I had the chance recently to speak with Dr. Lora Koenig, a physical scientist in the Cryosphere Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Koenig is interested in detecting changes in the accumulation of snow over ice sheets using data from passive microwave satellite sensors that have been observing the planet’s poles for over three decades. She studies the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets from up close, using field techniques like snow pits and ice cores, and over broad scales, through airborne and space-borne sensors. Her ground-based studies have included spending a total of over 12 months in the Arctic and Antarctic to validate satellite measurements with ground observations.
Q: How did you become interested in science?
Have you ever seen the Star Wars movies? Me, I loved them — not the newer Episodes I-III, but the originals, Episodes IV-VI. Actually, I really didn’t have much to say about the first movie, since I was just 15 days old on opening night. But The Empire Strikes Back was probably the first movie I ever saw. For those who haven’t seen it, or if it’s been a while since you last saw it, let me remind you that it opens on the icy planet Hoth. I still vividly remember the opening scene of snow blowing across the desolate icy landscape. I was fascinated by the scenery.
I suspect my enchantment with Hoth, paired with my early love of skiing, led me to my current career. I am now a NASA Earth scientist and I study the massive ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica. These vast ice sheets have been in the news a lot lately and rightfully so: As temperatures warm across the globe, the ice sheets lose mass, causing sea levels to rise. Predicting the future sea level rise from ice loss takes a large community of scientists—some study how ice flows, others how it interacts with the ocean, while others develop computer models capable of predicting future change. My research focuses on determining and monitoring snow fall over the ice sheets, which are large and desolate places where we don’t have many direct measurements of snow accumulation.
Q: What is it like working in such extreme environments?
My research is truly exciting and has led me to Antarctica three times and to Greenland four times. I have walked where no one else has walked and spent a dark polar winter in the center of Greenland, where the ice is about two miles thick, all in the name of science. When I am in the field, I gather ice cores and radar data. Both methods give me information about how snow accumulates in layers every year; it’s like counting tree rings. When I started in the field, I had to drive snowmobiles over long distances to gather enough radar and ice core data to be able to relate these ground measurements to the larger-scale satellite measurements, which would be equivalent to using snow-speeders or Tauntauns on planet Hoth. I have spent months driving across vast extensions of ice gathering data. In the past few years, though, new generations of radars mounted on aircraft have essentially replaced snowmobile traverses for radar studies. The advantage of taking radar measurements from a plane is that it allows scientists to collect more data over a much larger area, in less time.