Alexis: 0:01

Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome to the MoCo Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong. Nice to meet you. The MoCo Podcast is the place to celebrate and highlight women working within STEM and trade occupations. So please come join us. Tune in, take a break. We're on Smoko. It is so lovely today to have a special guest, Dr. Sophie Hines. Dr. Hines is a climate scientist and paleo oceanographer. She is an assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Hui, and she is part of the marine chemistry and geochemistry department. She has created and now leads the Hines lab. The Hines lab is really interested in understanding glacial interglacial climate change and understanding the role of ocean circulation in major climate transitions. So this area of research, it's so important, it's so topical. It's so interesting. So just thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on today and I can't wait to learn more.

Sophie: 0:58

Thanks. Yeah, it's, great to be here.

Alexis: 1:01

It's honestly, it's an honor and I know everyone's gonna be really interested to learn more about climate change and climate science, cuz it's something that is so topical, but maybe they don't really understand yet. So I can't wait to kind of dive into your research. But before we go into that,, Sophie, the first question, and this is probably one of my favorite questions to ask anybody who works in geosciences, is, how the hell did you end up in geosciences? Because I don't think many people, when they're a kid, they're like, you know what? I wanna become, I know what a paleo oceanographer is, number one. Yeah. And number two, like, that's gonna be me. I'm gonna be a paleo oceanographer. So, Could you walk through, I know you started your career early on as a pure chemist doing your BA at Carlton in chemistry. You then did your PhD at Caltech in geochemistry before a fellowship at Lamont, and now working in the specialty of paleo oceanography. Could you kinda walk through how you went from chemistry to paleo oceanography?

Sophie: 2:04

Yeah. So I was sort of one of those kids who was really into science, like from a young age. So, I, you know, liked all sorts of different types of science. And I remember when I was like, in high school, I was like worried about how I was gonna choose, like what kind of science I was going to do because I was like, oh, biology's really cool, and like, physics is cool and chemistry is cool, and like, how am I ever gonna figure out like what I actually wanna do? Yeah. And so, That was sort of like when I was coming up that was like, I really liked all different types of science. And, but I also really liked the outdoors and I spent a lot of time outside as a kid and like going hiking and camping with my family. And so like that was also really important to me. I cared a lot about like the climate and, you know, I was sort of interested in trying to understand the climate and climate change and like incorporating that into what I did. And so I sort of came, came at it from like that angle. So when I was in college, there are a couple of classes that were offered actually through the chemistry department on like different. Sort of aspects of climate science. And so that was kind of where I got a little bit of an introduction. I remember one of my, chemistry professors taught a class on like abrupt climate change. And that was the first time I'd ever like heard about this. And yeah. We looked at like ice core records and you can see these like really abrupt changes in temperature that are recorded and like the Greenland ice core. And we talked about like what is causing this and what are the time scales over which these changes are happening. That was sort of my first introduction, into like actual climate science. And then sort of funny story about like getting more into paleo oceanography. So at Carleton College, the chemistry major, so I sort of ended up. Carlton has a big geology department and I was trying to decide between whether I wanted to do geology or chemistry, and I ended up deciding to, to major in chemistry. Partially just because I thought that that would like, give me more options in terms of, you know, deciding what I actually wanted to focus on. And in the chemistry major, the sort of senior capstone project is, you do a sort of group project focusing on the research of kind of. Contemporary chemists that are doing different types of chemistry. Cool. And so what happens is the chemistry faculty like selects I think like four or five different people that will be like focus scientists and then Oh, amazing. Yeah. The chemistry majors can like choose who they wanna research and like you get together as a group and you read this person's papers and then they end up coming to Carleton and you get to meet them and talk to them and like, wow. You know, ask them all their, the questions that you have about their research and they give a little presentation. And so when I was a senior, one of the chemists that was selected, was Jess Atkins, and he's the person who that I ended up going to do my PhD with. So yeah. I was in the research group that, was looking at Jess Atkins research. And so he is a geochemist at Caltech and he has done a lot of research using deep sea corals mm-hmm. To look at, changes in ocean circulation in the past. And like, you know, our group, we didn't know much about this at all, so it was like, it's funny looking back at like all the questions that we had that, like, now to me seems so basic, but like we had no framework for understanding this. And so we just like dove right in and we're like reading these papers. And then Jess came to visit, and sort of. During this time period, I kind of, I started applying to schools and I applied to Caltech and I like got accepted into the program. Mm-hmm. So like, while we were still doing our senior project at Carleton, I went to visit Caltech and like got to meet Jess and Oh my gosh. And sort of tour campus and, and then he came to Carleton and, and met the rest of the group and talked about his research and I sort of, you know, I wasn't completely decided, but it was kind of like mm-hmm. A done deal at that point that I was gonna end up going to Carleton and like working with him and learning more about this topic. And so it was sort of a, an interesting journey, to get there. And it's funny, like looking back, I remember like being. In high school and one of my high school friends, her mom was like, a famous like biologist at M I t and I remember talking with her one time about like, how did you get into the research that you do? Like, yeah, I'm so like, how am I gonna figure out what I wanna, like, what kind of science I wanna do? And I remember that she sort of told me like, well, you know, I was just doing this one thing and then I kind of got involved in this other project and you sort of like, we your way. And then eventually I'm like doing what I do and it was like very much I. Like more happenstance than like a deliberate path. And I remember feeling at the time, like, this is such an unsatisfying answer because you're, you lady. Yeah. You're like, I, yeah. Like, I was like, how am I ever gonna figure this out? And like, here's like this person who's like so successful and like, ah, she's gonna like, give me the secret. And like her secret was like, eh, she just kinda worked out. And then that's like exactly what ended up happening to me, where it kind of just like worked out and I could totally. Have seen myself like going down a slightly different path mm-hmm. And like doing something different. But it kind of just worked out and now I like to love it, do what I do, and it's great. And so it, it's, it was really funny, like to kind of look back and be like, man, I really should have just trusted her because she actually knew what she was talking about, about, and the same thing happened to me. So yeah, she's now I like tell that story to other students. Like when I'm like, oh, you know, don't worry about it so much. Like, it'll, you'll work it out. A hundred percent. And I didn't think that was true, but it is.

