Alexis: 0:00

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to the MoCo Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong, your host. Nice to meet you. The MoCo Podcast is the place to celebrate and highlight women working within STEM and trade occupations. Tune in, take a break. We're on smoke o and today we're extremely lucky to be joined by the lovely Dr. Susan O'Connell. Dr. O'Connell is a professor of Earth and Environmental Science at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She has an extensive career, both as a professor and a researcher where her research is specific to climate change and climate science. She studies how polar regions, specifically the North Atlantic and Antarctica, how those have changed in the past. And using that understanding, to try to better understand what's gonna happen in the future and model the future of climate change. So her research is heavily tied to one of her passions in life, which is scientific ocean drilling. She's been involved in s o d or scientific ocean drilling since 1978, and she's done numerous scientific expeditions. I think her tally is at nine, but it might be a little bit higher than that now or soon to be higher than nine. So we're gonna talk all things. S o d, we're also gonna talk about another passion in her professional and personal life, which is d e i. In 2015, she co-edited and authored the book, women in the Geoscience, practical Positive Practices Towards Parody, and several journal articles, which include like leaks in the pipeline. Why do women remain curiously absent from the ranks of academic, in addition to being involved with numerous. Community organizations and associations like the Association for Women Geoscientists, started the Onto the Future at the Geological Society of America, and then one year at m i t on a National Science Foundation visiting Professorship for Women. So she's done loads of work with d e I. So I'm so excited to have this conversation with her today and talk to Dr. O'Connell about all things, her research, scientific ocean drilling, and then d e I. So Suzanne, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I appreciate it immensely.

Suzanne: 2:03

It is such an honor to be here. There's so many things I like to talk about, and you've just mentioned a very large part of them, so thank you for inviting me.

Alexis: 2:12

You're welcome. It's amazing to have you on. It's so nice to see you again. We met a while ago when we were both down in Antarctica on I O D P, and it's just so nice to see you again and to have you onto the show. So thank you for coming and maybe to start us off, because you're interested in so many things and you've done so many things. Maybe to start us off is how did you get. First discovered and first interested in oceanography and climate science because you have a BA in biology and geology, mse and a PhD in geology, and then an extensive career as a professor of Earth and environmental science and researcher at Wesleyan University. How did all these things come to be?

Suzanne: 2:51

this is a question that I deal a lot with students, because I teach primarily undergraduates and they're all nervous about what they're gonna do when they grow up. And I tell them, I don't know what I'm gonna do when I grow up, but I'm running outta time, so I've gotta figure it out. So I think there are some people who know what they wanna do, like maybe the moment they're born, or certainly by the time they're five. And they just follow that path straight and. I have a very un path. I got interested in lots of things. And so sometimes say, it's like in the, when I was a kid, we used to think about dalmatians. Whenever they saw a firetruck, they'd just have to run behind the firetruck. And that's sort of how I feel. So I grew up in a really rural part of Massachusetts, it was a very rural area. There was a one room schoolhouse in our town. There was, we had to travel 18 miles to high school and it was, you know, it was rural. I also come from a big family. I have five younger sisters. One of the great ways to get away and have a little space for yourself is outside. So I had this little secret. Place outside cuz we were, it was rural and in the woods, and I had a little place to sit and I could leave things there to read and just vegetate. And I loved it there. And it was quiet and no one was asking you to do stuff. So then when I went to college, it made sense to measure major in biology. Because there were a lot of plants and Yeah. You're used to it. And biology goes with plants. And then one summer I was very fortunate to be a teaching assistant at a small college in Maine. That was a third biology really botany. A third zoology and a third geology. I had never even considered geology because I don't know minors and oil people. And it just didn't seem right to me. But I took this course, so this was the summer of probably 72. Maybe 71. this was just when plate tectonics was coming

Alexis: 4:59

into the world. Wow.

Suzanne: 5:00

This geologist was telling me that we were in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and that they were, some people believed they were linked up to the New England Seas in the, it's like, give me a break.

Alexis: 5:15

You're like, they can't be linked. There's no way. How is this

Suzanne: 5:18

possible? So then when I went back to college, I said, I better take a geology course and get straightened out since I've been hearing all this really nonsense, rubbish, nonsense, nonsense over the summer. So I took a course in geology and it was just life changing. The culture was so different, in biology, people were, the professors were all doctor this and doctor that, and. Very formal. Excellent, but formal. And we were in geology, they were first name bases. We had a big rock garden with rocks, and we'd have lunch out there together and talk about rocks. I thought this is so fascinating. I said plate tectonics was coming on board and they some reason were managed to get some of the most exciting people on the edge of plate tectonics to come and speak to us. Oh, amazing.

Alexis: 6:10

Wow.

Suzanne: 6:10

It was unbelievable. And the fact that plates were moving around and ocean crust was forming and Wow. We didn't quite know how it formed. And one of the, people who came to talk was someone who studied lights in Newfoundland. And lights are when oceans, sometimes when they c collide. The collision happens. Bits of ocean crust, getts smooshed up onto the land. So you can walk on the mantle, you can walk on the crust, you can see the different layers of ocean. So to see it walk on this simple structure in Newfoundland, I was like, man, if I ever go to grad school, that's what I wanna do. But then I didn't wanna go to grad school. I was sick of school. So I got this great job teaching in Yosemite National Park. And to be there all year, so you get to see the seasons and, we had students from all over California come up and spend the week and we would teach them cross-country skiing, and then we would hike them up, Yosemite Falls and teach them about the natives that lived there and all the plants. It was just terrific. But while I was there, I got really interested in photography. So this was another slight diversion.

