Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice get people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant at Purdue University and I know a lot about the bruises that you get with your three year old daughter pummels you over and over and over again while faking taking an app. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. And that's the point of this podcast. I'm joined today so lucky to be joined today by a good friend Carolyn Foley. Also with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Carlin, what's up?

Carolyn Foley 0:39
Not much it is super snowy outside and it's very, very nice. I love snow. I'm one of those people who's like, it's super cold in March. And everybody else is frustrated. So how are you Stuart?

Stuart Carlton 0:51
I'm fine. But you know, you're just doing the snow thing to troll me because as I always say, we never get any snow in West Lafayette, we actually have a little bit now. Just enough snow that we can't sled. You know, it's like a taunting snow. That's what it is. And so that's what we got in West Lafayette. And it was zero degrees today. So the nice thing about West Lafayette is I walked my kids to school. So I walked into school at you know, after our two hour delay in the zero degree weather and that was fun. I mean, a certain type of fun. Which is to say not at all fun. And, but but no snow. It's like I could have been sledding him to school. But no, no,

Carolyn Foley 1:26
yeah. And that would have been easier to pull along. So one thing I do want to say, I never knew the two hour delay thing until I moved to Indiana. That was not something that I heard living like slightly farther north not like super farther north, but it was always like you either have school or you don't have school actually the the popular thing was the schools open for but the buses aren't running. And because I could walk to school my mom was like, you are going to school. And so everyone Yeah. Probably. I'm a responsible person today. But yeah, I was also

Stuart Carlton 1:58
why because you because you didn't have who knew? Yeah, um, well, congrats, you for on being responsible. And let me just send out the tweet. I forgot live now. And we'll get rolling. Well, actually, it's funny that you should talk about all this snow, and everything. And ice because we're here to talk, you know, it's winter. Right. Which in addition to being just devastatingly, psychologically difficult, in this area, due to the lack of sun and the aforementioned cold and a complete lack of snow, to temper, the psychological difficulty. It's a time where the lakes get covered in ice, or at least they should get covered in ice. And so we're here to talk about like, ice was like ice thing for you growing up.

Carolyn Foley 2:41
Yeah, I mean, it was sort of you know, you'd like watch the local streams and like, try to figure out if you could go out on them. And then you know, you go to an arena and it was like perfect ice and you go out on like a river or something like that. It's not the fun but yeah, people would like shovel off spots to play hockey and yes, so like ice and then also the other thing that's really really cool. It was like the shelf ice along the beaches is so pretty. So yes.

Stuart Carlton 3:07
So wait, hold on, so to play hockey, so you have a lake and we have enough ice and but it would just be a bit there'd be covered in snow and so you'd have to D you'd have to have a snow shovel the lake to clear out a hockey rink. Yeah. What a world.

Carolyn Foley 3:21
World person from Louisiana. Yes.

Stuart Carlton 3:25
All right, well, let's just jump right to it. We're gonna bring in our guests and since he is a researcher, I think we all know what's about to happen. So let's just make it so.

"theme song" 3:40
Researcher feature, a feature in which a researcher, teaches about the great lakes.

Stuart Carlton 3:51
Our guest today is James Kessler. He's a physical scientist with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory over in Ann Arbor remote in Ann Arbor right now. Not that in arbors. Remote. Anyway, my point is James is our guest. How's it going to take James?

James Kessler 4:07
It's going great. Excited.

Stuart Carlton 4:08
We're excited to have you. We are so we saw you were talking about ice with some people. We said we want to talk about ice too. We've had an episode or two about ice, but it's really important right now. And specifically ice coverage like in the in the Great Lakes in the Great Lakes. So this is an important thing that y'all measure every year. Right? Is that Is that what you'll do?

James Kessler 4:27
Yeah. So folks, I know myself included, but folks have been measuring ice gov for almost five decades. So we have records going back to the 70s

Stuart Carlton 4:36
across the whole Great Lakes you guys have been measuring for five decades, correct?

James Kessler 4:40
That's awesome. Obviously, it's gotten you know that the forms of measurement have gotten more frequent and a lot better over the years but

Stuart Carlton 4:47
so how do you how do you measure ice coverage? I picture like satellite imagery do you do like automated you know, machine learning based detection or something? What's up?