Alexis: 8:18

I love that. Like I absolutely love that serendipitous moment. I, I love it on multiple ways. I love for the first off that you were so nerdy that you were like having stress to be like, yeah, what science do I choose? What

Sophie: 8:29

science am I gonna do? I honestly, I love them all. Like,

Alexis: 8:32

where do I go? Because I had the same thing. I was obsessed with too many things and too many different types of science that I was like, oh my God, this is the most stressful. Like, do I choose biology or geology? Like what do I do? So I love that aspect of it. And then I love the serendipitous, and I love that you were upset with her to be like, lady, tell me your secret. Tell me your life plan of like steps that I can follow. Again, very like scientific to be like, give me your scientific method and I'll do it like perfectly. And she was just like, yeah, just wing it. And that's

Sophie: 9:01

exactly what it's gonna work out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's So she's a really smart lady. She knew what she was talking about a hundred percent what she was talking about. Yep. She was like, don't

Alexis: 9:11

worry, you're gonna do a project in your undergrad and then you're gonna end up meeting your future mentor. Yep. And doing a PhD with him. Like that's just, it's so beautiful. I love it. Okay, so diving on a little bit more onto now what you do as a paleo oceanographer and climate scientist. So your research, it's trying to understand global scale, ocean circulation and past climate change, over a range of time scales. Could you kind of explain that in layman's terms? If people are not oceanographers, could you walk through kind of what this means? Cuz people are so obviously, interested in understanding climate science, but maybe they don't understand the levers of climate science, one being ocean circulation. So why do we care about ocean circulation and why do we care about it in past climate to understand what's going on right now?

Sophie: 9:58

Yeah, so the ocean is, plays such a major role in global climate for a number of reasons. So I think when a lot of people think about ocean currents, they think about the sort of ocean currents at the surface that you could like experience if you're swimming around. But really the ocean is this big three-dimensional thing and there's this huge. Deep ocean. That's actually even more important for climate on longtime skills. And part of the reason is because there's a ton of carbon that gets stored in the deep ocean. And so like right now, we're really concerned about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and that's like causing the planet to warm. But actually if you, if you think about the amount of carbon that's in the atmosphere, and like even if you kind of take away the sort of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, like thinking about the sort of natural earth system, there's basically a similar amount of carbon in the atmosphere and in the surface ocean. And the deep ocean stores about 60 times more carbon Yeah. Than the atmosphere. And so relatively small changes in the deep ocean can really impact the amount of carbon that's in the atmosphere and so on. Long glacial interglacial time scales. If we think about like 20,000 years ago, that was the last glacial maximum. There's like mm-hmm. You know, a mile of ice over North America, it's like very, very different. That was basically a change of a hundred PPM CO2 in the atmosphere between the last glacial maximum and the sort of pre-industrial climate. And so you can have these really, really major global changes that are involving changes in atmospheric co2. And really the deep ocean is the major reservoir where you have the potential to store that carbon on those timescales. Mm-hmm. And so the deep ocean is filled from the surface ocean. And so the way you get water down there is you have these ocean mixing a, a couple of regions in the ocean where you get deep water formation. And there's basically two places today where that happens. One is in the North Atlantic, where you basically have water that's flowing northward. It carries a lot of heat. So the ocean circulation, the global ocean circulation is really important for heat transport. If you think about the climate in Scotland versus the climate in Newfoundland, Canada mm-hmm. Is really different. and part of that is because you have the Gulf Stream that's bringing warm water from the tropics and it flows northward and it kind of flows across and goes next to Ireland and the uk. And it like, It gives all that heat up to the atmosphere. And so you have a much warmer climate in Europe than you have in North America at the same latitude. Yeah. And so the ocean plays a really important role in that heat transport. And basically as that heat goes from the ocean to the atmosphere, it causes the water to become colder and it becomes more dense, and then you can have sinking. And so water goes from the surface into the deep ocean. And then that process also happens around Antarctica where you can form, a different flavor of deep water that basically fills the, the deepest parts of the ocean. And so as it's going down, it's involved in heat transport and it's also taking carbon from the surface, to the deep ocean. And this. Yeah, exactly. And so this process of deep ocean circulation or this, we call it the, the meridian overturning circulation. So, sort of going across different latitudes and then this sort of three-dimensional surface to deep circulation that happens on a time scale of about a thousand years. So it's pretty long if you think about like, people living like a thousand years is a long time. And so you're storing carbon down in the deep ocean for these long time skills. And that's really key for kind of taking the globe and going from like today's climate into a full ice age. And so those are the kinds of ocean circulation changes that we think are really important for driving these global climate transitions. And so those are the sorts of, ocean changes that I research. So I try to reconstruct those changes using various sort of geochemical, proxies, markers and proxies. Yeah, exactly. So little ways that you can essentially record like fossil information about the ocean in the past. And there are certain ways that you can store that information and then go and you use, sort of geochemical techniques to like extract that information back out and you can get a record of what happened in the past. And then a lot of the science is trying to connect those changes in the ocean with other records that are showing the. Atmospheric co2. Mm-hmm. Or tempera, global tempera tempera, temperature tempera. Yep. And so you wanna kind of try and find links between those things. So what changes do you observe in the ocean and how can we link that with changes we see in other parts of the climate system? Because it's really those links between different aspects of the climate that are really important for thinking about, you know, what's happening now. What's gonna happen in the future is we really have to understand the system as a whole. And so the deep ocean is a really key part of that system. And so we're basically, you know, paleo oceanography and paleo climate is, is just. Different ways of reconstructing parts of the system in the past and then finding links between them all. So it's not one single measurement that's gonna give you the answer. You kind of have to bring them all together and synthesize a lot of data, to kind of understand more holistically what's happening. Yeah. A

Alexis: 16:06

holistic view of climate. And it's using that one major. Lever of climate, ocean circulation, specifically deep water and using like that sink of carbon to really understand what's happened in the past. Right. And how is that linked to surface temperature, atmospheric temperature or co2. Get that exactly whole idea of holistic past climate and then bring it into the future. And can we model that and can we kind of understand, what's going to happen to us? Because I think something foundational in oceanography that maybe people aren't aware of is that ocean circulation has changed with time, right? So understanding these movements of these deep water masses, and again, like you said, that cycle of a thousand years, right? Mm-hmm. Of changing us from a glacial to interglacial period is super important to try to figure out what's gonna happen to us in the future, right? So again, we're looking at co2, we're looking at carbon sink, and we're also looking at surface temperature, right? Like water, water temperatures. Really what we're interested in.

