we have seen amazing things — creatures of all types, glaciers, natural wonders, and the absolute vastness of planet earth. the whales, porpoises, sea lions, sea otters, and seals have dazzled us and the clear skies and calm seas have centered us. we have all discovered inspiring stories along the way.

we look forward to sharing the students’ reporting in the coming weeks, right here on planet forward.

(note: our 2022 storyfest winner from ithaca college, and a 2020 storyfest winner from carleton college, will travel later this summer — so we’ll have more reporting later, too!)

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editor’s note: lindblad expeditions, our planet forward storyfest competition partner, made this series possible by providing winners with an experiential learning opportunity aboard one of their ships. all editorial content is created independently. we thank lindblad expeditions for their continued support of our project. read all the stories from the expedition in our astonishing alaska series.

kelsey nyland, ph.d., a research scientist and adjunct professor at the george washington university department of geography, is studying permafrost through the u.s. national science foundation-funded project circumpolar active layer monitoring (calm). at the 2022 planet forward summit, she discussed long-term trends of warming and thaw in alaska, and the resulting impact on local ways of life.

learn more by reading kelsey’s research.

“the planet isn’t just changing, its changed,” thomas wagner, nasa cryosphere program scientist says at the top of our video. 

we would not be the first to use that specific quote from wagner prominently either. looking back at news stories wagner had been quoted in, reuters, the huffington post and al-jazeera america all used a nearly identical quote from wagner from a teleconference call with the press about new sea level data in august 2015.

over the past few years wagner has been a source for the new york times, the washington post, the los angeles times, pbs newshour, newsweek and fox news. our own interview with wagner faced a time constraint as he had a televised interview scheduled after ours. 

wagner’s vast usage as a source, and some of his practiced/repeated key-points highlight an important job researchers have that is easy to overlook. 

environmental scientists looking at climate change are not only responsible for discovery, but for effectively communicating those discoveries. 

when i mentioned to wagner that about his frequent media appearances he said, “you know what it is, it gets easier the more you do it. (it’s) kinda like after a while you build up answers to the questions.” 

but there is more to it than him publishing a report. he needs to explain it to informants in a way that is easy to understand. wagner spent six years as a professor at the university of papua new guinea before he moved on to nasa, which most likely plays a role in wagner being able to effectively communicate his message to reporters and the general public. 

unless the masses start flocking to nasa’s blogs, it will be up to mega-sources like wagner to get the message out through various news outlets through a compelling and comprehensible message.

grinnell’s ninety-year-old maps, photographs and field notes provided a basis for locating his original survey sites along a transect that passed from the san joaquin valley through yosemite to mono lake, and covered an elevation range from near sea level to more than 10,000 feet. within the park, moritz’s team returned to sites from the valley floor to the mountain crest and collected animals in many of the same locations as grinnell. moritz’s team relied on live-animal traps; whereas grinnell’s original survey used lethal traps to collect animals. mathematical checks showed that the different collection techniques were not a problem in successfully comparing the two sets of data.

moritz’s team used the new survey results and grinnell’s original data to compare the ranges of 28 species of mammals. on average, the mammals had moved their ranges upward about 500 meters at the same time that the temperature in the area increased 3 degrees celsius. the species that were originally found at lower elevations tended to expand their ranges to higher elevations. species originally at higher elevations tended to contract their ranges as their minimum elevations shifted even higher. this suggests that species are already trying to adapt to a warmer climate. it also suggests that species that have historically lived at higher elevations may not have anywhere to go in the future as mountain tops experience temperature changes. further warming would lead to the extinction of many species that are adapted to cold, alpine conditions.

scientists believe abrupt changes in the atlantic meridonial overturning circulation, the dominant north-south ocean circulation current in the atlantic, caused the observed abrupt climate changes in the north atlantic. climate modelers from oregon state university have modeled an episode of abrupt climate change that shows remarkable agreement with observed concentrations of greenhouse gases. they concluded that ocean circulation changes were primarily responsible for driving co2 and nitrous oxide fluctuations during glacial periods on millennial time scales.

ultimately, the model’s agreement with ice core sample evidence lends credibility to the hypothesis that ocean circulation modulates variations in greenhouse gases. this knowledge may also help scientists postulate a solution for climate change.

at the university of california-irvine, arthur weis is studying how a 5-year california drought caused genetic changes in field mustard, a weedy plant that is common throughout the united states. weis collected seeds from wild plants before and after the drought, then raised them under identical conditions to observe differences between the two samples. even when provided with sufficient amounts of water, plants grown from post-drought seeds bloomed sooner. during the drought, natural selection favored this particular trait because it allowed the plants to seed successfully before conditions became fatally dry. building on this study, weis is organizing an nsf-funded workshop to stimulate a concerted scientific effort to collect and preserve seeds across north america. called project baseline, this undertaking will provide scientists with an important resource for studying future climate change–induced evolutionary events.

on a global scale, raymond huey of the university of washington and george gilchrist of the college of william and mary have found genetic changes in fruit flies that correspond to temperature increases. in their study, they examined a certain type of genetic change known as a chromosomal inversion. more than 40 years ago, scientists documented these genetic rearrangements in wild populations of the fruit fly species drosophila subobscura and noted that the frequency of the inversions correlated with the flies’ latitude. although the exact purpose of the inversion is unknown, it appears to protect the flies against warm temperatures. huey and gilchrist used the past data and added information on present-day fruit flies on three continents. their analysis shows genetic differences between contemporary fruit flies and 1981 populations: flies at higher latitudes have more of the low-latitude chromosomal inversions. in other words, these flies have undergone genetic adaptation to warmer temperatures.

fluctuations in the npgo are driven by the same fundamental processes that control salinity and nutrient concentrations. in the california current system, the npgo particularly reflects changes in the winds that cause coastal upwelling, the process by which subsurface cold water that is rich in nutrients is brought up to the surface. these results strongly support the use of the npgo as the primary indicator of upwelling strength and nutrient fluxes, and, therefore, the potential for ecosystem change in the california current system region. changes in nutrient fluxes drive fluctuations in modeled chlorophyll concentration—an indicator of phytoplankton concentration—that are highly correlated to observed chlorophyll. the model simulations support the hypothesis that variations in phytoplankton biomass in the california current system region are primarily driven by changes in wind-driven upwelling correlated with the npgo. the npgo thus provides a strong indicator of changes in the mechanisms driving oceanic ecosystem dynamics.

this “bottom-up” forcing is consistent with previous fish catch data and satellite-derived chlorophyll concentration, and underscores the need to better understand the influences of physically forced nutrient fluxes on higher food-chain levels in the ocean. the researchers have also shown that the npgo pattern extends beyond the north pacific and is part of a global mode of climate variability that is evident in global sea-level trends and sea surface temperature. the amplification of the npgo variability found in observations and in model simulations of global warming scenarios implies that the npgo may play an increasingly important role in forcing global-scale decadal changes in marine ecosystems.