James Kessler 4:56
So I have to give credit to like, you know, our partner agencies that we work with a The US National Ice Center and Canadian ice services, they do really the heavy lifting with the processing of data for the observational data. And yeah, a lot of its remote satellites and planes in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. They have radar in the microwave, believe, which can see through clouds, visible images, but they also have observations on the ground, we call them in situ observations on onboard ships and actually brave individuals that want to go out on the ice and drill holes in the ice and measure the thickness and concentration.

Carolyn Foley 5:33
That's really cool. Okay, so let's back up for a second planes. So people are like flying over the lakes. And then they have just some, like, is it kind of like a crop duster type plane? Or is it like something else?

James Kessler 5:45
You know, it's, it's so I'm not I'm not really involved with the actual data retrieval. But that's, that's my understanding of it. Yes. You know, planes with instruments on them. And the people on board, our, our trains are specialists, a specialists.

Carolyn Foley 5:57
That's really cool. That's really cool. Do people like the people who go out and measure things? Are they like volunteers that they can sign up to help out? Or?

James Kessler 6:05
Um, I hope so. Because I would like to do that. I've never had that idea before.

Stuart Carlton 6:12
Remember, go? Well, you see, you take, you give a lot something, you take a little something for the show. So that's interesting. So you have these great lakes ice measurements obtained kind of remotely and from the brave individuals who sneak out onto the ice, you say I just envision cracks, like just instant cracks, and then you're in the ice and then you have drowned. And you're like, well, that really wasn't worth it. But maybe not. That's why

Carolyn Foley 6:33
you're trained. But anyway, yeah. Well, I

Stuart Carlton 6:35
guess they turn lights is like terrifying to me, like this idea of because under it is very cold water. And I think I've only seen, you know, because it wasn't something I had exposure to. Because you know, nothing ice is over in New Orleans in southern Louisiana. should terrify

James Kessler 6:49
you. That's the thing is that I mean, it's super, it's it's fragile. And it's dangerous. I mean, people people get stuck on the ice every year and you know, have to be rescued. So I think I think you have not being from the Great Lakes region, you have the correct reaction to it. I think, maybe.

Carolyn Foley 7:05
And Carolyn does not. James didn't say that

Stuart Carlton 7:10
Carolyn said. No, but I mean, it was obvious to most people listening so so they um, they got on the ice. This is not on the list of stuff, but they go on the ice. Like they're on their truck, they're gonna ice fish, like in that letter, Kenny or whatever. And then or they're gonna snow shovel and play hockey. And then and the Isolate breaks around them and they're stuck who comes to rescue? I mean, is it

James Kessler 7:30
like a nice load? Yeah. If you if you just do some Google searches for you know, Great Lakes, ice stranded, you can you can find all sorts of reports and the Coast Guard or local authorities have to rescue people.

Stuart Carlton 7:41
I envisioned a pack of St. Bernard's with the little, you know, thing around their neck, little barrel or little fanny pack. Ice in the Great Lakes coverage. What is the coverage now like is now kind of traditionally when it peaks or when when does it peak in terms of ice coverage?

James Kessler 7:57
So great questions. So right, so talking about what's going on right now doesn't make a lot of sense. Without context, right? You talked about the store of data. So right now, it's just about 25%, which is right on key with the average for this time of year. And I'll try to not throw too many numbers at you, because you can talk about each leg individually, right? Or you can talk about all the lakes combined. So that 25% was for, you know, all five lakes, and that the maximum actually typically doesn't current until mid to late February. And that's on average about 50%. So we're on track sort of to hit that, you know, who knows, but we're only about halfway there. And it's pretty early in the season. As far as individual Lakes, Lake, Ontario, Michigan and Huron are almost exactly equal to the historical averages for this time of year. Superior and Erie are both a little below average superiors about 10% URIs about 45%. And those drinks are sort of on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And that's basically because your ears so shallow, that it has a really small amount of heat content, so it cools the fastest and freezes the earliest and probably the most, and superior is just the opposite, right? It's so massive, so it takes so long to freeze. So yeah, I would say we're, I've been calling this sort of a bizarrely average year, because we're sort of right on track. And it's not typical to be that way. So for context, if you look back through the five decades of data we have on January 26, it's been as high as about 80% or as low as about 5%. So that's, you know, a huge variation that it's possible to be in this year, we just happen to be sort of right where we're regular that the average balls,