Sophie: 17:06

Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, exactly. All of these things that are working together and like in terms of predicting future climate, we wanna help kind of inform models and make sure that they're doing a good job of reconstructing or of like representing the climate system. And so by having better records for the past, it sort of helps you test out model, like mm-hmm. Depictions of the global climate system. And so if a model can accurately represent a past climate, then you have more faith that it will accurately represent the future climate. And so another way that you can use this information is to kind of validate models and make sure that they're sort of accurately representing things, so that when you try and then push it into the future and predict what's gonna happen, you have more faith that it's like, Gonna be giving you the right answer because it's sort of has the fundamental interactions, modeled correctly. That's

Alexis: 18:07

really, that's very, very cool. And that's a wonderful thank you for adding that because that's a wonderful thing of being, I think some people who maybe don't understand climate change or skeptical of it to be like, how do you know that these models are predictive? So that's a wonderful reminder too, to use it, to look at past climate and be like, we understand past climate. Check your model to make sure we can actively predict that time scale and then to know, to be like our model is correct or potentially more correct. Right. There's always gonna be a level of bias and error. Yep. But,, just to have a check on that, that's a fantastic area of research.

Sophie: 18:40

That's wonderful. Exactly.

Alexis: 18:41

And I think you already kind of touched on this so a little bit, but the next one was really looking at like these deep ocean interactions and these like water mass circulations. There's a couple key areas in the ocean that everyone is obsessed with. You mentioned the North Atlantic. Antarctica is another one and one. Area that you do see it is in Cape Algos. Could you kind of maybe explain a little bit more why scientists geek out over these two areas?

Sophie: 19:08

Yeah. So these are two places that you just mentioned are also, two, recent I O D P cruises that I was participating in. Were kind of studying these two regions, so, the, sort of a gulls region, south of Africa is where you have this major surface current that's bringing a lot of warm water from the Indian Ocean, and it basically flows along the sort of southeastern part of Africa. And then when it hits the tip of South Africa, it sort of, folds back on itself and joins the Antarctic circumpolar current, which is this major ocean current that flows around Antarctica. And when it, when it does that, it's called the GUL Retro Reflect. It sheds off these Eddie rings into the Atlantic Ocean, and that's a major way, that salt is basically delivered into the Atlantic Ocean because the source water for the GULs current is this warm salty water from the Indian Ocean. And so scientists think that on longer time scales, the sort of amount of this water that's getting into the Atlantic, has changed so that under certain climates, under maybe a glacial climate, you have less of this salty water coming into the Atlantic or sort of during, The, the ends of ice ages, you can have changes in the amount of this, a guus leakage is what it's called. Mm-hmm. And because it's delivering this salty water into the Atlantic, it can basically impact, the density of, sort of the feed water to the North Atlantic. And so I mentioned that you have deep water that forms in the North Atlantic and the reason that it's able to become dense enough to sink mm-hmm. Is partially because it's giving its heat up to the atmosphere. Yeah. and it's partially because it's also quite salty. And so the amount of salt that you're putting into the Atlantic Ocean can then impact the amount of salt that you have in that, sort of feed water, to make it dense enough to sink. And so if you have more of this SGO leakage, you could sort of. Create more dense water in the North Atlantic and, and kind of trigger, a more intense deep water circulation, which then would have other kind of global implications. Exactly. And so all of these things are linked together. So if you have a change in one part of the system, if you sort of trigger more deep water formation, you're also triggering sort of more heat transport to the north. And so that will have other impacts on climate. Mm-hmm. And so, part of that research expedition was trying to understand the history of this current, and sort of connect it to these like global ocean circulation changes and, over like glacial interglacial climate skills. And so. You know, it ties into this, this, sort of key region in the North Atlantic. So there's these connections between the north and the south. And that's kind of ubiquitous in the climate system that you have these global, global interconnections between the water. Yes, exactly. And the Iberian margin is also, it's a place that people have gone to, to look at climate. and part of the reason is because you can have these really sort of unprecedented high resolution records that you can generate. And so one of the ways that pale oceanographers reconstruct climate change in the past, and ocean circulation in the past is using sediment cores. Mm-hmm. And so, You can, it's basically just like a long tube of mud that you collect from the bottom of the ocean. From the bottom of the ocean. You bring it up. Exactly. Yes. Yep. And Alexis, you know this very well, but basically there are a number of different ways that you can collect that mud. You can look at different, different components of the mud. So one sort of very common way that people look at this is by looking at the fossil, shells of little plankton that lived in the ocean, either at the surface of the ocean or at the bottom of the ocean. And when they die, their sort of shells become buried in the mud. And so as you go deeper and deeper into the mud, it's basically going farther and farther back in time. and so by picking out these little shells and measuring different aspects of their geochemistry, you can basically extract information about the ocean going back in time. Yeah. I

Alexis: 23:35

was just gonna add in to for maybe people that aren't listening, so what a lot of shells and what a lot of fossils are, is they're complete snapshots of the geochemical ocean chemistry of the time that they were created. Right? They were born exactly not made. So their shells are gonna be composed of the same chemistry as the ocean that surrounded them. So they're a wonderful proxy to use. And that's what Sophie's talking about is looking at that chemistry because they're like a picture Polaroid of, that environment.

