Doing Science at the Edge of the Earth

Some scientific discoveries take place in a lab. Others are made deep in the rainforest, along the ocean floor or on the dark side of the moon. And still others are made squelching through mud and ice on the northernmost island on Earth… at least, if you’re NPR climate correspondent Alejandra Borunda https://www.npr.org/people/1193795778/alejandra-borunda. Two summers ago, Alejandra followed an expedition of scientists to Greenland’s Inuit Qeqertaat, or Kaffeeklubben (“Coffee Club”) Island. The researchers with her were aiming to find what plants grew at the farthest north point of the island. Along the way, she had an adventure … and witnessed the good, the bad and the muddy realities of scientific expeditions. Interested in more exploratory science? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:15Emily Kwong?

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. Two summers ago, a team of scientists set out on an epic journey to the northernmost place on Earth. You could even call it the edge of the terrestrial world.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  There's just something fascinating about the edge of things, like the last thing.

• 0:36Emily Kwong?

  That's ecologist Brian Buma, who led the expedition. And he was joined by our very own Alejandro Barunda from NPR's climate desk. Hi.

• 0:45Speaker 03

  Hi, Emily. It is so great to be here.

• 0:47Emily Kwong?

  I am so intrigued by this trip you went on to the edge of the Earth. But where is that and why?

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great question. So the main goal of this trip was about going all the way up to the northernmost landmass on Earth.

• 1:02Emily Kwong?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Which is this tiny gravel island surrounded by sea ice, way at the top of Greenland. It's called Inuit Kerkapat. It's also known as Kafekluben Island, which literally means Coffee Club Island.

• 1:14Emily Kwong?

  Coffee Club Island? Take me there.

• 1:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was named by some Danes who really loved coffee.

• 1:19Emily Kwong?

  Okay. Why did you all want to go there?

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I was up there with some ecologists who think a lot about how climate change is reshaping the Arctic. So in other parts of the Arctic, like Alaska, plant life is changing really fast. And that's changing how the permafrost works, the amount of carbon that gets stored in the ground, and a ton of other stuff.

• 1:38Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  But no one really knows if that's happening in northern Greenland as well, because it's so hard to get to. And like, that means that there's very few plant surveys at all. Here's what ecologist Jeff Kirby, who was another person on the questing party, here's how he put it.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  We still have really fundamental gaps in...

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Understanding how things work. Satellite images and fancy tech doesn't solve all the problems that boots on the ground can.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  So we were up there to be those boots on the ground.

• 2:10Emily Kwong?

  That's very cool. OK, so what kind of research were you all doing? And what were you looking for up there?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the question for this expedition was, what's the northernmost plant living up there right now?

• 2:24Emily Kwong?

  Like, the final plant? Like, the plant at the edge?

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:27Emily Kwong?

  OK.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  The final plant. And we wanted to know that so we can see what it is today, so we could keep track of how that changes in the future.

• 2:34Emily Kwong?

  Wow.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  And Brian, he's the ecologist who led us on the whole quest.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  We'll be the first to truly document scientifically what's growing on the islands, what the island looks like in high detail, and create a record that can be followed up on in the future.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  And so this was actually pretty fun. There was a bedding pool going. Some people thought that the northernmost plant would be this tiny electric yellow poppy. Others were voting for this little purple flower called a saxifragge, and others thought it might be a moss. But the real point of all this was just what Brian says here.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  It's great to have a few blank spots on the map still in many ways.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  So that was what we did. We went off into the blank spot.

• 3:18Emily Kwong?

  Today on the show, we find out exactly what is growing in the northernmost blank spot and what the landscape there tells us about how the world is changing. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 3:33Speaker 05

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• 4:58Emily Kwong?

  All right, Alejandra, the adventure begins to find the plant at the edge of the world. And you said something about this being a blank spot on the map? You all were going to a place that we don't really know what's there. How does one even get to a blank spot?

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, so, so slowly. So it started like this. Four of us met in this little tiny town in northern Iceland. So it was Brian, who is this really hardy marathoner from Boulder, Colorado. Then there was Nat, ge photographer and ecologist Jeff Kirby, who you heard from already.

• 5:28Emily Kwong?

  Right.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  And then there was Aka Simmensen, who's an indigenous Greenlandic archaeologist. And there was me.

• 5:34Emily Kwong?

  Journalists. We should be a part of the adventure always.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  I mean, this is my main goal in journalism.

• 5:40Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  But also, I was a climate scientist before.

• 5:43Emily Kwong?

  Oh, really?

• 5:43Speaker 03

  So I was extremely down to help do some cool science while also recording a radio story.

• 5:49Emily Kwong?

  This is like a D and D team up. Okay, so the traveling party is assembled. Arctic Dungeons and Dragons can begin. What happens?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  So, yeah, then things start to go off the rails a little bit. We run around frantically trying to find a ton of gear that had somehow gotten lost in transit, like, you know, our food.

• 6:07Emily Kwong?

  Oops.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  And this little boat that we would need to cross some water. And that was a little bit stressful, but eventually found it all. And then we started going north. And so we bunny hopped up the whole eastern coast of Greenland in this teeny tiny plane. And honestly, this was a beautiful part of the trip. It was gorgeous. All the sea ice was sparkling below us. These giant mountains were covered in glaciers to our left. It was just a super dramatic landscape. And there's pretty much no one up there. So it took us like two days, but we finally made it up to the northernmost airstrip on the planet.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Welcome to Bliss.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  That is our pilot Kitty.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Nice work. Thank you. That was a... That was landing.

• 6:55Emily Kwong?

  Go Kitty.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  195 meters. You used 194 of it.

• 7:01Emily Kwong?

  That pilot needed all that runway, but it sounds like you landed fine.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. But after we landed, our final destination was actually still eight miles away and another mile out across the sea ice.

• 7:12Emily Kwong?

  Uh huh.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  I run a lot, so I thought eight miles, that's like not that big a deal. But I will say that it was basically the hardest eight miles I've ever hiked. And that was mostly thanks to climate change.

• 7:23Emily Kwong?

  Oh, wait. How did, how did climate change make your job of covering this ground harder?

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you know, we thought that this ground was going to be totally firm and like frozen permafrost. Because past explorers, that's what they saw. But the week before we arrived, it had been nearly 60 degrees Fahrenheit up there. And we were carrying these 70 or 80 pound packs and dragging a bunch of our other gear. And we were just sinking into this boggy, squishy permafrost, which was thawing because of global warming. And then there were all these rivers. We expected little streams, that was what was on the maps. But a lot of nearby ice and snow was melting because it was so warm. And instead, we had these like really wide rivers to cross.

• 8:10Emily Kwong?

  Yeah. How long did it take in the end to get there?

• 8:14Speaker 03

  So we thought that we would be able to do this in like a day. And instead, it took basically three. But finally, we got close. And when we woke up one morning, we got our first good view of the island. And that's when everyone started laughing. Basically, what we saw was this island, which was two big mounds of gravel. Uh huh. And there were these little cairns on top of the mounds, built by other travelers like us in the past. And Aka Simmensen, the Greenlandic archaeologist, she started laughing and pointed out.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, the island looks similar as breasts.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  And she said Inuit people would have had a good name for it.

• 8:52Speaker 06

  Iviangis, Iviangis could be the name.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Well, you know, you call it like you see it. And then what happens? So then we inflated this little raft that we'd carried all the way from Iceland. Remember that one that we lost? And we paddled across some water. And then we snowshoed across this absolute maze of sea ice. We even had to help each other jump across some of the bigger puddles of meltwater.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  And then, after a really long walk, we got there.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  You go on the island first. Your island. We're just visiting.

• 9:31Speaker 06

  Oh, you make me cry.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  She's on.