Carolyn Foley 9:36
so that's okay, you just said a whole bunch of stuff that's really, really cool. So 25% over the whole of the Great Lakes. And again, James just mentioned this, but we are recording this on January 26th of 2022. So you know, kind of the where we're saying, um, so that's really, really neat. I also hadn't, I don't know why I'd never thought about this. But yeah, the concept that it's actually Lake Erie that freezes first, it makes a lot of sense, given how little watery it is. But like, if you follow Lake Superior on Twitter, they are like, super, like, I have the most ice, etc. And that's not necessarily the case, right? Because of a bunch of other hydrodynamics. That's really cool. Well,

James Kessler 10:15
vegan, so they might have the most ice if you're looking at, you know, square area as opposed to percentage, maybe? I don't know. Right, right. Cool. It has has frozen over I think 100% or close to understand the vast sphere. That's bonkers.

Stuart Carlton 10:29
And so um, so the depth of the lake affects the amount of ice coverage or how quickly the ice gets there, right? Because essentially, if you're really deep, you have a big hot water bottle roughly, or maybe not hot, but less cold water bottle. Yeah. What else influences like ice coverage and how much there is?

James Kessler 10:48
Yeah, so I mean, the, the primary drivers are probably what you would expect, you know, water temperature and air temperature, which are obviously closely related, since they both sort of regulate each other. Excuse me, but they're also secondary influences. Cloud cover and solar radiation. Even snow cover has an impact. And what you know, once, once there is ice, it can accumulate snow on top of it, so that you have to shovel it off when you want to play hockey and whatnot. But that's no accident insulator, it actually has a higher albedo or reflectance than uncovered like ice. So that's going to influence things as well.

Stuart Carlton 11:21
Albedo. So that's, that's how reflective it is. So the more reflective it is it more sunlight bounces off of it. And therefore less heat, less heat, because less than the heat being absorbed. Right, got it. So if it looks like a duck, and it flew anyway, um, okay, I don't know the albedo effect. You know, I will put a link to that in our show notes, which you can find it teach me about the great lakes.com/fifty The number five zero because this is, this is our 50th episode, we should have had like a thing. I don't even have like a bumper, do I?

Carolyn Foley 11:54
I have no idea. But we shouldn't make James wait while you search.

Stuart Carlton 11:59
That's probably true. That's what we got. Alright, um, I won't, I won't, I won't search for a new bumper. But in your mind, imagine that was a bumper. Okay. Anyway. But so, over time, how is the so when I hear this, I hear about heat mattering? And I hear about, you know, whether I'm immediately thinking there's a climate change story here. You know, is there kind of a climate change story with ice is like the amount of coverage? So my guess is, and you could tell me if this is right, is that you know, every year may vary, but in general, the amount of coverage is probably going down. As the world warms? Is that what we're seeing or what?

James Kessler 12:32
Yeah, so in short, I would say that that's, that's correct. So as I was mentioned, you know, we've got five decades of data, that's, you know, for each Lake, and for each point in time and each point space, so it's tons of data to look at. But if we sort of try to simplify it and collapse it down a little bit, we can look at the annual maximum ice cover for each year. So that's what it sounds like, you know, the highest percentage of ice cover for a given lake for a given year, going through time. And if you look at that data, it is it's super high, there are super highs and super lows. It's very noisy. But there are there are trends that show us that that maximum ice cover is decreasing. And it is different for each Lake Superior is decreasing by about 7% per decade, where Michigan is about half that three and a half percent per decade. And that's in regard to that annual maximum. I think the the Great Lakes as a whole I think it's somewhere in between there about 5% per decade. And those those trends are what we call statistically significant. Meaning that they're not, they're not due to random chance. They're meaningful trends.

Carolyn Foley 13:36
Okay, so I just want to hop in, because part of why I was like, Whoa, at the beginning was like having five decades worth of data is it's not super common in science, particularly when you're talking about analyzing trends. So that's part of what makes this really, really awesome is that you are more certain that this is a real thing. That's that's really, really cool.