Alexis: 7:21

I didn't know that. I didn't know that you were a photographer. That's cool.

Suzanne: 7:24

I actually learned to print in Ansel Adam's darkroom. Oh,

Alexis: 7:28

what? That's a big flag, Suzanne. That's crazy. It's

Suzanne: 7:32

crazy. It's crazy. And I decided I just love photography. So I decided I really wanted to be a photographer, but I tried. I had a lot of student loans and we get paid like$10 a day in Yosemite, so I couldn't afford to be there. So I moved back to my home in Massachusetts and tried to like work as a photographer, but I am so far from a business person and I realized I hated it. And I said, well, I guess what I'll do is I'll go to graduate school and get a master's and work for an oil company.. And I can support this photography habit.

Alexis: 8:09

Oh, okay. That's how you started. Okay.

Suzanne: 8:10

That's how I started. So I said, I'm gonna go support this photography habit. And so of course, I was gonna map lytes in Newfoundland because they're so cool. Why not? Even though it has nothing to do with oil or anything like that. If I really was thinking straight, I would've gone to like UT Austin or something. So I was mapping OPIA lights in Newfoundland, and then at those days, the organization that did the planning for the drilling ship, which in those days was called the Glomar Challenger. There were different panels that would decide what to do. And one day I was in my field area on the top of Table Mountain, in Bon Bay in Newfoundland, and who comes wandering by, but the Ocean Crust panel. So all these guys are coming in, they're all interested and how you make Ocean Crust, I was interested in how you feel Crust. So I showed'em around a few places and then they're also op lights in Northern Newfoundland and they were heading up there, so I didn't have a car. So I said, oh, can I go with you? And they said, sure. So I went with them and I got talking to them and it turns out that one of the people on this trip was someone who's going to become the new head of joint oceanographic institutions for deep earth sampling. Oh my goodness. And so he said, oh,, you should, if you're really interested, you could apply. And I said, that sounds great. Cause I was getting tired of school again. In those days, I mean I had heard about the Glomar Challenger and the reason it seemed so special was when I was an undergraduate, there was,, A woman of course. Like all my professors were men then. And most of the students were men and, but these male professors talked in these sort of hush tones about this woman, Helen Foreman, who had been on the Glomar

Alexis: 10:11

Challenger. Yeah. It was like that thing of legend.

Suzanne: 10:15

Gosh. She didn't have an office down with where we were, but she had an office somewhere high up in rafters or something. Yeah. I saw her float by every once in a while. And it was like, oh my gosh, there she is. When I knew that I could start working and being involved with this amazing ship, the Glomar Challenger, I said, oh, okay. So I applied, got the job, and I spent. Two years, as the science coordinator for, what's that? Joint oceanographic institutions for deep earth sampling joints. Fantastic. And so it was a fantastic job because I hadn't traveled much. Like I hadn't, I've been to Canada, but this is an international program. So I went to the Soviet Union. Whoa,

Alexis: 10:58

that's cool. Back in the day. That's insane.

Suzanne: 11:01

And, Iceland and Italy, and it was with these really interesting people, but I realized that I was very much a second class citizen, cuz I only had a master's degree. And I was around people who all had PhDs and people at Woods Hole, all who had PhDs. In fact, my early on, one of my first encounters with one of the members of the planning committee said, introduce me and said, oh, this is Jim's gal Friday. It's like, excuse me. Oh yeah,

Alexis: 11:31

no, absolutely not. I do

Suzanne: 11:33

have a master's degree, you know? And, I did publish a paper. But it was just, if you didn't have a PhD, you didn't count. Yep. So I decided, okay, I really like these guys and I like playing this game. I said I better get myself a PhD. So I applied to a couple of schools and I got into a couple of schools and one was Columbia. And I was trying to decide whether to go to Columbia or Scripps, but I'd been in Woods Hole and as a single female in a town where everybody, most people are married and they have children and they have gardens. And I was traveling, I didn't have a garden and I wasn't married and I wasn't interested in children. So I going to Scripps just seemed like going into another Woods Hole. It's beautiful. It's on the ocean, but it's very insular. Versus New York. And when I went to, I was trying to make the decision when I went to New York, there was a. Subway strike. And so maybe even a taxi strike. I don't know. It was some big strike and everybody was just walking around carrying their dress up shoes and I thought, this is so

Alexis: 12:41

cool. This says energy to it. Yeah.

Suzanne: 12:44

Vibrant. And to be in a real big city just seemed perfect. So I went to Columbia and where we always joke that Columbia keeps its geologists up the river. They don't let us downtown on the main campus. So as I was going out, I, because I finished my job in July, it's a two year rotation and the science coordinator job was also moving to Scripps. And I could have taken, gone to Scripps and keep my same job, but, I didn't wanna do that, so I didn't do that. The person planning who got to go on the ship and it was amazing. Then it was very much smaller for those people who've been on the JOYUS resolution, which has been around now for over 40 years. The Challenger, there were maybe 12 scientists and maybe 12 technicians. So it was so tiny, so much smaller.. Was a smaller ship, not as able to deal, drill in waters that are, ice infested or rough seas and stuff like that, which is partly why they tied it up and got a new ship. But the, person doing the, Deciding where people would stay, who could go on the ship. Said, would you like to go out?

Alexis: 14:02

That's simple here. I'm like, yeah, duh. Oh my gosh.

