The Andes are the longest mountain chain in the world and the second highest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas. There are over a hundred peaks in the Andes with summits that exceed 6,000 meters (19,685 feet)-- and many of the mountains are covered in glaciers.

Glaciers cover 10% of the land area on Earth. They store about ⅔ of the world’s fresh water– an incredibly important and valuable resource. But as global temperatures rise, those glaciers are disappearing. Not only are we losing precious fresh water as glaciers melt into water that flows into the sea and gets salty and harder to use, but all that water is also causing sea levels to rise. If all of the glaciers on Earth melted, the sea level would rise about 230 feet, flooding every coastal city on the planet and displacing about one-third of the world’s population.

One person who is working to help understand and raise awareness of the problem of shrinking glaciers is Ulyana Horodyskyj Peña. She’s a glaciologist– a type of geologist that specializes in studying glaciers. She has a Bachelor's degree in Earth Science from Rice University, a Masters from Brown University, and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder. She was also a Fulbright Fellow in Nepal where she lived for 10 months. Her current job is Communications Lead at North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Colorado, one of nine Climate Adaptation Science Centers across the country. 

Ulyana’s Persistent Pollutants Project: https://scienceinthewild.com/persistent-pollutants-project/

To follow Ulyana and Ricardo’s mountain climbing expeditions, visit http://summitssongsandscience.com/index.html 

To learn more about glaciers, visit the world glacier monitoring service website wgms.ch/  

Watch Ulyana’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE54K0sF-1g

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

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WildWorld_Glaciers_Ulyana-002-1

Scott: Our planet is covered in water. While much of it is in liquid form, quite a bit of that water comes in the form of ice. Earth's polar regions are covered in massive blocks of ice, known as glaciers, and the tops of many of the tallest mountains on earth have glaciers two too. But that is changing fast, but that is changing fast.

Ulyana: This is a grand experiment that we don't know what the outcome is, but we know from history it's never been good.

Our planet will adapt, right? It's shown throughout history, but what about us? What about humanity? What about the ecosystems? We're losing

our refrigerator, if you will because that's what keeps the entire planet cool and regulated and our climate nice and stable. And so we really risk even more extreme weather events as a result of losing glaciers.

And to understand why it matters. the Andes are the longest mountain chain in the world. and the second highest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas.

Glaciers cover 10% of the land area on earth. They store about two thirds of the world's fresh water, an incredibly important and valuable resource. But as global temperatures rise, those glaciers are disappearing. Not only are we losing precious fresh water as glaciers melt into water that flows into the sea and gets salty and harder to use, but all that water is also causing sea levels to rise.

[00:03:00] The first ever World Day for Glaciers was celebrated on March 21st, 2025. One person who's working to help understand and raise awareness of the problem of shrinking glaciers is Ana Hoki Pena. She's a glaciologist, a type of geologist that specializes in studying glaciers. She has a bachelor's degree in earth science from Rice University, a master's from Brown University, and a PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder Along the way, she was also a Fulbright fellow in Nepal where she lived for 10 months.

Along the way, they record live musical performances and make videos about the scientific research they're doing. I sat down with Ana when she came to Rice to speak with my public science communication class. She and Ricardo had just recently returned from another expedition to the Andes.

Well, Ana, thank you so much for, for joining us and, and for being on the podcast. Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. So we're here at Rice, and so this is where you were an undergraduate student. You got your, your bachelor's degree here. I thought we would just start off by taking us back to that time.

So if you think back to your time at Rice, what were you, what were you studying? What were your interests at that time?

I would love to have that field opportunity. So that kind of planted a seed. And then I eventually transitioned over to the Earth Science Department to major in Earth Sciences and. Just a couple months before I graduated from Rice, I got a chance to go on an icebreaker down to the Antarctic Peninsula.

Wow. And yeah, I feel like that's what really kind of caused that switch into like, I really wanna be out in the field in these extreme environments. This is, it kind of made me come alive.

Scott: Yeah, no, I understand that as, as a kid, you, you kind of had an interest in the outdoors and, and may maybe even got to spend a little bit of time in, in the mountains and some snow. You, you talked in your Ted talk about a snowball fight as a formative experience. What, when was that?