Sophie: 24:06

Yep, exactly. So when they, like, when they grow, they use seawater to make their skeleton, and then when they die, their skeleton is preserved. And so it's exactly, it's like a snapshot of the water at the time that they live. So, as you basically go deeper and deeper in the sediments, you're going farther and farther back in time. And so the sort of, if you think about, that mud, if the mud is accumulating really slowly, then all of those shells are kind of like stacked up really tight together. Mm-hmm. And so you, when you like sample some of the shells to make a measurement, cause you usually can't do a measurement on just one single shell. You need to, to take a few of them. And so if you have mud that's accumulating very slowly and you like pick up 20 shells to make a measurement, you're gonna be kind of integrating those 20 shells over some time period. That could be kind of long. If the mud is accumulating really fast, then you basically can get, it's a shorter amount of time that you're integrating and so you can get a higher resolution record. And so Paleo climate scientists, Really likes those high resolution, high accumulation sites because it means you can get this really amazing information, and you can sort of understand, more like high resolution time scales. And so it's, yeah. You know, when you think about this like geological time skills, I think it's sometimes it's hard for people who don't think about this a lot to kind of get your mind to be thinking about like hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years and like millions. Exactly. So like, as a, as a geologist, it's something that you kind of get a lot of practice doing, like moving from different timescales all the time. I think it's sometimes I forget that it's a lot harder for other people to kind of like shift between these different timescales. And so, you know, when I say high resolution and it comes to a sediment core, that's like you can get access to hundreds and thousands of years. Mm-hmm. When at other locations you would maybe be thinking about tens of thousands of years. So it's still very long time scales, but in the context of like a full glacial cycle, that's like the, the last glacial maximum I mentioned is 20,000 years ago. Yeah. The previous Interglacial is 120,000 years ago. So like we're talking hundreds of thousands of years is the amount of time it takes to go into a nice age and out of a nice age and into a nice age. So it's really these long, you're looking over quite long time periods. But the Iberian margin is a place where you can kind of get access to higher resolution information. Mm-hmm. And so that's really valuable, because it's, it's giving you kind of better, better data about what happened in the past. And so that was totally, that was the reason that, that that site was selected to do kind of a more in depth investigation. And it's also, it's like this slope from the sort of, from Portugal down to like the very deep parts of the North Atlantic. And so you can get information at different depths, which also gives you more of a three-dimensional record of ocean

Alexis: 27:29

population. Yeah, exactly.

Sophie: 27:30

Completely. Yeah. So that's really, really valuable as well. Getting like information at different depths and

Alexis: 27:36

what Sophie's talking about here with the slope. So that's looking at the continental slope, right? With Plate Teton. Exactly. So if you move from continental margin to ocean margin, you have a transition period, which is the slope. And it's basically, think of it as like a big cliff, right? And the cliff is gonna have different depths, it's gonna have different angles depending on where you look. But that's why we're really interested in it, is we're looking down this slope, down this cliff, and we can pinpoint climate markers along that depth, right? So we're getting a better idea of high sedimentation rate. And that's really nice because it's being able to put data instead of being like, oh, it happened maybe in May. In relative timescale, we could be. Yeah, yeah. Nope. It happened on Tuesday, May 3rd, right? Like it just gives you a better pinpoint location of that data. And then she's talking about how we also can see a difference in data on. Depth and how does that change with climate? And then when we look at algos, the algos, I've never known how to pronounce it correctly, but when we, when we look at that in North Atlantic, I always think of the Spice Girl songs of like, if you wanna get with me, you gotta get with my friends. And

Sophie: 28:43

I don't know why it comes

Alexis: 28:45

into my head, but like just that they are completely linked. They are one and the other. If you're talking about one of them, you're talking about the other, like those two are best friends. They're going everywhere together. They're intrinsically linked. That's where my brain goes. My brain goes Climate. I like it.

Sophie: 29:00

Spice Girls good. Yeah, they're, yeah. I mean there's a lot of these connections. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.

Alexis: 29:09

We talked a little bit about like using fossil records as indication of past climate, and there's one kind of marker that scientists love, I know you love as well of neodymium. Could you explain what that marker is and why we're interested in it? Why we're excited about it?

Sophie: 29:27

Yeah. So it's, it's one of the geochemical tools that we have for looking at, sort of ocean circulation and deep ocean circulation on these long time skills and, You know, it's, the details of it are complicated as most things are, but kind of the most simplified version, that you can think of for this tracer is that it, it's basically, well, so Neo is an element and it has multiple isotopes, which are basically, it's the same element, but it has, same number of protons, different number of neutrons, and it has a different mass. And that means that, it behaves a little bit differently chemically. And so the isotopic composition, can vary around the globe. And so neodymium is ultimately comes from rocks, but then those rocks sort of, dissolve over time and it makes its way into the ocean. And it kind of can tag different parts of the ocean with a different isotopic ratio. Mm-hmm. And so you can think of it as like, you know, it's just like a little marker that kind of goes into the ocean and then moves around with the water. And it just so happens that in the North Atlantic, the rocks that are around the North Atlantic have a very different isotopic composition than the rocks that are around the Pacific. And part of this is a function of the age of the rocks. Mm-hmm. You know, rocks are constantly being, formed. So you have some places where rocks are really old and some places where rocks are just, you know, being made in a volcano or whatever now. So the Pacific is a place where you have very young rocks. Mm-hmm. You can think of like the Pacific rim of fire. You have lots of volcanoes around the Pacific. And so that, that's where rocks are being formed today. In Canada and Greenland, you have some of the oldest rocks on the planet. And so those have a very different isotopic value. And so it kind of tags the water in the North Atlantic with a different marker than the water in the Pacific. Mm-hmm. And in the global ocean circulation, the North Atlantic and the Pacific are kind of like different ends of the flow path. And so because they are also kind of tagged with these different isotopic values when water's flowing through the deep ocean, you can see kind of mixing between these two values. There are ways in which that seawater isotopic, information is recorded in the sediments and then once it's recorded in the sediments, you can take a sediment core and kind of reconstruct back in time. And so that's, that's the idea is that it's, Showing, you know, mixing of water from two ends from different locations. Yeah, exactly. From the two ends of the circulation. And so if the circulation changed, then the amount of mixing between the North Atlantic and the Pacific could change and you would record that in the sediments as a change in the isotopic value.