Suzanne: 14:08

I never would've asked. You know? It was, such a dream. I couldn't imagine asking. So said yes. And so we went and, it was Lake 74. It was Cape Town to SW Man, which is then Southwest Africa now Namibia. It was a really fun expedition. But the real story, I was looking at some of the basalt cuz we were drilling on a place called the Walrus Ridge in the South Atlantic. Still being Anite person, I was looking at the basalts and stuff and there really wasn't too much you could do with the basalts. This real story was in the sediments. Yeah. And so I gradually moved towards sediments and so I did a lot of work with side scan sonar. Looking at the ocean floor, we know so little about the ocean floor. Yeah.

Alexis: 14:57

Still to this day. No. Yeah.

Suzanne: 15:00

It's crazy. It's, you know what you think we've walked on the moon, but we haven't walked on the ocean floor. Which is crazy. So anyway, so then I stayed at Lamont and I worked on deep sea sediments, primarily their surface features with side scan, sonar and then cores, some piston cores. And then I got to go out on Lake 96, the last expedition of the challenge, which is really a very sad expedition because these people had, the same people had been working since the very beginning. That was really, it was very sad. But it was a great leg. Oh my gosh. Looking at all the sand, in those days people didn't believe that sand would travel all the deep ocean floor, but there's some really sand in the deep ocean floor.

Alexis: 15:53

Cuz turbines were barely, understood at that time, and it was just starting.

Suzanne: 15:57

We knew, there was the, in 1929 there was a break in the cables in the North Atlantic, which is their first. Not discovery, but interpretation of turbidite. But I remember even on leg one 13 people telling me's, because we were drilling, if remember 6 94 right in the middle of the Woodell Sea? People saying there's not gonna be any sand there. And I'm saying that's where all the sand is gonna be. That's where all the sand was in the right sea. Because Turbidite travel, so it was the same thing in the Mississippi fan and with the new side scan and then Multibeam, we didn't have Multibeam then. Would have a single line of going across like A channel or something? So if you look at early maps, like the maps, the Hazen THP maps, it shows Rivers coming down like this and a Deep Sea fan. But in fact, they're all anastomosing. It's just like the rivers on land. People know that, and it makes no sense because it's mud, it's soft mud. How do you, a channel that can be, a hundred meters deep in soft mud. But somehow that's what you find. We still don't know that answer to that question. So that was part of what I was working on for my PhD. And then the origin of a lot of this sand and where it came from. So then I had forgotten about working for an oil company now because I was really enjoying what I was doing. I also applied for my Deep Love, the start of the new Ocean Drilling program then. On the Jodi's resolution. And I got that job.

Alexis: 17:38

That's a staff scientist. That's when you worked for, that's a staff scientist. Yeah. Yeah. I love that story so much, Suzanne, because I love that it's not. At the very beginning we used said, I'm still waiting to grow up. And it's not a straight path and it's trying to figure out where you're gonna go. But I do love how, a lot of siblings pushed you towards finding like a outside sanctuary and that fell in like a love of like natural science by just being like, I need to get away from all five of you being so and ridiculous and I need to go outside. I love how that was like the beginning of it. and then the photography break to be like, okay, fine, I'll go back to grad school. Just to hit my habit of photography and be able to afford it. I still can't believe that's how you were treated with just a master's and unfortunately, I feel like that might still persist a little bit in academia and within this culture, but I'm really happy that you decided to go back to do a PhD and be like, well, screw you. One thing that came up that you were talking about is like the different areas of expertise of going from opioid lights and trying to understand ocean spreading. Couldn't imagine what it'd be like back in the day when you're just discovering plate tectonics and that's on the scene. And then trying to figure it out to see what is this first discovery of that? I think that would be so crazy to be part of. And then now your research is really focused on polar climates and paleo climate of, both the North Atlantic and the Antarctic. Could you maybe walk through why these regions are so important in terms of climate and what's special about these marine sediments? What's different about these systems that they're so important to scientists to try to understand climate

Suzanne: 19:13

They are very important and so I got made the switch from termites to paleo oceanography and paleo climate on leg one 13 because. Again, it was all about the sediments. And what happens when, if we look at a globe today or imagine a map of the globe, we have these major ice sheets in the North Pole and the South Pole. And that's pretty unique in earth's history. Yeah. So if we were to go back 35 million years ago, there would be no ice on either pole. And then around 33 million years ago, the ice started to form on the Antarctica, and particularly a place called the East Antarctica. East Antarctica. I think, always confusing because if you're in the South Pole, everything is north. Yes, it's true. Yeah. We're talking about an east and a west, you're like,