Ulyana: Yeah. So that was quite early. That was at age six for me. So I have two older brothers, so they were eight and 10, and my parents had brought us to Europe for like about a month. Just. To see all the different countries and experiences. But the one that really stood out for me was the Swiss Alps.

I remember we took this cog railway, you know, this little train up to about, I think 10,000 feet and this is July and there's snow everywhere. So of course us being kids kinda start with a snowball fight and. I actually saw the footage recently 'cause my, my parents tracked down, you know, the, the footage from that snowball

Scott: family videos. Yeah,

Ulyana: Old family videos now digitized. And I saw in the footage, you know, me throwing a piece of, of snow at my mom and my mom went like, and then all of a sudden you hear this rumble in the distance. And then it's a, it's an avalanche that had come down. And so it was just interesting to watch myself as a child seeing all that happening.

Got to see like the KT boundary, for example, like, like in the rock record, like that's what killed the dinosaurs. Like that's for me, brought it all alive also. Yeah. And so, yeah, I really, from a young age loved it. And then Rice kind of continued to like provide those opportunities.

Scott: Right, right. That's really cool. And then you as a ma. Master's student you were at Brown University, which is in, in Rhode Island. Right. And, and that was when you started rock climbing. But, but you know, Rhode Island is not a place that's known for you know, climbing and, and certainly not for mountains.

So how did, how did that start?

But I kinda had an interest. I'm like, oh, that's, that's cool. And so then when I got to Rhode Island. I realized there was a, a club that I could join. Just a local, kinda a climbing club, and I'm like, oh, this might be interesting. Just I started to really get interested in mountaineering. And so there's the Adirondacks there, the gunks, you know, just all these places where you can learn technical rock climbing as well as do some mountains in the.

And that's when I started to think. Maybe that's something I could do for a PhD. 'cause the program I was in at Brown was a master's. It was actually a PhD program. But then I decided to [00:09:00] leave with the master's and change direction and do glaciers. 'cause I could kind of blend my interest in mountaineering and science.

Yeah. So that's how that kind of all transitioned. But I still decided to finish a master's at Brown that was really kind of different in the sense that I was doing, iceland as an analog for early Mars. Mm-hmm. Field work. Okay. Which I love, you know, everything space and, and planetary geology related.

And that kind of, again, got planted here at Rice. 'cause I had, I knew I wanted to do eventually something in planetary geology. But then I realized I need to go west for the big mountains in, in Colorado. They have all the fourteeners, all the peaks above 14,000 feet opportunity to train out there and then eventually, hopefully head to the Himalaya.

Scott: So do you remember. Some of your first trips in big mountains?

Scott: it's about 19,000 feet

Ulyana: Yeah, 19,300.

And so. The training that I did, 'cause I was living in Rhode Island at the time, was like, there's no real altitude. So I remember the library being like, I think 15 story, or I can't remember exactly how many, but I remember going into the staircase up and down, up and down, up and down with my backpack.

Yeah. And I would load it up with a climbing rope just for weights and people would be looking at me like, what? Going into the

Scott: Are you gonna scale the building? Yeah. Right.

Ulyana: But that's, you know, just creative ways of getting training even when you're at C level.

Scott: Yeah. And then. You know, we're gonna talk about glaciers in a minute, but Kilimanjaro, of course, famous for the snows of Kilimanjaro, the ice cap, which of course is rapidly receding.

And I'm sure you, you, you saw that up at the top. What was that experience like?

I was stunned at how much melt and, and there was of those glaciers, like at least one of 'em was just. Half gone. Wow. Wow. That was incredible. So first of all, it's incredible because you're already up so high and you're near the equator, right? You're like, there's glaciers up here. And then in 2017 I was actually able to get really close, you know, and literally touch the ice and just have a look at it close up.

And it was quite interesting just again, to like have that experience of visibly, like visibly seeing it, touching it, and creating that experience for people too.

What, what is a glacier?

Ulyana: Yeah, I like to describe the mountain glaciers as rivers of ice. I just really slowly moving ice. Coming downhill 'cause of gravity. And so there's a lot of visible features you could look for. The main ones are cracks in the ice and those are called crevasses. And I, I don't have one with me, but a Mars bar or a Snickers bar or milk, actually Milky Way, now I'm getting hungry.

