It’s not that I have trouble writing, on the contrary, it’s all I ever really want to do. The issue is how much to write. How many words on this infinitely scrolling non-page am I going to regale—or flood—you with.
Yesterday I typed up my many pages of notes from three recent conversations I had with atmospheric scientists about their work and about the stratosphere. I learned a lot and am, as always, fascinated by what they do and why.
Through this process I am surprised by a couple things, first, how younger scientists in particular are committed to interdisciplinarity in their work. Second, how my initial urge to learn about a place to “escape to,” continues to return me to this very earth.
The sending up (of balloon, of imagination, of self, of fantasy) suspends me in a dry, inverted, nearly cloudless flowing band of thin air. Below me, in the tropospheric pause, big clouds billow; jetstreams push. At the top, way above, in the stratospheric pause leading to the mesosphere, there’s meteor dust.
Sometimes a trace amount of water vapor up there mixes with the dust and if I’m lucky, I can see delicate noctilucent clouds, so way high up, illuminated by the sun under the horizon.
In the middle of the stratosphere there’s the ozone layer, protecting the below from being fried. The dangerous ozone hole opens and half-closes like a slow-motion fish-mouth, depending on the season above the Antarctic.
I’m being pummeled by UV rays, near-infrared rays, winds and jets that don’t match the ones below. Occasionally the polar vortex wobbles and sends wild waves down through the stratosphere and sometimes waves come back up and bounce me from below.
When I get scattered like a trace particle or dust, I return to my Poe, whose Hans Pfall standing in his basket, replacing the author, escapes the confines of the earth. He’s murdered the plaguing creditors demanding repayment of debts and whooshes up to the moon in his homemade balloon. It’s a grueling and mesmerizing journey and he makes it there alive, somehow.
But even Pfall too wants to come home. He sends a messenger moon-man with a letter back down. Pfall tells his exploits and offers to explain all the science he learned along the way in exchange for a pardon for his crimes. He begs to come home, but his messenger flies away just before the pardon is granted.
This is already more than I meant to write. But many of the things the scientists told me gave me pause for thought. The up-rise is only part of the picture. The dream of escape means a constant relationship with the place escaped, different from but always tethered to the ground where I am right now.
Here are some choice excerpts from my new acquaintances. And at the end, a joyful gift just received.
From a conversation with Prof. i.R. Dr. Ulrike Langematz, Institute of Meteorology, Atmospheric Dynamics, Freie Universitt Berlin, February 23, 2023
A history story in my notes:
The first stratospheric balloon flight was in Berlin in 1901. Two professors at the Institute (Meteorology, now part of Freie Universitaet Berlin) were on board. They had all the equipment and wore all the gear they thought they needed but fell unconscious as the oxygen ran out as they were rising. Eventually the balloon descended to a height (6000 meters) where they could breathe again and so they woke up from being unconscious. But they couldn’t control the balloon until it descended further, to 2500 meters and they landed in Kottbus about seven and a half hours later.
An unintentional poem in my notes:
Stratosphere
temperature trends
climate change
decreasing temps in stratosphere
look in stratosphere
indicate
polar ozone
In the Antarctic, the ozone hole appears in spring. Low temps and CFCs still there means the hole develops.
Looking to see if it recovers as well or not. It appears every year again and again.
Can see recovery, it will take a long time; probably looking at 2060 or later.
-long process-healing—
From my conversation with Kai Kornhuber, adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Columbia University, Senior Research Fellow, German Council on Foreign Relations, March 1, 2023
Kai is a climate scientist. He works on extreme weather events. We talked about extreme weather and another term called “extreme extremes,” which overwhelm infrastructure in ways that cannot be predicted.
We talked about things I read about in his articles that I wanted to understand better: “atmospheric river,” “Arctic amplification,” and “double jets.”
We talked about how much great data exists. And we discussed predictability and how even though he works on extreme weather events and climate change, he does not think about moving to a Swiss mountaintop.