Alexis: 20:06

what are you talking about? Yeah. Which, which way,

Suzanne: 20:09

you know, it's north. Yeah. We think it started to form in these high mountain areas in East Antarctica. How well, how it got to form, how it started to form. There's still a lot of discussion, but mostly we think what happened was that the continent of Antarctica was separating from Africa and from South America. Had water that could flow completely around Antarctica. It's called the CIR Antarctica current. And it ended up thermally isolating Antarctica. Unique. I feel so unique. Yeah. And it's still thermally isolated and some people, would argue well with other things going on, there was a decrease in carbon CO2 in the atmosphere. There was a general cooling there. So there are other things, but certainly that really enhanced it. So again, the ocean is leading this major climate change. Where we start making this ice. And then in the Northern Hemisphere, Again, people aren't sure when exactly it started. The Northern Hemisphere ice started. Some people would put it at around five or 6 million years. Some people would put it even closer to 3 million years Fairly modern. Yeah, very modern. We're living in a unique time. And what happens though is we have these two huge ice masses, like giant refrigerators on both ends of the Atlantic Ocean. And this is where the Atlantic really comes into play. And so what happens is you get. Cooling because it's high latitude. The water that's at the surface of the ocean gets really chilled, like down to zero. And then you get ice forming. And when the ice forms, the ice is fresh water. So you have cold and you have fresh water. But if you have fresh water, it means you've expelled salt. Yes. Yeah. So now you have salt hay line thermo cold. So thermo hay line circulation. And it starts at these two poles and it gets, the water gets colder, saltier, denser. And it sinks. Sinks. And the amazing thing is that these distinct water masses, whether it's a North Atlantic, it's called North Atlantic Deep Water. Or Antarctic bottom water, they sink to the bottom and they flow under the ocean right along the ocean floor. And as they're flowing, they're collecting little bits of organic matter that are on the sea floor that are falling down. They're dissolving it, so they're losing some of their oxygen because they're decomposing organic matter.

Alexis: 22:54

Become nutrient

Suzanne: 22:55

rich. And so then what happens is when they get to higher latitudes, and this is particularly important in Antarctica because you have this water that's been traveling from the North Atlantic all the way to Antarctica, and there's, there are air currents that are blowing the water away from the surface. And so you can't have a hole in the ocean. So the water comes up. It's called upwelling. Yeah. Brilliant. Term it up. Upwelling. So upwells, and then it's bringing nutrients. And when sunlight comes out, it's primary product activity.

Alexis: 23:37

It's

Suzanne: 23:37

Thanksgiving. All the creatures are there. As you know, when you're in the southern ocean around Antarctica, It's full of sea life. Yes, it

Alexis: 23:47

is. It is like the best sea life that I've ever seen in my life. I will die with those memories of those humpback whales surrounding our boat. Like it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life.

Suzanne: 23:57

And there's so much of it. And then they're all those little penguins and then they're riding by an iceberg.

Alexis: 24:03

Leopard seals the whole

Suzanne: 24:05

bit. Yeah. And whereas most of the oceans, if you were to look at a, say a chlorophyll, which is, the fact that you have photosynthesis going on map of the ocean, these whole big centers and really nothing is happening. They're

Alexis: 24:18

dead zones. They're nutrient deserts for the most part. Yeah. In like the pelagic zone. Yeah. They're just open,

Suzanne: 24:24

empty. And so if you're sailing around there, you might see. If you dump some garbage over the side as people used to do, yeah. You might get a dark or something coming by to get a snack, but you don't, you aren't gonna see sea life. Whereas, in the Southern Ocean, you wouldn't get tired. The first whale welled on the port side and the whole boat sort of

Alexis: 24:46

lists. Yes. Everyone runs. Everybody runs. But after

Suzanne: 24:50

60 days of, well on the port side it's oh, can I just look out my window and see it?

Alexis: 24:56

You get kind of used to it and a little bit. What is it Spoiled? You just get spoiled by the how much, sea life is down there. So is that what kind of makes it so important and so interesting is just the amount of biodiversity and the amount of nutrients?

Suzanne: 25:10

And what happens is that, because it's so dense and it's flowing, it's actually driving the whole ocean circulation. So it's as if, you're pushing, you can think of it as pushing, but it's not quite pushing, but decreasing water is decreasing at both poles and flowing along the bottom. And so it's driving ocean circulation. And the thing about Antarctica is it's the one place in the ocean where all of the oceans are connected. If you think of Antarctica, so here's this, the Atlantic part, here's the Indian ocean part and here's the Pacific part. All that water meets at Antarctica. And the densest, coldest water is there and it's moving all that circulation. But it's the fact that you have this cold, dense water that's. Creating what our climate is like today. And that's one of the things people worry about when, we think about climate change is that we're, as we melt the ice sheets, not only do we worry about sea level rise, but we create what's called a fresh water lid. So we have a lot of fresh water and it's not salting, it's sitting right

Alexis: 26:21

on top of all this deep water circulation. And

Suzanne: 26:24

so then you're gonna shut down major ocean currents like the Gulf Stream. That would be quite something. But one of the things that happens in these areas, and which is one of the things I study is, the ocean sediment is made up primarily of bits of ous material. Some gets blown in by the wind, some gets flown in with turbines. And some gets in the high latitudes, dropped by icebergs. So you have those three sources of ous material and then you have plankton that live there. And the plankton, a lot of them, diatoms and calcar, nano fossils are photosynthesizers. Some really like it cold, some like it not so cold. And so their shells, or they're called tests, they aren't really Shells. Are preserved in the sediment. So I don't study these little shells, but the great thing about being on the drilling vessel is other people do.

Alexis: 27:25

Yeah. I could tell you what they mean

Suzanne: 27:27

and they can tell you like, oh my gosh, look. This means it was a particularly ice infested cold time. I only know one diatom well by name. It's called Yukia Antarctica. Okay. And I can pick it out. Oh, there's Ampia Antarctica. Like I know anything about diatoms other than They're beautiful. But with my work, I can say, oh my gosh, and now we have lots of these little bits of larger sand and even rocks, Rocks that fit into the drill bit. And, they, Can only come from ice birds. Where

Alexis: 27:59

did this drop stone appear from? Exactly? Where did it drop from? How did melting happen? Where did the ice sheet come from?