James Kessler 13:55
Yeah, absolutely.

Stuart Carlton 13:57
But think about so quick clarification on percents, because this always confuses me with them. So it goes down, let's say 5% per year. So that means in year one, it's 100%. In year two is at 95% and year 390. Or is it the kind of thing where said absolute or relative percentage is a percentage points or what

James Kessler 14:13
you know, I usually try and clarify that. But then I just talk in circles and I think I confuse people. So thank you for asking. You're correct. Except maybe I misspoke. But those percentages are per decade, not per year. If it was 101 decade, the next day would be 90. And so yeah, they're absolutely percentages.

Stuart Carlton 14:30
Oh, wow, that's even faster. Okay, I'm probably but figure that on your own kids and report back at least@gmail.com. So what does this mean lower ice coverage, right. So what does this mean kind of long term, what expect What effects do you expect to see, you know, either ecologically or climate technologically, you know, depending on what specific parts that you, you know about.

James Kessler 14:53
I mean, as far as impacts there, you know, there are sort of pros and cons. There's a big commercial shipping industry in the Great Lakes. Some multibillion dollar industry and they're impeded by ice cover. So they like to have like less ice cover. And the Coast Guard who goes in and breaks the freighter freighters free when they're stuck in the ice and clears the shipping channels. I mean, they're they also benefit from less ice cover. There's also, as you're, as we've already sort of discussed, there's love, people like to go on the ice. And that's, you know, a big Recreation and Tourism aspect. I'm saying I say on the physics side, I think your background is more in ecology. But I'm aware of microorganisms and fish that depend on the ice for for food and for spawning. So that's really important. So when there's less ice, they don't have a place to do that. There's a complicated relationship between ice covered evaporation. Because ice cover and prevents evaporation, it's basically it acts like a tap on the lake. But in order for the lakes to cool enough in order to freeze, they need to cool through evaporation. So there's sort of a complicated relationship. And then along with the recreation aspect, there's also this big I think, safety implication, as we were just talking about people getting stranded. And with less ice cover, and a huge variation and ice cover that gets tricky because people assume, Oh, it's a certain time of the year, it's safe to go on the lake here, and maybe last year was different than this year, and you're gonna find yourself needing to be rescued.

Stuart Carlton 16:13
So what was once thick is now maybe a bit thinner, unlike me during the pandemic, but that's pretty significant than and I'd like to point out, you know, with all this kind of stuff, it's really complicated. In that, you know, there's going to be some benefit to some people or some industries, even though there's also a lot of sort of negative of it to this stuff is really complicated. And it reminds me of when we're speaking with a video Balasubramaniam and she was talking about, also, this may be a chance to think about that, right? And think about structuring things in ways that are more justice oriented, but a lot of a lot of complicated stuff. So it's, it's this, is this decreasing amount of ice over decades, is that kind of baked in at this point because of climate stuff? Or is there a way that it might get reversed?

James Kessler 16:58
Yeah, so I think we're still going to see high ice years going forward, because of that variability that we talked about. If you check, you know, if you check our website, you can, you can see the hint that the annual maximum ice cover that I mentioned, you can see that as as sort of a chart, you can see just in the past decade, we've had three super high ice years. So a lot of people see that and say, you know, is it really changing. And that's why I think it's really important to use statistics to try and find the trend and see if there's a meaningful trend. As far as future user impacts, I'll just say that, you know, Earth is a system and that the lakes are regulating the air temperature and vice versa. So I kind of defer to the climate scientists that are that are studying the atmosphere, because those, you know, those changes are going to directly influence the changes in the lakes. Cool. So

Carolyn Foley 17:41
you mentioned some of the products that you have available on your website for people to to look at. And so we can add some links to those to the show notes, which again, is teach me about the Great lakes.com/fifty. Right bubble? But can you talk a little bit about who uses those products? Like what types of products do you have available? And then sort of do you have a sense of who uses them?

