not fully understanding of what could make a difference by them as individuals. I would ask,
what can your listeners do? I think that's a really difficult question. That is a pretty simple solution. I want your listeners to push back on what they've been told. The narratives that we are told are so often unimaginative, and they limit what can be possible. I am tired of walking into a room and telling people I'm a glaciologist and they snicker and say we'll all be a historian soon, as if the future of ice is predetermined. Uh, it's not. We have such an impossible future that we
can imagine. I'm actually hopeful for glaciers. And why I'm hopeful for glaciers. As a scientist, I have absolutely no problem conflating the personal with the professional. I think a lot about my life. I've spent the majority of my
adult life being told I would never have children. And after years and years of IVS and using the scientific tools that we have developed, and having a lot of heartbreak and sending to the narratives of being told of what is possible and impossible for my future, my husband and I now have a small child, m I was able to redefine what is possible for me. When we think about glaciers, were told they are melting and there's nothing we can do. The future is set. All glaciers
need is snow, cold temperatures, and time. That's the basic recipe to grow a glacier. Today, if we managed to get our temperatures down, our glaciers could respond, and we could live in a world with ice. Now, uh, we add science there and the splash of cold water reality, which is, even if we got our temperatures down, our glaciers take take a while to respond. And so the work I do to advocate for ice to say we can live in a world with glaciers. That's a world
I'm never gonna see. That's a world my son finning and is an ever going to see. But his children might see that we can live in a world with ice, and our glaciers can grow back, but it's not going to happen overnight. But it is still incredibly important to think about the next generations and what their planet looks like. And that's the work we do today, is redefining what
is possible and how we imagine a future. So I would tell your individual listeners to not give into the narratives that our future is set, that we cannot combat climatic changes. We absolutely can, and we begin each day and we put our mind to it and know that we can make a difference. You know, just listening to you, you have so much enthusiasm for your profession, so much affection truly for what you do. And just given your last answer, let me end on this note. Where do
you find optimism? Clearly it's in your work and what you just said, But can you expand on that what gives you such hope? I think I get a lot of hope from the ice itself. It is so resilient and even though a lot of the glaciers I work with are dissolving, that is not a permanent state, that
is not the final chapter. And I think too often we think of our time skills in these these hours, these days, these these tweets and instead thinking about how a future might look what the next years might look like. I have the power to shape that. I have the power to add a lot more to the conversation, So to your listeners, So do the glaciers, the oceans, the rivers, the forest that we live with that group conversation that redefines the future we move into. I think about that
and I get a lot of hope. Wonderfully, said Dr m Jackson, Thank you so much for being with us today, and thank you for all that you do to care about our glaciers and to care about addressing climate change as well. It was a pleasure to be able to talk to you. Thank you, Thank you for having me. What an incredible way to think about glaciers and all life on Earth. There are three things I took from that conversation. First, how fascinating to realize that glaciers are
not only vital, but that each one is unique. But they are also changing quickly. The glaciers we know today may be very different the next time we see them. Second, looking back on her career, Dr Jackson reminds us once again about the import tance of mentorship. As a teen, she didn't imagine that she could be a scientist until a mentor encouraged her to pursue both the master's degree and a doctorate. That's why today she makes a point to spend time with children and to show them what
a scientist, especially a glacier scientist, it'll look like. Finally, Dr Jackson encourages us to reject defeatism when it comes to climate change. Yes, the glaciers are melting. We may think there's nothing we can do, but that's wrong, she says. The future is not set, and we have the power to shape it. Tune in next week to hear about our next featured woman and discover why she's one of
Seneca's one Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PUNGI Have a Great Day.