Suzanne: 28:05

Where did it come from? And the fact that if you see them, you know there was ice. So it's that very simple observation.

Alexis: 28:12

It's so cool how much information is within marine sediments and also just being the first person to see that. I feel like that would be fantastic for your research of being like it's a puzzle piece of trying to understand past climate. And understand how it works. Thank you so much for explaining too, I think cuz I think when people aren't in geology, they don't understand or wouldn't even think of that ocean circulation specifically. That polar circulation in Antarctica is the main driver of climate change and that is the main controller of ocean circulation. I don't think that instantly comes to people's mind.

Suzanne: 28:47

No, they don't. And it's because it's, you think of the, like this ocean, the surface of the ocean. It's wind driven. The upper part of the ocean is depending on how you count, no more than one kilometer, no more than a hundred meters and probably much less. And then there's another 2, 3, 4 kilometers of water. And we know so little about it. That's the other crazy thing.

Alexis: 29:16

Yeah, know so little about it, but it's also, it's such an interesting point in earth history and earth past history that we have both of those pools right now existing on our earth while we're studying them, right? So that's not only do we not really understand a lot about currents and about ocean circulation, but just to be in a unique time of earth history now to study it is just absolutely fantastic and fascinating.

Suzanne: 29:43

It is, it is. And to be part of it, it's just thrilling.

Alexis: 29:46

We've talked a little bit throughout so far, our talking about s o d, so scientific ocean drilling. And you've mentioned these expeditions and what the material looks like, what you're getting from it, how you're gonna understand climate from this material. Could you maybe speak to a little bit more about the role of cruises in climate science, their importance on why you're so passionate about them? But you're, you've been a huge component of scientific drilling for so long. Could you speak to that, their importance within climate science?

Suzanne: 30:18

When we think we need a record. So when we think about ocean sediments, they're basically a library. And in that library, instead of the layer, the books being lined up like this, you know, they're lined up like this. And so when you take your core and you go down into these sediments, you're bringing up this library of Earth's history. And you could, why don't you do it on land? You can't do it on land because it's not preserved. Gets really messed up. It's right. It's not preserved. So we have wind blowing things around. We have in a lot of places, ice moving. Like pushing stuff away. Like here in Connecticut we have some glacial lakes. So we have some material from the last glaciation. We have some Marines. And then we have to go, couple, 200 million years to see the next bit of earth's history. My goodness, that's a lot of that time is all in the ocean. So we can go to the ocean and see it. So it's a fairly continuous record. It's not absolutely continuous, but it's continuous as we're going to get. And one of the amazing things about ocean drilling is you have this very or fairly continuous record. We need really continuous records. And so instead of drilling just one hole at a site. They drill three, even four holes. So they're able to put together what's called a composite core. And so they know, because if you think of drilling, when you go down with a core, you tend to mess up the bottom a little bit and mess up the top of the next one a little bit. And so they, you have a core now this way and then a core this way. So they hopscotch around each other so that you get a beautiful record. And what you can do with that is look at what is causing the changes. Because we don't know, we know for the last, five or 6 million years that climate is, was driven by orbital forcing the relationship of our planet to the sun. But we've had that relationship to the sun forever.

Alexis: 32:27

The OV cycles have existed forever.

Suzanne: 32:31

We don't see the impact, so it's sort of like, You did this and then this happened. But you can do this

Alexis: 32:37

a million times a day. You don't see it doesn't happen. Yeah. And this doesn't

Suzanne: 32:40

happen. So what triggered that, and I'm going out this summer and that's one of the things we're gonna be looking at is, particularly for the northern hemisphere, when did the glaciation start? When did the bottom currents change? What happened? Very cool. We hope to get into the older parts of the sediment, so beyond 5 million years. Very cool to see what ocean currents were like the bottom currents, not the surface currents. And it's the only place we can do it. You can say, you could look in lakes and you can look in lakes, but chances of finding a 5 million year or 10 million year old lake sediment. Not so much. There's Lake by call in Siberia where they did some of that and it's, but fascinating work. That's one spot. And in the ocean you can go lots of spots and try to figure this out. And we still haven't figured it out, but we know better what questions to ask. We know better where to go to answer those questions. And I think one thing people also don't realize when you drill a hole, that is tied into a seismic line. Yes. So there's all this what's called site survey work that's done and people go back and forth with, a ship that's able to listen to the change with energy, the changes in density of the ocean sediment. So you have an idea, is it nice and layered? Is it all messed up? Is it big fat layer? You get a

Alexis: 34:08

better idea of structure. And, units usually of like resistivity, right? A better overall picture of the environment,

Suzanne: 34:16

right? And so it's one hole, but you can extrapolate then over much longer areas. So even though it's sad, it's just one hole. You can extrapolate a lot, figure out more about what the ocean was like at that time. And that becomes really critical because people look at these, they're called reflectors, some major reflector where there's a big density change. And you might say, okay, this reflector meas means something.

Alexis: 34:45

I think that's a fantastic answer, Suzanne, cuz I think that's perfect on preservation and I think you're so right. Like the ocean drilling is one of the only times that we can get a complete record of marine sediment and marine history and we can get a deep record and an older record that's not available on land. I love scientific ocean drilling. I just have always been absolutely obsessed with it ever since I was a kid and I found out what Jack Gusto was. I was like, I'm gonna get on a research vessel and I'm gonna get on a drilling ship. That's gonna be my job. One thing that you brought up there is understanding kind of climate change and understanding Greenland and up in the North Atlantic When we talk about climate change, I think so many people are obviously so interested in it, but they might not. Understand it or they'd be really interested to hear your opinion of it being a senior climate scientist. I was wondering if you could speak to climate change in the future. What's something that worries you? What's something that gives you hope And then what's something that you think people should be more aware of in terms of climate change?