Alexis: 32:24

Yeah, I love it. It's basically like, again, kind of a snapshot in time, but it's also looking at like a change in behavior. I've always loved markers. I think that they're so interesting and they're just, I love them because they also usually give you that Yes. Right. That you're like, okay, I think that this is what's happening right now. Like, this is my idea. Mm-hmm. This is my highest hypothesis. And then you see that marker and you're like, oh, we got it. Right. Like, like we did it. And so thank you very much for that, for kind of diving into your research because I think it's so important and it's, it's just so topical and thank you for getting into it. I really appreciate it. Changing kind of scope a little bit. So we met back in 2016, which is absolutely wild. And we met on a, on an expedition from Mauritius to Cape Town. And at the time you were doing, you were just wrapping up your PhD at Caltech and in seven years you've gone from there to then a fellowship and then now to running and operating your own lab at Woods Hole. And for people who are maybe not in oceanography, woods Hole is like one of the meccas of oceanography. Like it is holy ground. So that, I'm just so incredibly proud of you and that is just so amazing to hear. And how did that feel, like, how did that feel establishing the Heinz lab? Does it still feel surreal seeing that name to be like, that's my last name. That's me. How, how did that come to be? Could you walk us through it?

Sophie: 33:51

Yeah, sure. It is funny, I mean it's weird to like go from being a PhD student to like then running your own lab and in what seems like kind of a, a short amount of time. Like I think you kind of. You come to realize that like a lot of this, you just sort of, you have to learn as you go. Like no one is really, yeah. No one really tells you how to do it. So, yeah, it's still, it's still kind of funny to, to be running my own lab group, but I'm excited about it. Oh. When I first sailed on, the expedition with you, I was finishing up my PhD and then, when I graduated I, did a postdoc at, Columbia University. Mm-hmm. That, that was based on the work that we did on the expedition. And so it was a really cool opportunity for me to get to go on that cruise as a grad student. It was the first time that I had gotten to go to see it was something that I really wanted to do. And I also met Sydney Hemming, who was one of the co-chief scientists of the Expedition, and she was one of my postdoc supervisors. And so when I was at sea, I was starting to think about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do for my postdoc. And, Columbia, is another very, very, Like mm-hmm. Amazing place to do climate scientists or do climate science. It's, it's one of these like, Macs as well institutions that has exactly, that has like tons of people doing this sort of research. And so that was a place that I was really interested in going, to do a postdoc. Especially because when I was in grad school, my advisor, was basically the only person doing like the kind of paleo oceanography that I do. So there were some other, scientists at Caltech who did climate science, but a lot of them worked on different timescales Yeah. And sort of looking at the evolution of earth history, in different ways. And so there weren't other people who were kind of thinking about, glacial cycles. Like how does the earth get into an ice age and get out of an ice age and doesn't leave it. Yeah, exactly. And so that was. I mean, I really liked my experience at Caltech, but I was interested in going somewhere for a postdoc where there were, where there were lots of other scientists that were thinking about different aspects of that problem. That's all do.

Alexis: 36:09

Yeah. This is like, this is the specialty of it is Lac.

Sophie: 36:13

She, yeah. And like you know, it was really cool to be able to be in a place where then I was surrounded by a lot of students and other postdocs who were all thinking about this problem. So I had more people to talk with about, you know, the science that I was doing. And so I, I talked with Sydney when I was at sea about, you know, a postdoc project and it sort of ended up working out for me to go to Lamont to do, to do a postdoc with her. Mm-hmm. And that, that was really great. And sort of, yeah. Then when you're a postdoc, it's. It's kind of a funny time period because you kind of spend, I, I feel like the, the joke about it is you spend half of your time like finishing writing up papers from your PhD and the other half of your time applying for jobs.

Alexis: 37:01

It's like this weird transition. Yeah. Like, I swear I'm here to actually do work.

Sophie: 37:06

Yeah. So it's, it's kind of chaotic because you, you know, it's usually only, you know, it's like one to three, a couple years of time. Yeah. Yeah. So mm-hmm. You kind of are immediately looking for the next thing. And, faculty jobs are so competitive now. That it's really hard to, to get a position. So I was kind of immediately starting to apply for jobs. And, you know, I interviewed a number of different places and then kind of got the job at Woods Hole, which was, amazing. Just, yeah, it worked out very well for me. So then I started here in April of 2021 and started like making my own lab. It's been just me, so I'm just kind of doing my thing, but, Hopefully I'll, I'm, I'm trying to recruit a grad student soon, and I'm, gonna be, I have a technician starting that will be joint between myself and another scientist. So it'll, you know, things are, things are picking up, but, oh, it's, it's slow to start things out. It takes a while. Oh,

Alexis: 38:07

completely. Like you're starting your own lab. That is a huge endeavor. That's not something that's gonna happen overnight, and it's, I could imagine it being amazing and just congratulations times the thousands for starting it. Thank you. But I could also imagine it being a little bit scary and just being like, no one's really telling me what's allowed, what's not allowed. Like, oh, I guess I'm just gonna go for it. Like, I guess, I guess this is just what I'm gonna do, but, congrats as well to have a technician and to get an undergrad or did you say graduate or undergraduate student.

Sophie: 38:37

Grad student, yeah. Grad student. Like a PhD student. Yeah. Amazing.

Alexis: 38:41

That's, that's very, very exciting to get a PhD student.

Sophie: 38:45

That's wonderful. Yeah, so hopefully I, I don't, I haven't, haven't recruited somebody yet, but hopefully like this next year I can, I can get somebody to join the lab, so it'll be nice. That's very

Alexis: 38:55

cool. And like what, I know you're just getting set up and there's so much stuff to go to get the lab set up and to kinda go through it, but what are you working towards for the next, like, couple years with the Heinz Lab? What is the mission of it? Is it gonna be really similar to the research that you're doing now? Are you expanding into different areas of ocean circulation or you still really focused

