Lab 057: Volcanic Winters, Microplastics, and More: Live from the Great Northern Festival

About This Lab

In our live recording of Lab 057, we are at the Great Northern Festival in Minnesota’s Twin Cities! When you want to talk about winter, where better than one of the coldest places in America? Join us for an incredible convo about volcanic ash, snowflakes, microplastics, and ocean acidification.

Winter is coming

• Colder winters and warmer summers, more frequent hurricanes and rising waters are all interconnected

• The ocean is getting spicier, it’s acidifying

  • It’s capturing carbon dioxide

  • On a log scale, ocean is moving 0.1 in acidity but that actually accounts for 30% change in acidification

  • This is bad for the crustaceans and snails because their shells are dissolving because of the acidification of the ocean

• Plastic in the ocean

  • Plastic can’t degrade

  • It’s in our clothes, in our everyday things, in city dust, tires, the road

  • After precipitation, a lot of these microplastics are getting washed into our water systems

• Salps experiment

  • Over 8 yrs scientists examined salps, sea creatures that propel themselves and eat by taking in water and expelling it

  • In all 100 salps, they found micro plastics in their stomach

    • Scientists estimate there’re 8 mil micro plastic particles PER CUBIC METER

• There a micro plastics in the SNOW

  • Snowflakes start as vapor and when they reach their critical mass, they start to fall

• Volcanic Winter

  • When a volcano has a powerful eruption, it can decrease global temperatures 2-3 degrees

  • Scientists can take out ice cores and get evidence that a volcanic winter has occurred

• When snow hits the ground in durham

  • Apparently ppl abandon their cars and the city shuts down

  • Trucking industry is impacted by this and then groceries become scarce in stores because no new product is being shipped

• If it’s colder, you’re smarter?

  • People in colder temps have the major key #DJKHALED

• Upcoming LIVE SHOW TICKET LINK (FREE)

Guest Expert

This week, our brilliant hosts and scientists Titi and Zakiya put us on game about the science behind so many wintry phenomena like volcanic winters, what’s really in our snow, and what happens when snowfall makes a city shut down.

Transcript

You can read along with this lab here.