Suzanne: 35:50

Well, needless to say, I talk to people about climate change all the time. I love it.

Alexis: 35:54

Good.

Suzanne: 35:56

That's what they say. It's really important to talk to people. Yeah. So if you were to sit by me on an airplane or train, you would think, oh, I have to change my seat. But so first there's a lot we don't understand and so sometimes people say, we don't understand, but there's a lot we do understand. I think as a scientist we often focus on what we don't understand. Cuz we want all, that's our job answers. Yeah, that's our job. But we know for sure we're putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere and we know for sure that is warming it up. We might not know exactly what the consequences are. Like we might not know how fast Greenland is melting. I just, it was just a paper this week about that it looks as if parts of the, a northern glacier in Greenland is melting twice as fast as they thought. Wow. So there's so much we don't know, but there's so much we do know, and I think people don't understand the thing, situation of the rate of change. So often people will say, well, climate has always changed. Yeah, but it didn't change this fast, slow, yes. Yeah. When it changed this fast, we have things like the flirtatious, tertiary boundary. Yeah. We have other major boundaries and even those boundaries are not as fast as our current rate

Alexis: 37:18

of change. And they're also associated with mass extinction events too. Like that type of change is chaotic to the entire system

Suzanne: 37:25

and it's probably didn't happen as fast as what we're doing right now. If you consider that in what, about 200 years? We've increased the atmospheric CO2 by about 50%. Wow. So I don't remember the number, but it's something like, we have detonated the equivalent of 35 billion and then it is a billion. Billion. Ato Hiroshima, atomic bombs added that, my goodness. Amount of energy. The thing is, this energy that's coming in, 90% of it goes into the ocean. Yeah. So the ocean is warming and so fast. It's a huge amount. Water has a very high heat capacity, so it takes a lot of energy. To warm the ocean. And we are warming the ocean so fast. Some papers show that, the surface 10 or 20 meters, but now it's showing that warming is going down well over a thousand meters. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So we're changing this major source of our food of climate. Of e ecosystems. And we're doing it so fast, and so I wish people understood the importance of the rate of change. If it happened over 2 million years, that's still fast for geologists. But it's not like you're doing it over 300 years and we're doing, that's what we're doing. You can't even see that in the ocean

Alexis: 38:53

record. No, not at all. It won't be preserved. It wouldn't even notice.

Suzanne: 38:55

It would just be a thin line, just like the thin lines that we see where the KT boundary is or something. And that's what we're doing. I wish people understood that more. I think they would get on faster doing things. And in terms of hope, I think hope is really important. People think, oh, how can you teach these courses? It's because I do have hope. I think there are so many new things. That we can do the new sources of energy. I don't understand why we are not putting huge amounts of more money into research for alternative energy. Why we aren't providing funding like low hanging fruit. But why aren't we subsidizing all these houses being insulated so they aren't using as much energy?

Alexis: 39:43

Easy

Suzanne: 39:43

solutions to it. Yeah. It's so easy. And when I say our planet, I mean us. That's what we care about. I care about the, the planet itself. Earth isn't gonna be fine. The dinosaurs went away and it was fine. Pite went away and it was fine. But it's the humans and the real devastation that could happen as we have more climate migrants, as coastal people lose their home, their place to live.

Alexis: 40:11

It becomes a nuanced, complicated human problem of like policy and economics too.

Suzanne: 40:16

I feel as an educator that maybe we are not doing our job that we need to, have everybody understand, not just say the words like, oh, climate change is bad, but why is it bad? Examples of the consequences and, the increase in fire, the increase in storms, the rise in sea level, there's so much that. People need to know about and I think, I don't understand why they don't act and, students today, I'm very fortunate to work with really great students. it's a very liberal place. But even then, these students are driving around in these big cars and they drive from one part of campus to the other.

Alexis: 40:56

It's not front and center like at all times of the importance of climate in everyone's everyday lives.

Suzanne: 41:02

I think understanding all of these different parts and then, Just becoming a leader in it, like in your own way of saying, all right, I'm not gonna take 20 minute showers. I'm gonna eat beef less. Only once a week or once a month or, yeah. Whatever it is. Just making small changes in talking. Talking to people about it. Like why am I doing this? Because I care about you. I care

Alexis: 41:28

about you. I care about the next generation. Yeah. I think that's a really good answer, but I do think that you need a little bit more education into what is the consequence of climate change. And also I think the interconnection of resources. I didn't understand how many resources and energy was tied into our everyday kind of consumption until I worked in mining. Just realizing how reliant we were on natural resources. I didn't realize how much we use, how much goes into every single movement from showering and electricity and energy to technology and the amount of rare earth elements that are within all of our technology. And that has to be mined. And that uses diesel, that uses oil and gas. That like the interconnectivity of that whole thing. It pollutes water. Yes. The whole thing.

Suzanne: 42:16

And of course now with the need for rare earth elements, and one of the places they can go to get them is the ocean. Yes. Yeah, it's true. So ocean mining. Is not something in the distant future. It's something in the near future. Yeah. Which I think is terrible because we're one of the places they'll go with are these amazing, fantastic vent communities. Yeah. Which are like fairy tales in the deep ocean. Yeah.