Sophie: 39:16

on North Atlantic? Yeah, so, You know, it's kind of, it's, it's sort of similar, you know, it kind of building everything is sort of building on what I've done so far. So, we talked about the Iberian margin. I went on another expedition this fall, on the same ship that you and I sailed on Alexis. And we collected a bunch of sediments from that area. And so that, I'm gonna be getting a ton of samples. I'm actually, I see in like a month in June, I'm gonna be going to, Germany to the core repository where all the cores are stored. And we have what they call a sampling party, which basically means that all the scientists get together and you spend like six hours a day chaos, like scooping mud out of the course, and taking like thousands and thousands of samples for everyone. And so it's kind of like a team effort to basically, get all of the samples that all the scientists need to do their kind of post expedition research. And some of those scientist or some of those samples will come back to me. I'm, you know, excited to work on that stuff and, and I'll be doing similar measurements to, to what I was doing, in the sort of AGAs current region. So using neodymium isotopes to reconstruct changes in ocean circulation and looking at these sort of glacial interglacial climate changes. The great thing about the Iberian margin, as we discussed, because there are cores at different depths, you can get this kind of 3D information about changes in circulation. And so that's, that's kind of the plan to look at. Changes in circulation, over different depths to see like what, what the water is, what the deep water is doing, over time at different depths. And so that's kind of, I love it. A really, really,, powerful way of looking at ocean circulation in the past. So that's something I'm really excited about. I also have a project with some collaborators, to, it's also related to neodymium, but it's like trying to understand the proxy a little bit better. Oh, cool. So looking at the sort of things that are happening today in the modern notion so that you can kind of understand a little bit better, like how does the water get tagged with this isotopic value? How does it get recorded in the sediments? Are there, like modifications that are happening, which could maybe, Alter, kind of alter the inform. So like, you wanna know that like in the ideal world, you just have like this tag that magically appears and then gets beautiful, perfectly recorded in the sediment and like, it's never that simple. So, I have a project we're gonna be going, on a cruise to the Labrador Sea. Oh, cool. That's fantastic. Measuring seawater and taking sort of short sediment cores to look just at the upper part of the sediment, so that we can understand like exchanges between the sediment and the seawater. How, oh, I love that information is being recorded in the settlements. This is the, the project that I have, a student or that I'm trying to get a student to come work on. It'll be a chance to go to see again, different kind of crews. So, okay. The I O D P expeditions are. Really awesome. There's this like whole infrastructure that's There on those ships. The US academic fleet has other, that's like what we'll be using to go to sea. And it's much more of a, like, you have to bring all of your equipment yourself. Yes. And it's much more like do it yourself kind of. Obviously there's the, the coring devices are provided, but there's a lot more. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, there's a lot more stuff that you kind of have to, to bring along. So unlike the Jodi's resolution where it's basically like a floating laboratory and there's all this instrumentation that's already there, which is so incredible for most of the ships that people use. You kind of have to bring all the equipment yourself. So that'll be different. I'm both excited and scared to be like leading a cruise myself, with some collaborators, but it'll be like, you know, on our shoulders to make sure things are successful. So that's kind of scary but exciting at the same time. Oh, you're gonna do fantastic.

Alexis: 43:33

You already, you know what to do. Like, this isn't your first rodeo. It's, I could understand being scared, but you're gonna be fine. Like, you know everything that you need and like, yes, things are gonna get broken, things are gonna happen, but you'll be fine. Like, you're gonna be okay. It's gonna be so exciting. Like,

Sophie: 43:50

I was wonderful. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Alexis: 43:53

You're welcome. It's deserved. Like I feel like it's gonna go completely. Well, I'm not gonna say completely without a hitch cuz it's field work and we all know what

Sophie: 44:02

happens. We'll definitely be hitches.

Alexis: 44:03

Everything's gonna be completely fine. Like you just know. Yeah. Like, but. It's just really exciting to hear and maybe to explain again, if people aren't in oceanography, like explain what we've been mentioning. Cryptically of the I O D P and the Jordan's resolution. The vote that we've met on is, the JR is a deep sea drilling vessel, part of the International Ocean Discovery Program, which is a program that's been going on since the sixties. So I have many different names of Deep Sea Drill program and then O D P and then I O D P. And it's basically an international organization that does sediment drilling and drill corp. We also do some hard rock as well. Deep seed drill core around the world. And it basically takes a long-term record of ocean sediments and hard rock, throughout time at different locations. Right. And so that. Sediment and all of those cores that come up from the JR. It's this long term open. Repository of information where scientists from all around the world can do their own research on this material. So it's a fantastic record of climate and of ocean science and what Sophie just mentioned, the repository in Breman, that is one location. So there's one location in Japan, one in Texas, and one in Germany, which is this open public data base of marine sediment and hard rock. And that is what a lot of scientists look at. And when she's talking about a sampling party that she's about to go do, it's it's

Sophie: 45:44

complete party,

Alexis: 45:46

it's complete chaos. Like it's just everyone with little flags trying to put it on the rocks to be like, Nope, that's mine. I want that little layer of clay. I want it, I wanna take it home. I wanna study it. Like it's just, but it's this beautiful organization and, expeditions. Have a set number of scientists that all work together too on major projects and do a bunch of collaboration work on research and papers. And so it's just a wonderful experience. And we met on one expedition and then I'm so happy to hear that you've been on more and, that you're about to lead another one with the National Fleet and the national fleet. It, my understanding of it is that it's a gravity based core system. Is