James Kessler 18:05
Sure. So one thing that I think is really great, and came to mind when we were talking about how this year compared to prior years? Are these, what I call a lot of people call spaghetti plots, which are, you can think of his line plots with every year of ice covered data overlaid. So it looks like a massive spaghetti because it's all these lines overlapping. But then in more bold lines, you can show this current year, and then also the long term average. So that gives you a sense of what is covered right now. What's What is it on average? And how high and low hasn't been at this point in year? And also, where are we headed? You know, you can sort of sort of take a guess, look, looking at that. We also have, as I mentioned, spatial maps. So those, you know, the other plots that I was talking about are collapsing an entire link down to a single line and just calling it a percentage. But there's a lot more to the story than that. There's also the spatial distribution of ice cover. So we have spatial maps or charts. And the data behind those people actually want to really get into it for any given day going back to 1973, when ice cover was observed. And it used to be bi weekly, and more recently, now it's actually daily. So that's sort of the historical, we also have two days, or depending on when you're looking at yesterday's ice cover, which is provided by the National Ice Center. And then we also have a forecast for the next three days, soon to be five days. And that's from a model simulation. Obviously, it's a forecast. And if you want to know more about that, you can check out the million little triangles episode that describes, among other things, the very complicated hydrodynamic and thermodynamic model, which is just basically the current temperatures of a lake. But that model has a nice component to it. So we're able to predict the ice cover, and then use the great charts that we have to sort of validate that model as well.

Stuart Carlton 19:51
That's awesome. You're more pro than we are James about the great lakes.com/thirty 434 with Dr. Eric Anderson, who is now with us Colorado School of Mines but was with Clairol at the time. And the Leakey, the Leakey award winning Dr. Eric Anderson.

Carolyn Foley 20:07
Yeah. And I was gonna say that James Kessler is putting himself in line for Leakey 2023 award for like, best guest award, I dropped the episode for you. Yes, we don't play favorites. But

Stuart Carlton 20:24
there may be a special category of linkies for self promotion.

James Kessler 20:28
So surely you also you also asked about users. So I don't want to I don't want to miss that. Because that's obviously important, you know, we can make all these great products. But if nobody's using them, it's not that great. So I mean, there are just curious individuals, I'm surprised how many people just like to track this sort of thing, just sort of for fun. You know, there's fishermen, coastal resiliency planners, the commercial shippers, and even like I said, you know, the Coast Guard, obviously, you know, some of these people are more interested in what's going on right now and the future. They don't care about what happened, you know, 10 years ago, necessarily, but variety of uses for sure.

Carolyn Foley 20:59
Right. Cool. Yeah. And I was also thinking, part of why I asked that question is because we get asked questions by like meteorologists all the time about like Lake temperatures at a particular spot. And making these kinds of I like calling them spaghetti plots. I like that term. So we've had lots of requests for those. So it's really, really cool. And so again, we'll put some links so that people can have a look at what's available. But you talked about, like, all this massive data that you have available, you talked about some of the products that are available. James Kessler, is there a product that you would love to make? If you could, it can be as crazy as you want? Because our show is weird. So is there anything that like, if you could have a dream, like ice coverage predictor, whatever, what would it be?

James Kessler 21:45
Yeah. So you know, I do I do a lot of modeling in my work. And I've done it with the atmosphere, or the lakes and ice cover, and even, you know, the streams and runoff over the land, being able to connect the Earth system. So that information between all these different models can flow both ways. So there's, you know, a two way arrow between all of those different components. We call this model coupling. And it's a dream because it's too complicated to implement right now. There's too many components, you know, it's, you're basically recreating the Earth system on computers. But a lot of them have been have been coupled, we're, you know, returning on the more important ones. So in an ideal world, we'd, you know, Earth system model on the computer would be the same as the Earth system.

Carolyn Foley 22:25
That's really, really cool. And then you would have perfect predictions, and no one would ever complain. Well, Stuart would still find a way to complete your

James Kessler 22:35
school approximating physics. So I don't know maybe

Stuart Carlton 22:38
I'm accurately describing things. It's not necessarily complaining. It's just an unusually clear view of life. I think it's how you're describing. Well, this is really interesting, James, and I'm really glad to hear about Lake ice and all the stuff that I've learned, but that's actually not why we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we've got to teach you about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. And the first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

James Kessler 23:05
Sandwich? Definitely. The reasoning just doughnuts are great, but I feel like you're never satisfied after eating a doughnut. Like you maybe just want another doughnut. Where like when you eat a great sandwich. It's It's satisfying. You can just sit there and enjoy being full.