Alexis: 42:44

Agreed. It's hard to mine in the ocean without consequence. It's hard to mine on land without consequence. Without environmental, consequence. Suzanne, this is switching topics completely and it's going away from, from science and from climate change, but going into a different passion of yours, which is d e i. And I just wanted to talk about and touch on your book that you wrote in 2015 About women in the geoscience, practical positives practices towards parody. Could you describe the book, the inspiration behind writing it? And I know that there was a bunch of practices that came out of that book of what we can do to increase parody in geosciences. Could you maybe speak on those practices?

Suzanne: 43:21

So that book actually grew out of a program at the National Science Foundation called Advance. It changed so many things. Prior to advanced. I've been around in this business a long time, and when I started at Wesleyan, I was the first and only woman in geoscience physics, chemistry, astronomy. Whoa. And it was a very alien place, and it wasn't, I can't imagine long ago, no. Wasn't that long ago. And I still remember going to a meeting was actually a scientific ocean drilling meeting early in my time at Wesleyan. And there were 80 men in the room and one woman that was the O me. And so that would never happen today. That would never happen today. One of the things was that the National Science Foundation realized that, the numbers of women were line like this And instead of going like this, oh, eventually it's gonna happen. We're gonna get there. We're never gonna get there. If it's still this line is like this, yeah. We're never gonna get to here. They put a lot of money, millions and tens of millions of dollars into this program advance. And instead of it being like, okay, you get money for something, for whatever it is you wanna do, the institution would have to buy in. So like the provost, like a very high person. Yes. Yeah. It isn't just like me and my little lab saying, oh, we need to increase the number of women. No, it's the provost saying Amazing. Yeah, the head honcho and they put money into it. So it was like, oh my gosh, I have an NSF grant for half a million dollars. So wow, somebody is paying attention. So they put the money in. And a couple of the schools, the one that stands out most to me was Michigan. Their advanced program was the first set of advanced schools. And they looked at things like, what are the barriers to hiring? Say more women, because Women were getting degrees, but they were not joining assistant professors. And then they started, they weren't moving. Becoming, full professors. Even if you got your PhD, you weren't, you were leaving and why were you leaving? You know what? Women wanna have children. And there was no. Family leave policy. There was no nursing facilities, there was no daycare, there was all these things that school is needed. Then also a particular problem I think in science, but probably everything, in a profession, you tend to be married to someone with a similar profession. Yes, it's true. We got married doctors and nurses, and lawyers, married lawyers. And so you as a PhD geologist is probably married to another academic, quite likely geologist. And so one of the things they did, instead of looking at it as a two body problem, a two body opportunity. And so what would happen is you, so they wanna hire this one, this female person, or they wanna hire the male. And the female, what's she gonna do? She has a PhD too. And so they had money in this so that you, as the trailing spouse, could come and get a job for at least three years. She could establish a lab. And it was part of the grant. And this is something we write about in the book, the whole idea of implicit bias. So people have known about this for a while, but I don't think they internalized it. One of the examples they use a lot is, orchestras used to have only men. I remember as a kid going, I lived near the Boston Symphony orchestra's summer home. They were all men. When they were trying to change this, they made it so that you, everybody was performing behind a curtain and they Oh, I see. It was blind and then all of a sudden, guess what, they were really good female musicians. Oh, wow. Then if you saw a woman playing the violin, you couldn't imagine she was really good. But if you didn't see her and you couldn't see anybody, she was really good. So the whole problem of dealing with implicit bias, and one of the things they did at Michigan is they had a, I don't think they were called Michigan players, and they would act out these scenes and. It would start out where, there were say four people and it was a white professor, a black professor, or another couple of other people, and they'd had all these different rules and they'd say these things and then they would switch. So now the woman would be the aggressor person and the male would be, yes. One of the things we did with our advanced grant is we brought that them, those players to the American Geophysical Union meeting. And it was open and people could just come for free and listen and see. And you would get really angry, like, why are they doing that? Yeah. And then they would switch. It was like, oh my gosh, I have a totally different

Alexis: 48:04

viewpoint of that. If that's, that behavior is allowed when it's associated to a different person or what that means. Yeah.

Suzanne: 48:11

So advance really got implicit bias in the. In the sciences, rolling. Also like questions that you could ask at an interview so you could no longer say, are you expecting to have children?

Alexis: 48:25

I've got, even got in those questions and you're like, that is so illegal, you're not allowed to ask that.

Suzanne: 48:29

We've just had a couple of searches in my department this year, and when we have our initial meeting with these people, we have the same 10 questions and everybody gets asked the same, 10 questions in the same order. So it isn't as if I can start saying, oh, you're doing something I'm really interested in, so I'm gonna delve into that and you're gonna become my favorite person and you're gonna get my vote. Yes.

Alexis: 48:52

Because we've established a bias Yeah. Yeah. And so

Suzanne: 48:54

they did work like that, showing how important that was. And these are things that are in our book about that. And then just the whole idea of mentoring. And I think there's a organization, national Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. I first became acquainted with them through an advanced workshop that I went to. It talks about what is important in terms of your, moving your career forward. And so it looks, if when you look at it, the females tend to be. Put on more committees cuz you need to have a female or a minority person on these committees. And that is getting you nowhere. It's tokenizing you. And so ways to say no and also to point out that, hey, if you only have one woman, she cannot be on all the committees. Yeah. It's just not fair to her. And so just things that now might seem like common sense, even then they might have seemed like common sense, but now it's incorporated.