Sophie: 46:26

that correct? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the coring is, so on the, like you mentioned, It's like a drilling vessel, so it looks like an oil drilling ship, but it's all scientific drilling and basically the way it works is that you like lower drill pipe from the ship all the way down to the bottom of the ocean, which is kind of mind blowing, like, oh yeah. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of meters. Like you basically attach the ship to the bottom of the ocean and then you take sediment chorus from the bottom and bring them back up on board. And because of the drilling infrastructure, you can go, quite far down into the mud. So you can go like hundreds of meters into the sea floor and you can get these long records, which is really amazing for studying climate over long time periods. Yeah. The sort of. A simpler way to get a sediment core is you basically, it's like a straw with a rock on the end and you like put it over the side of the boat, boom. And it like goes down and sticks into the mud and then you pull it back out. Yeah. That's like a sh you can get cool records, they're shorter. But it's easier. That's like a much easier infrastructure to deploy and so Totally. Yeah. There are more vessels that have the capability to do that kind of gravity coring. Yeah. And so again, it's like, it's a, you know, big, big tube with a big weight on the top. Yeah. And so these ships can basically use like a little crane off the side and deploy the core on, like a wire line and it just goes down and sticks into the mud and then comes back up. And so that is, it's much less infrastructure. And so that can kind of happen also all around the globe. Mm-hmm. It's harder to get these really long records if you wanna go far back in time and you wanna have high resolution information. You need like hundreds of meters of sediment. Yes. Yeah. And with this gravity coring system, you can only kind of get maybe tens of meters of sediment. So it's much, it's like much, much shorter records. But it's kind of easier to do it. It it takes a lot less infrastructure planning and Yes. And infrastructure. Yeah. So it's just an easier system to use. And you can also use these other types of coring systems called a multi-core, which is these very short, you know, they're like, I think it's basically a meter and a half, or a meter long and they just like stick into the very top of the mud. But they're really good at kind of capturing that interface between the ocean and the sediment. Yeah. And so it actually, like when they come back up, they're usually only halfway full into the top part is is like water and the bottom part is mud. And so you're like really capturing that interface, which is crucial for like doing some of these studies where you wanna understand interactions between the mud and the water. Yeah. You wanna have a very undisturbed, interface and on the drill ship it's really hard to capture that interface. Totally. And so that's, that's another thing you can do with these, like other types of vessels. The US has a whole fleet of ships that can do this kind of work and other countries do as well. So there are, you know, other research vessels all over that are doing, you know, gravity, coring, this multi coring, which is capturing that interface between the sediment and the ocean. And so that's the sort of thing that I'll be doing in the Labrador Sea is using mostly Multicores to kind of look at these interactions between the mud and the seawater that that's sitting above it.

Alexis: 50:04

Yeah, that sounds perfect. Like a multicore is like exactly what you need, right? Like that's a beautiful

Sophie: 50:09

record. Yeah, and it's called Multicore, cuz there's like eight of them. So you get like eight different, you know, it's, it's like not one tube, it's like eight little mini tubes that are getting you that interface. I love it. So

Alexis: 50:19

cute. But else is so perfect that you have little eight records of it, right? Like that's, that's ideal because Sophie's right, like when you do drill coring, that interface is usually lost, unfortunately. Like we try our best to get some record of it, but it's very, very hard to have a perfect shot that that's going to be recorded or not have some type of, interference. Right.

Sophie: 50:43

Yeah. Like it disturbed when you're Yeah. When you're collecting the mud itself.

Alexis: 50:47

Yeah, exactly. Right. But it's just because it's so deep and just the way that, the way that she goes, so that's so exciting. Have so much fun in the Labrador Sea. When do you leave?

Sophie: 50:56

We don't have a, a date yet, because the Labrador Sea is pretty far north, there's kind of, you can only really go when it's summertime mm-hmm. In the Northern Hemisphere. It hasn't been scheduled, but it would either be in the summer of, 2024 or the summer of 2025. Very cool. So that's wonderful. Hopefully, hopefully like July. July is like the ideal weather window. Yes. Yes. It is. Like that. You don't want, you don't want storms. You aren't like big waves. Oh my God. It's rough. Trying to avoid that. Yeah. Yeah.

Alexis: 51:28

It, that's a very rough area of sea. Like that is a very green exhibition, you know what I mean? Like yeah. July would be perfect. Fingers crossed it 24. That would be amazing. But also 25 is fantastic. Where would you leave from? Mm-hmm. Would you leave from

Sophie: 51:42

Woods Hole? Probably. Woods Hole. Yeah. The sort of ship that is the workhorse in the North Atlantic is the RV Neil Armstrong, which is out of Woods Hole. it does a lot of expeditions in the Labrador Sea. But it, because it has so many different things that it's doing, it's kind of oversubscribed, which is why the, the crews might get pushed back a year. So there's, there's folks that like do all the scheduling of the US ships, so they like all of the projects that are funded. They kind of have to like mesh them all together and like schedule the ship so that, you know, like, you know, each project has different time windows when they need to go out. You know, talking with the, the National Science Foundation, and figuring out like, you know, what, what are the priorities if they don't have enough time to do everything, which cruises are gonna go out and what you're gonna get bumped another year. Yeah. What are the main ones of that year? Exactly. And so there are some that are like these recurring, expeditions for like, you know, monitoring. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there are a number of like time series that are mm-hmm. Like looking at. Ocean properties. There are these mooring arrays that are measuring, basically it's like a buoy with instruments on it. And so they're like, I love the buoy systems.

Alexis: 53:00

Yeah. I always nerd out, like they're one of my favorite things in the entire world, I think is like all of the buoys and all of that data that they're collecting constantly. So I keep, it's

Sophie: 53:09

amazing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there are these different arrays of buoys that are like deployed in the ocean and they're constantly monitoring, the ocean, you know, the properties of the seawater. A lot of these are used by, physical oceanographers mm-hmm. To, to study the currents and look at like really high solution information. So there's a number of these mooring arrays that are in the North Atlantic. Because of the fact that there are these ongoing time series, those kind of get priority. So we might get bumped a year, unfortunately, but That's okay. They're important. I think it's a, you know, it's for a good cause I guess. I guess it's

Alexis: 53:48

for a good cause for buoy, I

Sophie: 53:49

guess. That's fine. Like

Alexis: 53:51

I just, I love the little buoy too, because like, it is, like you said, like a lot of it's like physical oceanography and like atmospheric science is tied into this data that they're collecting. But I love that you can usually like check into the buoys to be like, what's buoy number like 5,328 doing today? And like, I kind of feel like it's almost like a Wally robot, right? Like these like mm-hmm. Cutesy little buoys across like in the Pacific all the way up to be like, yeah, okay. How are you doing today? Like, are you a little bit colder? You little bit warmer, like, how's the witch treating you? I just find them so cute. Yeah. I like, they're very, very cute record keepers.

Sophie: 54:27

Yeah. There are a lot of people at Huey that work on this stuff and so every once in a while we'll get like an, an email to campus being like, this buoy washed up and like someone is wondering if it belongs to someone at Huey and they'll like send a photo of like some buoy that like cut, like came loose and was like floating around and like some fishermen like took a photo of it and was like, does this belong to you guys? So those are always kind of funny emails to get like someone's. Like buoy became unmoored and is like floating a drift on the ocean. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just like,

Alexis: 55:04

what are these hooligans that woods Hole doing? You guys lost another one man? Like it's just another buoy. Yeah, another buoy gone. My next ones, cuz we're almost at time, but I just wanted to kinda ask, because this might be like a wonderful podcast to listen to or an episode to listen to. If you're just starting as an oceanographer, say you're just starting as a climate scientist. Is there anything in your career that's really surprised you? Like something that sticks with you that maybe when you first started you didn't know, and then now that you've been into it and you're running your own lab and you're running your own research programs and your own oceanographic cruises, what's something that's kinda shocked you about this industry?

Sophie: 55:50

That's an interesting question. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think like the, the thing that I was talking about at the very beginning about like kind of my career path and how it's kind of, it's like unfolded not necessarily in the way that I thought it was going to, or, or like, I guess I think it's easy when you're starting out to look at people who have like established careers and feel like, oh, they must have like known where they were going the whole time to be able to get to that point. And I don't think that that's like really a requirement. So I think if you're starting out and you're like excited and like really passionate about sort of learning stuff and about kind of the science in general, that's really, that's the most important thing, like being. Being like interested and kind of learning more and always being curious about things is much more important than like knowing exactly where you want to go because it's never really like a linear path, I don't think. And, and sometimes you'll kind of just happen upon something that like really catches your interest and then you like follow that thread. Mm-hmm. And a lot of grad school is kind of about that, you know, you're like, Coming into a new topic and like, I don't know, looking back to when I started grad school, like I didn't know anything about oceanography. Like I was a chemistry major, but like I didn't know, like I didn't know about ocean circulation. Like I didn't come into it knowing all this stuff. And like you learn so much in grad school and like just being kind of open and curious and like, I think that that is the most important thing. And that you learn so much along the way. And I think like it's, it's always kind of informative to like take a step back and just think about like, man, I've come so far since I started even like, you know, graduating college, I had. You know, foundational information. I had taken like an intro geology class and like mm-hmm. I was a chemistry major, so I knew stuff about chemistry, but like, you just learn so much more, as you kind of, as you go on. And so I think like, yeah, it's just the, the like, drive to learn stuff and the curiosity is kind of the most important thing. And like, you know, I think it's, it's good to be like resilient and adaptable too. Like, grad school's really hard. Science is really hard. Like, there's so much that, like when you get a new data set, like you've done all of this work in lab to like, yeah. You know, maybe you like went out and collected the samples and that was hard. And then you had to measure them and that was hard. But like, then you get the data and it's like, oh shit, what does this even mean? And like, that's hard. Is hard too. Like, it's like, oh no. Yeah. You know? Mm-hmm. It, it like, I think that it, it takes a lot of kind of perseverance mm-hmm. To like, dig into the data and, and learn and sort of, you know, maintaining that, that like curiosity and the, and like kind of holding onto like why you're excited about it in the first place is really important for being able to like, get through the times when it's hard because the hard times happen a lot. And it's always nice to be able to like, talk to friends and colleagues and like mentors. I always find that very helpful because like, You realize that everyone is going through it too. Totally. And like it's so easy to feel like, yeah. Inadequate or like you're doing it wrong. But I think that that's kind of a, it's like a ubiquitous feeling and everyone feels the same way. And like it's nice to get a reality check every once in a while. Yes. And just be like, oh, you feel this way too. Like, I must be doing it. Okay. Like if everyone is feeling the same way and like I look at all my peers and I think like, oh man, they're like crushing it. And then you talk to them and they Yeah. Yeah. And then they feel like just as kind of like unsure as you do, then you realize that like, actually we're all doing fine. Yes. We're all okay. So, yeah. Exactly. I,

Alexis: 1:00:13

I think that's a perfect answer and I absolutely love that. I love that on so many levels. I love the idea of curiosity and like staying, I. Humble, but in a way to be like, Hey, like you didn't really understand this a couple years ago. Or like when you first started you just had foundation. There's so much more to learn and there's so much more to like dive into this specialty and like you can kind of just wing it. It's gonna come follow one path, follow that curiosity and see where it leads you, and then follow that again to another area of science and another topic and specialty. So I love that part of it, but I also love that idea of like colleagues and understanding that everyone's a little bit unsure and that it is difficult. You need that curiosity because the part of research, you have no idea what you're gonna run into, right? Like you have no idea problems that are gonna happen. Maybe the data set doesn't look as good. Maybe the data's leading you in a complete different direction than you first started or you first thought about it. So that's something that's difficult and I like the idea of. I think when we get taught about scientists and we see scientists in movies and in television and stuff like that, we have this idea that they're like geniuses that know everything instantly. Mm-hmm. It's like Matrix brain download to be like, yeah, I am a geologist. I know everything about every single rock. And you're like, I am basically a living timekeeping of geology. And you're like, no, that's, that's not the case. Like every single time you're like, I don't, is it like that? Is that correct? I, I like that refreshing take of being like, maybe I don't really know what's going on right now. And I think that my colleagues are these like perfect super scientists and they also maybe don't really know what's going on yet, but we'll be okay. We're, yeah, we're all in the right direction.

Sophie: 1:01:52

Yeah. And like it's, you know, it's like you're kind of at the forefront of knowledge. Like that's what science is. You're like discovering new things that people don't know the answer to. So it's like, oh, no wonder this is hard. Like no one knows the answer. There's no right answer. Yeah. We're trying to figure it out. Like that's literally the job.

Alexis: 1:02:11

Yeah. We are literally here to figure it out and just to write it down and to be like, okay, I think it's this. And we'll see. The next

Sophie: 1:02:17

generation will come in and double check. Yep. They might disprove it or they might say like, yep, good job. You did it. Right,

Alexis: 1:02:23

exactly. We don't know. I think that's a wonderful way to end it. And thank you just so much for your time today. It was lovely to reconnect and to have you dive into your research. It was so much

Sophie: 1:02:34

fun. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was really fun for me as well. Oh good. I'm

Alexis: 1:02:38

glad to hear. Okay, well, bye guys. Thank you very much for listening. This was the Smoko podcast, the place to celebrate and highlight women working within STEM and trade occupations. And we are joined by the lovely Dr. Sophia Hines from Woods Hole. So thank you very much again, Sophie, and we will see you next week. Bye-bye, Tata. Bye