Arctic ice.
Our best 2011 audio diaries
20 December 2011
This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: we've got an end-of-year bumper edition featuring the best of our audio diaries from 2011. We feature scientists reporting their research from the Arctic, Sweden, Canada, Monterey Bay in California, and the Antarctic.
In the first audio diary, Ceri Lewis from the University of Exeter describes what it's like to work in temperatures of minus 40°C. She went to the Arctic to find out how tiny marine creatures called copepods at the bottom of the food chain are adapting to climate change. Understanding the changes these animals are faced with will let scientists get to grips with how climate change might affect other Arctic wildlife.
Next up, Mel Sandells from the National Centre for Earth Observation reports from Sweden, where she's studying snow. That sounds flippant, but measuring how much snow there is on the planet is important for understanding exactly where the Earth's water resources are. The ultimate aim is to measure snow depth and mass from satellites in space.
We've also got Nick Higgs from the University of Leeds, who's on a ship off the coast of California searching for dead whales at the bottom of the ocean. He's looking for tiny bone-eating worms that could be responsible for major gaps in the whale fossil record.
And from Canada, Sarah Moller from the University of York explains why North American forest fires are such a hazard for people thousands of miles away in Europe.
Listen
Click the play button above to listen now.
A full text transcript is available.
Finally, David Tupman from the University of Leeds has a go at interviewing an elephant seal on Signy Island in Antarctica.
If there's a subject you'd like to hear about in the Planet Earth Podcast, don't forget to let us know. Email your ideas to editors@nerc.ac.uk or if you're on Facebook or Twitter, contact us there – see the links below.
Keywords:
Arctic,
Atmosphere,
Biodiversity,
Environmental change,
Natural resources,
North America,
Oceans,
Polar,
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