The IcePod goes live and Antarctic! For our first live episode that we broadcasted during the APECS workshop "Antarctic Science: Global connections", we met with the Australian weather observer and Ph.D. candidate Vicki Heinrich. Well, actually, it wasn't only Vicki but we had another special guest: Vickie's pet cat sneaking around. For more than ten years, Vicki has been a regular in the Antarctic to look at the clouds and play with balloons, all courtesy of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). To be trained on the ten types of clouds, she found this opportunity once in a newspaper, and it saved her from the mining industry. To get paid to stay twelve months at a weather station in Antarctica still feels extraordinary to her – as are the beauty of the Antarctic icescape and the many friendships she has built along the way, both with colleagues and penguin colonies.
So why did Vicki then move into psychology? In 2017, she started her Ph.D. thesis with the project "Use of Weather and Climate Information: Risk perception and decision-making in the Antarctic" in order to learn more about how people use weather information to make their daily decisions. To get to know the other side – the user's perspective – is clearly an add-on to her career, and to us as her project got YOPP-endorsed. It turns out – as a preliminary result – everybody wants to know about the wind.
Find the new and all previous IcePod episodes e.g. on our website.
The IcePod is the podcast about polar science and the people. We’ll talk to scientists who went on board Polarstern, the German research icebreaker, for the biggest research expedition in the Arctic. It is produced in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute and Radio Weser.TV. For feedback or questions, please check back with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Editorial responsibility: Kirstin Werner and Sara Pasqualetto
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