It was during this conversation I understood the intensity of connection between my previous work on underground and bunkers and the current work on stratosphere and balloons.
My last question to Kai was about the future of colonizing other planets. Here are my notes of his perfect response.
Kai says: “Billionaires are really trying to flee the poor and make a society that is exclusive and detached. That is the urge. They want to do it alone.”
He says: “Even a world struck by climate disaster would be better than living on the moon.”
From my conversation with Dr Simon H. Lee, Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, March 6, 2023
This conversation turned out to be the most free-flowing, he was an excellent science communicator and by the time we talked, I had also learned a lot so it was easier for me to have a more informed discussion.
Some notes:
—science full of creativity, interdisciplinarity, continuum. We’ve invented, defined disciplines, but life is more continuous.
—interest in the atmosphere: grew up in England, became fascinated by the fact that things far away could influence where I was.
—as a child, he was struck by the fact that hurricanes far distant over the Atlantic could influence and transport weather from one point of the world to another.
The stratosphere:
—something happening way high—invisible things happening.
—before, people didn’t care about it, they thought it was just a dry place, no clouds, holds the ozone layer
—couldnt make models, did not appear to have weather. Yet in the stratosphere there are winds and waves.
—how you see weather: through the vertical motion of air, vertical motion—rely on, form instability.
—communication via waves, winds
The last part of our conversation was about predictability and the weather, since this is his current area of research. I won’t go into details but it is something called a “weather regime” which he described as a larger space to look at weather trends. He suggested I imagine it as the “mood” of a large part of the landscape.
He told me that people love to blame weather forecasters for not getting it right, and described how the incredible amount of data we have about the weather. Yet the specificity we demand of 21st century technology at every moment (checking weather, for example, hour by hour for specific zip codes), means there is less predictability and more room for error. And people blame the forecasters.
Simon told me that there is no hope of predicting the weather more than two weeks out. It is statistically impossible. The minor variabilities in prediction increase over time to a point beyond that that makes the future impossible to know.
That felt to me a lot like life, and a lot like art.
And to close out this week’s post, a gift.
I got here to Oslo on Wednesday and on Friday I picked up the package that Armelle Frenea-Schmidt, Aerospace Engineer, had mailed me from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden.
I had asked Armelle to send me the cardboard “crashpads” that break the impact of the landing when science experiments come back to earth from the stratosphere.
The balloon has burst, the thing is falling quickly, the parachute’s doing what it can, but there are delicate instruments on the payload and they don’t want them to be destroyed.
I wrote about crashpads in an earlier post, but in short, they are honeycombed cardboard pieces that get affixed to the bottom of the thing that’s going up into the stratosphere. And then they get banged up when they land, hard, on the ground.
So she sent them and now they are here in my office and they make me very happy. They have been to the stratosphere. Armelle also sent stickers, pens, and a keychain from the Swedish Space Agency.
I’ll be going back to Esrange in September to see Armelle’s group of student engineers sending things up in the balloon. And I’ll send things up too. More on that later.
Thanks for reading.
Upcoming screenings of BUNKER, and—streaming!
The BUNKER midwest tour begins March 28 at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Ohio premiere! I’ll be there in person for a Q&A. Click here for more details about the Wexner screening.
March 29-April 1, BUNKER will be having its Chicago premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and I’ll be on hand for Q&As at the 3/29 and 3/31 screenings. Click here for details about the Chicago events.
The film is also available online, streaming at projectr.tv .
I have been kneading the word 'untethering' a lot this winter. Children growing and gaining dual citizenship and venturing in mind and body, considering simplifying and leasing the farm to base temporarily elsewhere sometimes, seeing and letting go of safety lines tied long, long ago. I made up a new resilience game last week that starts with writing down a current answer to the phrase, "I will be safe when..." and explodes all the arising answers and following crystal shrapnel as light hits it.