Stuart Carlton 23:19
I agree. I agree. Nobody enjoys being full on too many doughnuts. Enjoy during it's kind of like it's kind of like martinis. It's fun during but then there's the aftermath. Yeah, that's good. So when I go to an arbor, right, you're in Ann Arbor. Alright, so I'm gonna go up to an arbor and visit you and all these other people. Where should I go to get a really great sandwich.

James Kessler 23:39
So if burgers count as sandwiches, I would say freedom but Tito's freedom batido freedom but Tito's two separate words. It is not going to be your typical sandwich because there I think self described Cuban inspired street food. So there's french fries on it. And it's it's this big, greasy mess. It's delicious. If you're not in burgers don't count the backup is safe, which is also vegetarian. So if you're you know, you have both options, same pie like the cheapest ceva scva scva. Oh, it's been in our since like the 50s or 60s like they've been here for a super long time.

Stuart Carlton 24:13
See, we don't have anything like exotic sounding and Westhoff yet. So when you save I'm like, well, Carolyn's giving you I

Carolyn Foley 24:20
think maybe we did, but then it closed. Anyway. But yeah, that's awesome.

Stuart Carlton 24:29
Exactly. We did, but then it close. That's great. The second question is this. Is there like a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience? So one thing we tried to do with this show is you try to build an appreciation for this amazing resource, right? And so one way to do that is by talking about places that are special, is there one that you'd like to share with our audience?

James Kessler 24:50
Yeah, so I mean, really, anywhere in the Cuban Peninsula is super special to me. I think it's like the coolest place on Earth, and that's the peninsula that protrudes into the sun. Their next southern part of Lake Superior. Specifically if I had to pick a place maybe Calumet, which is like a little mining town that's in the keeping up, and it's just super, super cool history. It's super remote. Definitely check it out.

Stuart Carlton 25:12
Well, James Kessler, physical scientist with Nolan's Great Lakes merman Research Laboratory, and a disturbingly smooth guest, who seems more professional than we are,

Carolyn Foley 25:21
he absolutely is more professional than we are. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 25:24
Well, at least me specifically. So I protest against that. But anyway, thank you so much for coming on, and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Thanks for having me.

We're super knowledgeable guy, obviously, it's really important stuff. And I hate when the physical scientists talk better than I do. It's just really frustrating.

Carolyn Foley 25:58
What do you really want can science communicators?

Stuart Carlton 26:03
I mean, that's true. Yes. Yeah. You know, I can have two feelings, I think. And so that's what I do is I have two feelings. No, it's really fascinating topic. And Lake ice is something that to me, I just, you know, obviously, it wasn't a thing. I know a little bit about like puddle ice and to hear about, like, even today, what you're talking about the hockey and all that stuff and getting stranded. It didn't occur to me that it was a cultural resource, right? It just occurred to me to think about it in terms of, you know, the physics and the ecology and stuff like that. But that cultural side, you know, was, it's interesting, and it's interesting to hear about the different ways that people use it, too.

Carolyn Foley 26:37
Yeah. And I mean, I think that, you know, it's just also really, really cool to watch the images. It's just like a, it's like art, where you're watching different things, and the you see the different wind patterns and things like that. So even in terms of like, interested, I think some people are interested just locally, but I don't know, people like me are like, whoa, that's just so cool. Yeah, you can edit that out if it's dumb queen, sorry.

Stuart Carlton 27:00
No, no, no. It also is it except for the parts that we're cutting out. And no, that's, that's absolutely true. And a lot of imagery and stuff. And, you know, it's another instance of one of the importance of these long term datasets, right. And those very often rely on on government programs. And, you know, we, of course, as a federally funded program are teaching about the Great Lakes is partially at least federally, you know, we don't advocate for any specific policy. But without these long term government resources, a lot of the stuff we talked about just doesn't get done. And so it's really neat that those are really valuable datasets to see across decades,

Carolyn Foley 27:36
right? Or at least not with any kind of confidence. Like, when when I encourage people to go take a look at the images that James is talking about, because they are kind of bonkers how variable things can be so Yep.