Alexis: 49:52

It wasn't being incorporated or practiced then, even if it was common sense, it wasn't actually realistic to that environment.

Suzanne: 49:59

I think the advanced program and this book is a distillation of a lot of the advanced programs and it's just a great program, I think. Amazing. it changed so many schools and if all the other schools are changing, then you have to change too. And there's no idea there's ways to deal with things. The trailing spouse making a position for that person. Yeah. And looking at it not as a burden, but as an opportunity

Alexis: 50:22

to get two birds with one stone. That's an amazing way mindset to look at for faculty, but also just a very easy implementable change that can add women into the, to the faculty and to academia. That's amazing.

Suzanne: 50:36

Or the woman couldn't come because her husband didn't have a job. Yeah. Now she gets a job, but he gets a job too.

Alexis: 50:40

I definitely went to both of the schools that I went to for undergrad and grad school, we had so many spouses that were both professors or one would run a lab and one would be a professor, vice versa. And it was fantastic. They both, they came together as a pair.

Suzanne: 50:55

Yeah. Years ago, and I think people as young as, you don't remember this, but I remember this, it, there was these rules called nepotism rules, and you could not hire the spouse of someone. You abso you were forbidden to hire the spouse. Then what are you gonna do? I just have so many instances in my head where it would've made so much sense to hire them as a team, but Totally it didn't happen.

Alexis: 51:19

I'm happy that, program advance was put into play and that you published your book and all of these findings from the book is absolutely incredible. One last question is, Suzanne, you've just been like, you're a legend in this field. You have been working in oceanography, ocean drilling, climate change for years. Could you maybe describe how this industry has changed since you first started your career? Where would you hope the future of this industry goes? And then what would be any advice to people just starting this industry? So how has it changed? Where do you hope it goes? And any advice to someone just starting right now?

Suzanne: 51:56

Let's take one, like what have changed. I'll just give one example of what's changed and specifically with Ocean Drilling. If we look at the Glomar Challenger that was around for 12 years, The F On the second expedition, they had two women, micro paleontologists. Oh. Who went out. But that entire time, there were three women co chiefs. Oh my goodness. Three women out of 96 legs. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. Whereas now it's common. Not common, common, but it happens so that nobody blinks. You have two women coachees.

Alexis: 52:37

Yes. You do. Yes. I've sailed on multiple expeditions with both women co

Suzanne: 52:40

chiefs. And almost every expedition has a, at least one woman. As a co-chief. That's such a tremendous change. And on Leg 74, my first leg there, there were no women on the cleaning staff. There were no women technicians. But now it's. I think more than half the technicians are women. And the people that do the cleaning and cooking are at least half women. I think that's, it just changes the whole atmosphere. If there are two women and a hundred men, it's a very different situation than if there are 50, 50 50 women and 120 men. It's very different. So that's one thing that's changed so much and it changes so much of just the way things feel. The future. So I think we're in a really sad place for the future, because as you've probably heard, they Yeah. No more the jordy's resolution is gonna be tied up. Which is unbelievable to me because we have so much more to learn, and it's, as programs go. If you look at nasa, we are just a small mission in NASA The fact that it's tied up, my hope is that people will realize, and this is N, national Science Foundation, that it just has to go on that. So we as scientists, need to be lobbying. Our congressional people much more strongly, and not only in the US but in the world. Because part of the reason the National Science Foundation pulled out or is pulling out is because that the. International partners aren't able to pay as much. Yeah. Because, I guess I don't, I have no idea why. You might think Japan, they have a huge space agency, they could put in some money. All these countries still have space agencies and this is our own planet. And so in terms of what I'd say is, in terms of your own, like what you're doing, be present where you are,. So be where you are. Enjoy that moment or not enjoy it, but be present so you fully experience it. And then I think be resourceful. Because there's, there are resources out there, you just have to figure it out. And then I do have a lot of hope for the future. If you don't have hope, then you may as well not bother to do anything. Or I guess, I don't know. I have hope in this new generation of students, in the technology that people are gonna wake up and, you might say, we're gonna exceed two degrees c. Yeah, but let's make sure we don't exceed five degrees soon. Yes. Let's

Alexis: 55:16

try to cap it or try to manage it a little bit better with technology or policy or whatever, what have you. I think that's a great way to end it. And I love the hopeful nature. I couldn't agree more. I think if you're not hopeful, I feel like you become apathetic, and you don't wanna change anything. I love the idea of being present, especially after hearing your story of how you became, involved in climate science and this kind of serendipity aspect of it, of just being like, I don't have a car. Can I come with you guys? And then that led down a full path of working for Woods Hole and Oceanography. So I think that's fantastic advice. I couldn't agree more with your answers Suzanne. And just thank you so much for coming onto the show. I learned so much. I hope other people learn as well. And enjoyed listening and just thank you for coming on the show. It was so nice to see you again. Nice to

Suzanne: 56:05

see you. And I think, thank you for doing this cuz I think, people just need more exposure to some different types of information so that they don't lose hope or they don't think it's only getting worse. It's not only getting worse, many parts are getting so much better.

Alexis: 56:21

And it's not, concrete yet either. I think that becomes a thing of like it's getting worse. Like we can still do better, we can still change it. We might not hit the two two degree, but we can, like you said, cap it before it gets to five. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Suzanne: 56:35

Thank you and take care. Thank you.

Alexis: 56:37

Bye guys. This has been the Smoko podcast. We will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening.