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Annika Horlings: Icy Reflections: Fieldwork and the Calling to Study Glaciers

Updated: Nov 17



I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, U.S. I am a glaciologist, and my research focuses on polar near-surface processes that are important in the mass balance of alpine glaciers and ice sheets, how these processes work, and how they are changing through time. I completed my B.S. in 2016 and my PhD in 2023. I have conducted fieldwork in Antarctica; Alaska, USA; and Washington State, USA.


Icy Reflections: Fieldwork and the Calling to Study Glaciers

 

My skis glide effortlessly on the undulating snow slope. I take in a deep breath, silently in awe of the late afternoon view of endless mountains that expand before me. White, pristine mountain ranges. A ruggedness that I can feel in just a glance, like no one’s been here except the ptarmigans and the bears that sometimes traverse the landscape, and the Sandhill cranes that fly overhead. Blue skies open wide above, while the quiet solitude of the wilderness and the smell of fresh snow give me a deep sense of peace. I am in Alaska, U.S. on a glacier in the Kenai Mountains. I am helping to take measurements to quantify how much mass gain or loss the glacier experienced in the last year.  

 

Cut to another view, that of white stretching forever, flat light, blowing snow, blistering winds and frigid temperatures descending to -50 Celsius. I am fumbling with the wire connections on an instrument, my gloved hands sluggish. The goggles resting on my face mask become fogged up with moisture which quickly freezes onto the clear plastic. My body is cold and exhausted from a full day out in this weather. I have been in the field, camping with my field team, for nearly a month. It’s other-worldly, a landscape where no human seemingly should be. And while sometimes I wonder why I am indeed there, it also is peaceful and humbling to me to be so far away from the cement jungle of the city and in a place no one really had ever been before. I am in the interior of Antarctica, 400 kilometers from the South Pole research station and many hundreds of kilometers from a research station in West Antarctica, with not much in between but the ice sheet and the mountains of this remote continent. I am helping to take measurements to determine a location for a deep ice core that will hopefully tell us more about changes of the Antarctic Ice Sheet during Earth’s last warm period.



Drawn to glaciers - why I do what I do

I am a glaciologist, and, in my case, this means that I sometimes get to visit these kinds of places to gather data to analyze and to better understand glaciers and how they are changing in the context of climate change. I am currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder, and am studying changes of the Juneau Icefield in Alaska. 

 

My journey into earth science began informally during the early years of my youth. On family hikes into the Cascade Range of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, I often would sit for hours in awe of the glaciers and surrounding geology. “The mountains are calling and I must go and I will work on while I can, studying incessantly.”[1] I often recalled and was inspired by these famous words by naturalist and conservationist John Muir. They evoked the lure of the mountains and natural world, and reminded me of our responsibility to understand our interconnectedness with nature. Something I felt and still feel so acutely when I was and am in the mountains. I dreamt of traversing these mountain landscapes or even, if I let myself dream big, Antarctica, as part of my job one day.

 

The years between then and now were hard-won, and I didn’t have the luxury of many privileges that would have made my dreams easy to achieve.  However, many years later, I was able to formally study glaciers at the University of Washington for my PhD, with a specific focus on the part of them that is perhaps most obviously interconnected with the changing climate: processes in the snow and the firn (i.e., material through which snow densifies into glacier ice). Now, as a postdoc in Boulder, Colorado, I describe why I do what I do for work as multi-faceted: to better understand the changing landscapes that I personally have a deep attachment to and that are important in our understanding the impacts of climate change; to continue to be curious, learn, and explore interesting questions about our world; and to be in these beautiful landscapes, some so deeply awe-inspiring, some incredibly harsh.

 

Currently, my project focuses on the expansive interconnected alpine glacier system adjacent to Juneau, Alaska, U.S. called the Juneau Icefield. Because most mass loss of Alaskan glaciers occurs through surface melt from rising atmospheric temperatures, we need to understand the processes involved in the meltwater’s transit from the surface of the glacier, through the glacier, and out into the oceans. Understanding meltwater flow through the firn remains a fundamental challenge in our ability to characterize the behavior and mass loss or gain of Alaskan glaciers, and consequently their influence on sea-level rise, regional water resources, and downstream ecology. During the next few summers, I will be working with the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP) on the icefield to hopefully improve this understanding.



A note to my younger self

There are many things I wish I could have learned sooner. How to meditate. That failure is a part of being courageous and living fully. That one can do some things just for the fun and joy of it. The list goes on, like a lot of us who have entered into adult life, because we acquire these kinds of lessons and skills over time and through trial and error. But perhaps one of the central lessons I wish I had learned sooner is on the importance of valuing life outside of work, achievement, and academia. While these can often become front and center for a lot of academics, I have learned to value my life outside of work even more with time.  I am so many things besides my job, and so are you, reader. I am a partner, friend, family member, teacher, mentor, climber, backpacker, mountain biker, poet, musician, and general nature enthusiast. While it’s not something that’s overtly valued in academia, in my experience, I wish I could tell my younger self that it is important to aim to live a balanced life if you can (this comes with privilege, of course); to live into your values both at work and outside of work; and, for perspective, to remember that your journey is a piece of something much bigger than yourself (I mean, we’re just one speck in time and space).


Outro

Snowflakes dance around in the air, blown from the surface of the Antarctic Ice Sheet by the wind that shapes the surface topography of this area. The sastrugi (which are like sand dunes, but in the snow) are well-defined here at the Allan Hills, a location about an hour’s flight from McMurdo (the American Antarctic research station), and known for its high winds. Here, researchers, including myself, are contributing to a large multi-institutional effort to survey locations for and drill ice cores to obtain the oldest ice and to extend our continuous greenhouse gas records far back in time. In between wind gusts, the high-pitch crunch of the snow trodden from my boots resonates as I walk towards the skidoo (a.k.a. snow machine, or snowmobile) that is our mode of transport in the field. I sit beside the skidoo’s lee side so that its meters-long frame can block the slight breeze from reaching my body. One of our instruments is collecting data, silently sending radar waves into the ice below, and then listening for these waves after they reflect within or at the bottom of the ice sheet back to the surface. This measurement will help us determine different aspects of the glacier, like ice flow. I wait. The only sound I can hear is my own heartbeat.



In all, it is my hope that the work I do provides a little more insight into the interconnectedness of glaciers and climate, which are evermore important to understand amidst our currently evolving and complex world.

 

So, I’ll leave you with a few questions. Why do you do what you do, both for work and outside of work? And, in the words of nature poet Mary Oliver, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”[2]


Bio:

Postdoc at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, U.S

PhD in Earth and Space Sciences

 

Land Acknowledgements:

CU Boulder is located on the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and many other Native American nations. The Arctic work that Annika is currently involved in occurs on the sacred land of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian.

 

Citations:

1 Badè, William Frederic. The life and letters of John Muir. Vol. 2. Houghton Mifflin, 1924.

2 Oliver, Mary. House of light. Beacon Press, 2012.

 

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