Stuart Carlton 27:47
All right. Yeah, I mess with these really great data too. Yeah. Or, anyway, great. Um, well, so we're gonna do again, we haven't done this a while. What? What did you learn today? Carolyn,

Carolyn Foley 27:56
I am super ashamed to say that what I learned today, growing up on the edges of Lake Erie, I should have known this but like that Lake Erie, Frieza. First, that is just I don't know why I never thought I think it's because I don't often think about like the depth and things like that past. It's warm. I mean, I've thought about waves. And I've thought about stuff like that. So that's really, really cool to think that because it's smaller, it freezes first and covers kind of higher coverage.

Stuart Carlton 28:24
No, that is that is really cool. The thing I learned today, well, I read a lot of software talking about about, you know, getting stuck on the lace and how that's more hazardous now, and I'll slip on the ice, excuse me, which is terrifying. But it's the term spaghetti models, which anybody from the southeastern United States, that is a triggering term, because that's what they use as a spaghetti diagram, when they're modeling hurricanes, Hurricane paths. And so you're used to looking at the spaghetti diagram and then finding the European model and looking at the different model runs and all that stuff. And so they call that the spaghetti diagram to us. So I hear that, but of course, they use it for the for this as well for applications. Yeah. And this is not triggering in the same way. It doesn't make me worried that I'm going to have to evacuate. All right. Boy, I don't have any announcements, God announcements over here. We're

Carolyn Foley 29:12
gonna do a book club episode.

Stuart Carlton 29:14
I don't want to announce that because who knows? Okay. Free to definitely for the Great Lakes. We may do a book club episode. I was honestly hoping that it just went down the memory hole, but Carolyn decided that he's not going

Carolyn Foley 29:24
out if you want. Time, but yeah, nope, no announcements,

Stuart Carlton 29:30
no, no announcements. Well, you don't you can do we're gonna have a call to action. He said, we're building engagement. That's what you don't have podcasts. I was reading all about this. We're building engagement. So how do you you'd like ice listener? Why don't you send us a tweet to the tweet at each Great Lakes. Thank you or an email to teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com Tell us a lie story or call the hotline and we'll we'll put it on the air. You know, if you call us or we'll read your story in there if you want or if you don't want. You just want to inform us that's cool to us. Yeah, we

Carolyn Foley 29:59
actually read We'd like to hear from you. So, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 30:02
no we do we get we get email periodically. And the occasional tweet is super fun. And it helps us to build a better show, frankly, because it gives us a wider range of experiences to pull from as we think about what topics we want to talk about and the ways in which we want to talk about them.

Carolyn Foley 30:15
Also, you could be talking about ice now, but remember, in just a few months, the ice will be gone again, and we will be out swimming and boating and fishing

Stuart Carlton 30:23
that we will well we won't be swimming because the water is too cold to swim in in the summer, but that's a different issue. Alright, teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and we encourage you to check out the great work that we do at ai secret.org and at i o i n Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Probably Instagram I don't think we have a tick tock tick tock

Carolyn Foley 30:47
No, there's been a hard pass on tick tock thus far.

Stuart Carlton 30:51
There has been I'm too old for it so I just have to rely on you youngins to tell me if we should have a tick tock and the answer is no. We don't have one don't even bother to worry about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters Carolyn Foley Megan good and Rini miles even Chitty is our associate producer and our fixer are super fun podcast artwork. Look at it right now is by Joel Davenport in the show is edited by the awesome Quinn rose. You should check out her work at aspiring robot.com If you have a question or comment about the show or an ice story, send an email to Teespring about the red lights@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline 765496 ai SG that is 4474 False on Twitter if you want to use Great Lakes, awesome Instagram. No, we don't have an Instagram. We just have a Twitter. Oh my god. Thanks for listening

Carolyn Foley 31:40
and keep grinding those links. Keep creating those

Stuart Carlton 31:43
links.

Carolyn Foley 31:50
Also, you know what we forgot to say? Follow Nova Clairol. They have an amazing social media presence.

Stuart Carlton 31:56
Oh, well you know what you just said it