If you take that candy bar and you, and you break it the top part where the chocolate is kind of breaks into these cracks and the lower part where the caramel is flows. So you can think of a glacier similarly. So there's a point at which it's, it's cracking at the top, but there's a limit to where that crack stops.

Yeah. When we were at that maximum. And so, yeah, I, I like to point that out in the field where you, you can just be walking along. And then looking for these features out on the ice. In the Andes there's a lot, and in the Himalaya there's a lot of debris, cover rock and, and, and dirt covering the ice.

So it's not always as obvious as you kinda have to look for other features, like maybe ice walls, maybe darker stuff that's showing up. Maybe there's pools of water. So we have sometimes this vision of what a glacier is, is this clean blue ice with these cracks. But there's also these debris covered glaciers that are also rapidly changing.

Scott: Yeah. And so you're saying, you know, you think of it as a river of ice and. So that implies that it is moving like a river and, and, and they do,

Ulyana: Yeah. Just very, very slowly

Mm-hmm. And I assume that that comes from the, like, the pace of glaciers that are, that are sort of flowing down from gravity, but they're also often receding, right? Because of climate change and other factors. Right. So, what determines whether a glacier is advancing or receding?

Ulyana: Yeah. So for advancing, you really wanna get a lot more snow to fall in either the winter time or in the Himalaya during that, the monsoon season where you get a lot of the precipitation high up. So essentially, yeah, if you think about your bank account being in the green or the red, it's the same thing with the bank account of a glacier being that snow.

Gain or, or receding, is really driven by how much snow you get because how does a glacier form, you have to have a lot of snow that then starts to compact and then a lot more snow that falls on top of that, that keeps compacting until it eventually turns to ice. So that transition is super important and we're just not having enough time and enough snow fall sometimes to grow those glaciers.

Scott: You're listening to Wild World. After a short break, we'll hear about some of the creative ways Ana collects data on shrinking glaciers.

BREAK 1

This is Wild World. I'm Scott Solomon, and I'm speaking with Glaciologist Ana Hoki Pena.

(BREAK 1?)

Ulyana: Yeah, a lot of it is actually photographic. So during my PhD I set up these time-lapse cameras to watch the changes. In particular in the Himalaya where I was studying, there's a lot of these lakes that form on the surface of the glacier, and so that water's gonna. Be able to heat up fast heat up more, and so then it can start to eat away at the ice surrounding it.

And so that's one way that you can kind of eat away at a glacier. And then we also will take measurements using sonar. So actually getting a, an inflatable raft out there with sonar. And as a graduate student, the budget was quite small and so we used fish finders. There were no fish. We can confirm in these lakes.

Scott: 'cause fish finders are actually using sonar

So it's not safe for a person to be in there with, with that. With that machinery. So, and then I've kind of also transitioned into really studying the pollution that's present in the snow pack. And so that requires physically climbing to the locations and collecting the samples, doing some init kind of, information on snow temperature, the snow grains, what did they look like, what's their shape and size?

All that gets put into a numerical model that can actually tell you how much melting, extra melting is happening due to the presence of pollution. And the interesting thing is you can't always visibly see the pollution. In the snow, it's really tiny, like it's less, less than the width of a hair. Wow. And so yeah, I've kind of been looking at both ends of the glaciers where these lakes are forming and melting more dramatically that ice.

And then in the upper parts, the healthier, if you will, that snow pack. How that's being also melted by pollution.

Ulyana: Yeah, so black carbon, it comes from something called incomplete combustion. So when you have a fuel source that burns in the presence of oxygen, you obviously get your heat and energy from that. But there's byproducts. Byproducts are greenhouse gases. But when you have partial burning of that fuel source because say lack of oxygen it also creates this extra carbon or soot or black carbon.

So there's these tiny particles that kind of get lofted up into the air. They're two and a half microns or less, so they fall under that pm 2.5, that particulate matter 2.5 category. You might hear that sometimes in the news about that being bad for air quality.

Scott: Yeah. And that's something you wanna breathe in,

Ulyana: right?

Scott: So it's kinda like if you wear, you know, black clothes on a hot day, you feel hotter because that black color is. Absorbing more, more heat.

Ulyana: Exactly, and I'm kind of regretting my choice wearing all black in Houston.

Scott: Yeah, you're wearing all black today. Luckily it's not too hot yet today, but but yes, that's true.

So even though these particles are so incredibly tiny, they can actually still have an impact on the melting of something as enormous as a glacier.

Ulyana: Absolutely. Because the way it works is they're really small, but they kind of pack a big punch. So again, they absorb that solar radiation, the snow starts to melt. And then what happens is black carbon is. Hydrophobic. It doesn't really like the water, so it's not gonna run off as that snow melts.

There's a layer on top of the ice, and so the ice is not as reflective as the snow. So again, you have this kind of accelerated melting happening and you can visibly actually see this. Maybe not at the start, but with time you'll be able to see it.

Scott: So you, you said that this black carbon comes from incomplete combustion, so things that aren't burning up all the way, I guess. Right. So, is that a new issue or it sounds like the kind of thing that maybe has been going on for a while?

I mean, you can try to minimize the open burning of agriculture that happens in places like Africa and Asia. But then also you have wildfires, right? So wildfires is something that's an indirect result of climate change. You know, especially in Colorado, you know, it's just drought is, is drying up the trees and they're just basically like.

Tinder waiting to go up. So that's definitely more challenging. As far as like the so is also coming from, from wildfires, but at least maybe we can do something about the half that we're responsible for.

Scott: Yeah. So, so what, what kinds of things can people do in order to kind of reduce how much of this black carbon is, is ending up on glaciers?

And it's may coming from these sources based on wind patterns. And it could be that source, that could be that factory, for example, that that coal fire power plant. And it should be doing better at scrubbing that black carbon out of the atmosphere, but it's not right. And so there are solutions, the black carbon.

Part of the climate crisis is solvable and scalable, but we need data like where is that actually coming from?

Scott: Right. And so in the data that you've helped collect or that you've been involved in, in analyzing, does it look like people who are living far away from glaciers are still having an impact through their emissions?

Does it, you know, if you, if you don't live anywhere near a glacier, should you still be thinking about the impact that you're having on, on glaciers?

So, you know, there's, there's the personal impact, personal part of this, which is like maybe reducing how much we drive. We're taking public transportation, but then. There's corporation accountability. That's a big one. And so again, to inform that we need the data showing, hey, it is you guys, or it is coming at least from this region and making its way up here.

And why do we care about the Arctic or Antarctic? You know, people are so far removed, especially in Houston, like so far removed from it. Well, it's like what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. Also, right? So if you have melting ice up there, that actually affects global weather patterns, it will affect hurricanes, for example, which you think gets hit

Scott: Yes, we do. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I've also heard that microplastics have been found on some of the, the highest mountains in, in the world. How do they get there?

And an analysis was done and it was. Plastic was raining out Wow. Of the sky. That's crazy. And so it's kind of a similar idea of like these things when they're so small, micro or nanos, that they can get lofted also into the air. And we are a plastic nation where a plastic world, a plastic is convenient for so many things.

It's being found everywhere. I had a colleague who just came back from a Greenland trip, literally just a week ago, and she was finding it in the soils up in the Arctic as well. And in it's also found in human bodies. And again, that is something that is solvable and scalable, but we need to know like how far reaching is it?

And, but again, the thing is we can do something about it, but we need the da data and, and then act on that.

Scott: Absolutely. And, and, you know, having you say, these plastics are ending up in our bodies, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, do we know much about the health effects? It can't be good.

Ulyana: It can't be good. So I can't speak much to that. I just, I just, from what I've read, that it's, it seems like we each consume the equivalent of like the size of a credit card. Oh, geez. Worth of plastic, which is really alarming. Yeah, it is a lot. And there was some research, I just remember reading about how they're detecting.

Microplastics in the bloodstream, in in, in arteries of people who have had heart attacks. There's no like exact correlation yet, but it's just interesting that like when they did the autopsies, they're finding micro and nanoplastics Wow. In the arteries. So

Ulyana: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so my husband's been climbing a lot longer than me. Sweet's had this amazing record of, of photos and just the experiences of, of being on these peaks. But to give you an example we climbed and got engaged on Mum Blanc in the Oh wow. In the French Alps and just climbing up it one way and down another.

I mean, you could just see. The impact of the melt, there's just a lot more rockfall. So you can almost think of like those mountain glaciers as being the glue, right? And they're holding the mountain together, if you will, to an extent. And as the glacier melts and as the any kind of ice that got got embedded with those rocks melt out, it's gonna mobilize a lot more of those, those rocks.

It was, we start climbing at like 11:00 PM so that we avoid the, the heat of the sun mobilizing the ice and the rock. And the year we were climbing. It was also like a record heat wave in Europe.

Scott: which are becoming more common of course. Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. And so is, I mean, that must be in addition to having to hike at night, basically you must also have a narrower kind of, you know, window of when in the year you can even do

Ulyana: Safely. Yes. Great point. Absolutely. Yes. So that, that, that window is narrowing and because the window is narrowing, more people are gonna be on the mountain and people can also dislodge rocks and ice. Right? So yeah, you have kind of a compounding problem here. Wow. Mm-hmm.

Scott: Now, I know that you've spent a lot of time in, in the Andes and the Andes. I mean, this is the longest mountain chain in the world. It's the second highest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas.

Ulyana: Yeah, a conka is almost 23,000 feet, so it's the highest I've, I've been to, and I remember the feeling is very surreal. Like you, you. The impacts of having less oxygen up there is just, it kind of feels like slow motion. Like your mind is willing to, like, it wants to go faster, but your body is just not, not catching up.

And at the same time we were doing science. On the peak. So I had to have like really good notes about like, all right, follow these steps Exactly, because it's gonna be really hard with that lack of oxygen. And the muscles, you know, are really straining because, you know, you need the body kind of focuses on the protecting the core, right?

And so, yeah, it's, it's, it is a strange feeling. So that's why you have to acclimatize, which means you, you kind of progressively go up to higher camps that you set and then you don't, you don't obviously climb it all in one go.

Scott: No, it's not a day hike.

Ulyana: Nope. Definitely not a day hike. It'll take sometimes two to three weeks to climb.

And then of course you also have the melting glacier impact.

Scott: Well, tell me a little bit more about the melting glacier. So. So, you know, Aconcagua is assist the highest peak in the Andes. How much Glacier is there on acon? On Aconcagua? Are you, are you on a glacier the entire time?

Ulyana: No. So there's multiple routes that you can take, and because we saw the. Status of the glacier on the other side decided actually not to go for, for that side. So the normal root now doesn't have anything really glaciated, you have to go over. It's, it's actually in some ways harder because it's so rocky.

We, my husband and I did, we're trying to do a Mexico's highest peak called aba, which is the third highest in North America. It was like a sheet of ice because all the snow had melted off. So you could just imagine how hard climbing that is with your ice tools and with your crampons, the spikes on your boots.

And we weren't successful. We couldn't get to the summit. Wow. So it's definitely changing.

Scott: and it's icy because it's like melting and refreezing or what makes it so, so

Ulyana: Yeah, so basically like, so it had a nice snow pack on top of the ice, but because of the warming temperatures, all that snow melted off and it just left the glacier ice below.

Scott: Oh, I see. So it's really just sort of exposed, exposed, the glacier that has been there. Yeah. The ice. Mm-hmm. And then, and is that glacier also shrinking? It's.

Scott: Let's take another quick break. When we come back, we'll hear a remarkable story about how glaciers helped to save the lives of 16 people whose plane crashed high up in the Andes Mountains.

Welcome back. My guest is Glaciologist Ana Hoki Pena. (BREAK 2?)

Wow. So what are some of the other peaks in the Andes that you've climbed or glaciers in the Andes that you've had a chance to explore and study?

Ulyana: Yeah, so I've been up in the Cord Blanca also in Peru. So. That was very challenging climbing as well. And we're actually looking for pollution impacts on the glaciers up there. But perhaps a more unique climb is up to the impact point of a, of a, a plane crash. The Uruguay Air Force Flight 5 7 1.

(INSERT RECORDING OF ME ADDING CONTEXT ABOUT THE SURVIVAL STORY AND FILMS ABOUT THIS EVENT)

Ulyana: You know, you, you have, in order to get there, you have to take, a four by four, you have the horseback ride, you have to hike, so you're really far removed from any kind of civilization. And yet the glacier, how it's changing is stunning and rapid. So for me, that was very powerful visual of like, Hey, even in places that are really untouched, if you will, by humans, they're still changing how many places on the planet, how many glaciers on the planet.

We have the same story unfolding, but no one's a witness to it.

Ulyana: Yeah, so back in 2005, he was actually climbing a con. And then he knew of the story of the Andy Survivors and he wanted to see it for himself, you know, so there's a memorial there across and where they, they bury the remains of those who, who didn't survive. And so he hired a horse, horse handler to go up there.

And then once he got there, he is like, oh, I wanna see like where the plane actually impacted. Everyone says it's this kind of manly here, where there's some plain parts that have come down the propeller, you know, pieces of the wing. And so he started to go on up. And then he realized, oh, there's another plain piece over on this gully, this other kind of side gully.

And so he started climbing up that gully and then it was getting close to the, to what may have been the impact. Point up at almost 14,600 feet, he sees something blue sticking out of the rocks. Hmm. So he is like, what is this? So he starts looking through the rocks and it's a coat. It's one of the, you know, like a sports coat.

Oh my goodness. Wow. And it came down a different goalie than the other plain parts. So that kind of. Got him thinking about, well, what if the plane impacted at a different point here? So we started climbing all the way up there and kind of got a visual, you know, of how it could've, could've all happened.

And so then he he brought down the wallet, you know, the id, but left, you know, the coat there. 'cause he is like, well this is, you know, this is history. But then he managed to get connected with the survivor by phone. And he was able to reunite him eventually, like it took three years until the coat could be retrieved because there was a bunch of snowstorms there that ended up covering it up again.

For 20 years, and I've had the chance to join for the last seven years now, and put a scientist kind of lens on it about, well, how is this glacier changing?

Scott: I mean, this is just, there's so many remarkable, you know, aspects to this story. I mean. You know, your, your husband Ricardo, finding this incredible historical artifact that has an ID so he can actually know right. Who it belonged to, and then, you know, actually giving it to that person and, and forming this connection, this, this friendship as I understand it.

Yes. And then, I mean, the fact that they've gone back together and that you've gone as well to the site with him, I mean, can you just give us a sense for what it's like to visit this site? With Eduardo, with one of the survivors of this, this accident.

Scott: yeah, I mean, there've been movies about this, right? Like, I like the movie Alive and there's been some documentary, I mean, it's a really well known story.

Ulyana: Yeah. So it's like, wow. So I read about this story and now.

Back his jacket. It was like being reunited with an old friend. Wow. And so then he started opening up about it and was open to the experience of letting more people hear from him about what that was like and also at the site. And so when we went up to the memorial site where the crosses and the remains are buried and there's a lot of the.

Scott: And had he been there previously,

Okay. But not. Prior to that, but, and, and then it's kind of made a commitment every year. 'cause he said it, it's also serves as a good reminder of, of his friends what happened and how fortunate he is in life. And I feel that's a good lesson for all of us. Yeah, right. Like when I went there and I really like, connected with the story and really reflected on what that must have been like.

It's like, wow, we are so fortunate. There's so much gratitude to have for life. And, and for him, he said it's like a life affirming thing. So that was very impactful. And, and people can join, you know, they can join these trips, they can have that experience. And Eduardo's 77 now, and then he's still going.

It's just, for me, it's just absolutely incredible. Like how he, he continues to make that pilgrimage and share his story.

Ulyana: Yeah, it's pretty incredible 'cause like, so Ricardo, since he's been going for like these 20 years now, has this amazing photographic record. So we've taken some of those photos. And then the the book alive, there's a photo in there that shows the glacier, how it was in January of 1973. And so you can actually see how filled the glacier is and then compare it to photos.

Now to see how much the glacier has shrunk. It's an interesting point 'cause we were talking about advancing and retreating glaciers before on these typical debris covered glaciers where they have all this rock and, and, and dirt on top, they deflate or they get thinner. And so I kind of did the same thing I did for my PhD, which is bring these laser ranging binoculars.

You can also use satellite imagery, and so in the span of 50 years. So I went in 2022 with these, these binoculars to do some more kind of higher resolution data collection. In the span of 50 years, you have a drop of like 40 meters. Wow. That is remarkably fast. It's very similar to what my PhD research found in the Himalaya.

And so I was like, wow, this is very telling because again, this is a glacier that's pretty far removed from, from any kind of obvious sources of. Of humanity, of humanity's impact, and yet it's on a similar pace of, of melting and shrinking as as it is globally.

To a certain extent. Right?

Ulyana: Yeah. And that's an interesting point 'cause we were just able to go up to the impact point a couple weeks ago and it was so bare. And it just made me think about if the plane hit now, there'd be no, there'd probably be no survivors. There's no chance it's hitting rock, you know, and it would tumble out of control.

And so it happened to be a strong El Nino year that a lot for a lot [00:41:00] snow and ice. Of course there was already a lot more glacier in general, but just a lot more. And so it cushioned, like you said, the blow and the impact, but then all that extra snow kind of became a trap also because they couldn't.

Easily get out. They had to wait, you know, for, for a couple of months until it was until they were able to, finally, two of them were able to climb out, and so just a couple of weeks ago, having a look at where those men climbed the head wall to go out and get help was. It was very moving also to envision them doing that.

You know, like what effort it took when they're starving and they have no mountaineering knowledge to do that. The bravery it took also, and then looking at the head wall now of like hanging glaciers, so pieces of ice coming down and rock and all this. It's like there would be no way to even safely climb out now.

In our final segment, I'll talk with Ana about some of the ways that she's getting everyday people involved in her work on glaciers.

You are listening to Wild World. I'm speaking with Ana Hoki Pena about her work documenting the disappearance of glaciers.

So climate change has also become a politically divisive issue even though it's really not controversial among scientists, right? Mm-hmm. And so how do you discuss climate change in your work on glaciers with, with people who are skeptical?

So it's about really informing. The public to an extent, but also resource managers you know, they are the ones who are going to be allocating like, well, what's happening with our resources in a time of climate change, especially drought, is gonna really impact the region where, where we work. And so we really try to come at it from.

The perspective of, you know, what's gonna happen to the water, what's gonna happen to the crops and even the economics of that. And so I think like if you could put a lens on something that matters to them then they're more interested and, and, and learning about it. So that's kind of how we've approached it.

So really it depends on your audience, right? And, and what they in some ways maybe not want to hear, but need to, to hear just for the sake of their livelihoods.

Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. Can you tell me a little bit about that project?

Ulyana: Yeah, so when I was in Nepal I was coming and going you know, on a few. Expeditions and trips and, and met a lot of the local people, the Sherpa, and, and I was like, you know, it would be really interesting to like hear, well, what, from their perspective, what have they seen change, right? We have the scientific lens of the measurements, the quantitative stuff, but the qualitative data like.

What do they see happening, you know, down the generations. And then I actually got a Fulbright, so I got to live in Nepal for almost a year. So it was 10 months and I'm like, oh, this is an opportunity to really build this initiative. With scientists and Sherpa working together both from storytelling and from the scientific data collection viewpoints to really.

Scott: So yeah, tell me a little bit more about science in the wild. Like what are the types of things that you do and how do, how do people who aren't scientists get get involved in this?

In the data collection, but also in the interpretation, like, what does this mean? Right? Because a lot of the citizen or participatory science is about just collecting data for scientists. But I wanted it to come full circle, be like, well, what does this mean? Right? Because I feel like there's kind of a disconnect of like.

Focused on the black carbon and microplastics. So really involving the public. Hopefully. Growing bigger in the sense that we can figure out, hey, where are our pollution hotspots here, or even in other places around the world, and how can we really cause real change? Because that's, that's the big picture.

That's what I'm aiming for. I'm at the data stage now and getting people and recruiting and involved involving them and, and you know, having them understand what that process is for actually interpreting data. But that kind of big picture still thing is, well, how do we actually enact change from all that?

