Guest Blog Courtesy of Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center – Thermal Energy Design Challenge

In this activity, make your own ice storage device using simple at-home materials and a little bit of imagination! Challenge yourself to create something that traps cold air inside and keeps warm outside air out.

Emilie Beaudon is a glaciologist who travels to icy slopes around the globe to collect frozen records of past climates. Just like a detective, she investigates microscopic ‘clues’ in old ice to find out what the environment was like during ancient times. Some of the clues in ice cores include plant fragments, salts, gas bubbles, soot, or metal particles. Her favorite ‘clue’ to study is mineral dust particles.

As a child, Emilie was so impressed and fascinated by the gigantic volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo and by the Vatnajökull glacial burst that she decided she would study Earth’s natural processes. Later on, Emilie obtained a master’s degree in Earth Sciences in France and then earned a PhD in Glaciology at the University of Lapland (Finland).

Dr. Beaudon is now a senior researcher and member of the ice core paleoclimatology research group at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio). Since the first time she touched an ice core 17 years ago, she has retrieved and analyzed ice from both the polar regions and from mountaintop glaciers. She is now leading a project to understand the environmental ‘message’ carried by dust stored in glaciers and its link to monsoons.