• 9:39Speaker 06

  I'm on. Oh, I'm crying.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  And then, literally, the moment we step onto the island, Brian spots something.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  I see a puppy.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  There's at least one.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  A flower. So that was really exciting. Also, they're really cute. Arctic poppies are these cute little electric yellow flowers. They're just few inches tall, and they can be so pretty. So was that it? That was the northernmost plant? Not quite. We kept walking north on the island, and we were doing these longitudinal sweeps along the way to make sure we were capturing everything. You know, we were actually doing geometry in Brian's notebook for a while. You scientists. And eventually.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  And we have a real contender.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  What was it?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  An Arctic puppy. Tired-looking Arctic puppy.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  It was just popping out of the gravel, and it looked like it was going to be our winner.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It is a gorgeous little puppy.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Again, gorgeous being in the eye of the beholder. It's actually, it's actually next to a moss, which is, um, just a little bit. Actually, the moss is still winter.

• 10:56Emily Kwong?

  It was, it was not a flower. It was a, it was an unnamed moss. That's the northernmost plant.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Who was not hoping for an unnamed moss? What can you say?

• 11:07Emily Kwong?

  It's not as epic, but it's the facts.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  So Brian pulls out the GPS to double check where we are.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  For anyone who ever wondered how far north life goes, we're at, uh, eighty eight point six, six, five, oh, three, oh, north.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  To celebrate, we were like, obviously we have to jump in the water that's right next to us at this northernmost piece of land on earth. And so we take off our clothes and run screaming into the Arctic Ocean.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  We called it the Capoclebin Swim Club.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  And then when I stepped out, I actually uncovered with my bare feet, another tiny patch of moss. And so that actually ended up being the winner, the northernmost plant on earth.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Oh, that's funny. That's a different moss. Nice find.

• 12:03Emily Kwong?

  Swimming for science. If you hadn't done that, you wouldn't have known.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Years of planning, weeks of travel and swimming gave us a cute poppy and another unidentified moss.

• 12:15Emily Kwong?

  It seems like actually there was quite a lot of plants up there at the edge of the world.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, there really was. Honestly, more than we expected. And that's probably partly because climate change is making it easier for plants to survive, especially in the summer season, like what we were in. But plants weren't all we, we saw. We actually also ran into this little stoat, which is like a tiny weasel, living in a pile of rocks on the island.

• 12:40Emily Kwong?

  Oh.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  And he was the size of a tube sock and he was completely unafraid. We called him Randall. This is Randall attacking the audio recorder.

• 12:49Emily Kwong?

  That's him trying to eat the microphone. I can hear his little mouth.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, he had no fear at all. He was cool.

• 12:56Emily Kwong?

  What, taken together, what does this tell us about the present state of the Arctic and its future? You mentioned, obviously, it's clearly warmer, there's more life, climate change has a lot to do with it. What else?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  So this is one of the fastest warming areas on the planet.

• 13:12Emily Kwong?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  And that warming is driving huge ecological change across the Arctic. But like Brian said, this was a blank spot on the map. And no one knew whether that warming and change was happening here, too.

• 13:22Emily Kwong?

  Oh, I see.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  And so the main goal of this trip was really just to put a line in the sand, you know, to witness and to catalog what's up there now, the poppies and the mosses and the sex fridges, so that when scientists go back in 20 or 50 or 100 years, they'll know what else has changed.

• 13:39Emily Kwong?

  You were out there for the sake of science, but is there value in just going for the sake of exploration, just to know?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's a really good question. And honestly, for me, it was just this moment to live in this wonder about the world that we live in, to see this very, very special place, the edge of the terrestrial world. And I actually think that's a very human instinct. And Brian agrees.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Just basic curiosity, I think. What's over the next hill up until there's no more hills? And so there's a question of what's, what's that last hill? That right there is the last hill.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  And we went to it, that last hill.

• 14:22Emily Kwong?

  Alejandra, thank you so much for taking us there, us Shorewave listeners. It's been a blast.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you so much for, for listening.

• 14:30Emily Kwong?

  This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Burleigh McCoy. And it was fact checked by Alejandra and Tyler Jones. Beth Donovan is our senior director of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.

• 14:54Speaker 05

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