Scott: So what are some ways that, you know, if, if listeners are, are wanting to, to get involved, what, what, what are some things that they can do?

And so I am actively looking for any kinds of classrooms. For example, teachers who might be interested because we have a big project coming up in September up to the North Pole. That'd be a great chance to do simultaneous sampling while scientists are sampling near the North Pole, have students sampling, you know, perhaps near or in there.

In their classrooms, and we're hoping to develop a lot of educational content that can be used across the nation and world. That's kind of, again, the big picture, but.

Scott: but that's exciting. That's amazing. Yeah. And what if somebody just wants to make a contribution? Like is there a, is there a way that, you know, donating some some funds to one of these organizations

But we've had. You know, applied for grants that were federally funded that have unfortunately are not coming through. So, but the whole kind of tagline, if you will, for Science in the Wild was science by the people, for the people, right? We're democratizing science and so whatever people want to do, whether it's donating funds or time, or helping outfit, classrooms and, and building curriculum, I want to cover the full spectrum.

Scott: So, so why is this kind of participatory science important to you?

Ulyana: I think it's really important because I think there's, again, a disconnect with what scientists actually do and where like a lot of our data come from, for example, like where does, where do our weather forecast come from? Well, from our iPhone. Okay, no, where's that actually, where's that data coming from?

If we can critically think about these things and then we can learn these skills through, through say the participatory science that can help us all, you know, in, in multiple aspects of life. Absolutely.

Scott: And just to really sort of bring it home. I mean, you know, as we think about glaciers. And you know, you've personally witnessed and documented some of the, the really rapid changes that are happening to glaciers around the world. What are we losing if we lose glaciers? What is the, maybe to put it another way, like what are some of the ways that glaciers are helpful to people?

Ulyana: Sure. I mean. Quite literally, we're losing fresh water, right? You can think of these, these glaciers as water storage towers. This is especially important for mountain communities. So we're losing, you know, actual fresh water sources and we're also losing history and stories, right? There's a lot of information you can get from ice cores.

Yes, we've seen higher amounts of say, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but we're talking about tens of thousands of years that it took to switch right to rise, and we're talking about hundreds of years. This is a grand experiment that we don't know what the outcome is, but we know from history it's never been good.

It's led to mass extinctions. Right. So maybe our planet will, our planet will adapt, right? It's shown throughout history, but what about us? What about humanity? What about the ecosystems? And so I think we really lose an an opportunity to learn from the past, and that's critical for our future. And then we're also we're losing our, our.

Scott: So as you think about the future, the next five, 10 years, what do you, what are your, what are your fears? What are your hopes? What are your personal goals?

Ulyana: Yeah. My fear is that we're just not going to act in time. We've, we've known about this problem since the eighties. We're seeing almost 40 years now down the pipeline. Like what? This means as far as like these extreme weather events, they're not unrelated, right? Like even these huge wildfires and, and hurricanes more powerful.

Perhaps enough people just don't have the knowledge, for example, to know like how damaging this is and until they physically feel it while they do something. And then what was

Scott: Your goals. Your goals? Yeah. Your personal

Ulyana: Yeah, personal goals is continuing to just work on science, education, and communication. You know, I still do the research, but I just really saw such a value in communicating it, right?

Because you can, you can do all the research in the world, but if you don't communicate the value or the the importance of it to the public, nothing's gonna change on the policy side. Right. And so my personal goals is, are to continue on with the research and education and communication. But my big picture, kind of like, I would love to see some policy change if possible, especially in relation to black carbon.

Scott: Well, Ana, thank you so much for sharing all of your amazing work that you're doing and, and helping people to understand, you know, what's at stake here and, and how they can get involved.

Ulyana: And thank you so much.

Scott: To follow Ana and Ricardo's Mountain climbing Expeditions, visit summit song and science.com. To learn more about glaciers visit the World Glacier Monitoring Service website. wgs.ch. Check out the show notes or go to our website, wild world show.com. For more links about glaciers, about Ana, and to watch our Ted Talk, check out our YouTube channel at Wild World Podcast for complete episodes.