What Clouds Tell Us About Climate

Meet Carlos Sevilla, a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at the University of Victoria. Carlos takes complex scientific ideas and turns them into almost poetic explanations of why and how clouds form, and what that means for understanding bigger climate patterns. He thinks everyone should have a 'cloud friend'. Join this conversation to find out what that means!

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Claire 0:00

Seeds of Hope is a podcast created on the Kungan Territory, represented today by Esquimalt and Songhi's First Nations. We feature special edition episodes at Xianu Territory and shared Musqueams, Quahomish, and Slala Tooth Land. As uninvited guests, we hold with immense gratitude and respect the privilege it is to share and cultivate a climate-conscious community here on what we colonially refer to as Vancouver Island. Today we're heading over to chat with Carlos Sevilla, a climate modeler who makes reading clouds feel like storytime. Carlos took a break from working on his PhD to talk to us about cloud dynamics, climate modeling, and why he thinks everyone should have a cloud friend. I shall introduce you. Actually, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself. You're Carlos Sevilla, and you're on the sixth episode of the Seeds of Hope Climate Storytelling podcast. Could you tell us about yourself?

Carlos 1:05

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm gonna start talking like I'm on the radio now. Amazing. Um, I'm gonna change nothing. Uh hi. My name's Carlos. Um I am a climate researcher here in Victoria, BC. Um, originally from Quito, Ecuador. And I also just love clouds. Yeah, which is what I think is gonna be the focus of this talk.

Claire 1:27

Would love that.

Carlos 1:28

Probably that. But I should actually add that my research in climate science is related to clouds. I'm not just like a fan, like a an unrelated fan. I also do research that is related to clouds. And I can talk all about how important clouds are for climate modeling.

Claire 1:43

An unrelated fan of clouds. I would say that's me. I I identify as unrelated fan of clouds.

Carlos 1:49

I think everybody should be. And I'm gonna make uh an argument for that today. Um, I should also add that I'm a PhD student at the University of Victoria within the math department, and I also work uh I've been working a co-op at Environment Canada with the um Climate Change Canada modeling agency. I actually don't know what the acronym stands for, but that's okay, it changes every day and then. I do it for the government of Canada.

Claire 2:16

That's not gonna change. Well You know what?

Carlos 2:20

It's been postponed at least until the next election. We'll put it that way. Ooh, I can tell I've got two back. Ooh. Maybe I'm not allowed to talk about that. That's a good question. Anyway.

Claire 2:28

Okay, but so you have your bachelor's in physics, is that correct? And your master's in applied mathematics. You want me to give you like a full rundown of the Yeah, just a little spiel, just to paint the picture.

Carlos 2:40

It's got some meat to it to some degree. I um went to the United States. I studied at a little college, little known college called Hampshire College, uh, where I was doing well, I was kind of exploring, they gave me a lot of freedom, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to go into. I considered studying history.

Claire 2:55

Whoa, Roman.

Carlos 2:56

No. Specifically, no, just in general. Um and in fact, I also considered like anthropology and ethnology, but um I was feeling STEM. I ended up doing like uh theoretical physics. I spent uh some summers doing internships where I was doing like cosmology and um quantum optics. So really just throwing things to the wall, seeing what interested me. But I was pretty felt kind of disenchanted by like how abstract a lot of these topics are. It doesn't feel particularly applied. I mean, like quantum optics is is very applied if you want to like you know play with lasers and um do quantum computing, which is what is related to, but that still wasn't very uh grounded, as grounded as I wanted to be. And so I decided after my undergrad to pursue a personal passion for climate, which is something I've always just generally been. It's um I guess I could just call it a crisis that feels really close and home to me, something that I really care about, and I've also just had like an affinity and a love for weather and clouds, like we've talked about, storms and all. Uh, and so I decided to do my master's in applied mathematics and climate. There's like a weird degree that I found. I did this in Scotland in Edinburgh at Harriet Watt University, and it was a very quick program, just one year, and then when I finished, I came over to University of Victoria to do uh applied mathematics in climate modeling. And that's I'm I'm and I came in 2021, I'm I'm still here. There we go.

Claire 4:29

How did you know that you wanted to go from like just stay kind of side van of climate and clouds to like actually studying it? Like what it why not lasers? Because the lasers is like everyone's dream toy.

Carlos 4:44

Oh yeah. I mean, like if I could, hmm, that's a good question. So I did this internship in Seattle, and they did genuinely ask if I wanted to stay and do like a PhD there instead. Like they did offer me a position at this lab in Seattle, and I said no, because at that point, um I'm sure I would have been a great researcher, would have done great, but I wasn't that interested in what the in the problems at hand, you know. Like we're talking about like how do you um trying to have to think back on this? It's very dry computing kind of work, you know, like the the lasers um aren't as fun as you might think, we'll put it that way. Uh how do you restrict a photon for certain milliseconds to a a cavity? Those kind of problems which have like very niche applications. Uh I mean, at the time at least, tech was very interested in these kind of things for for optical reasons, but like I wasn't interested in those reasons, you know. If I would have taken that job, it would have been just for a uh job sake. So um, yeah, I I was just thinking like what actually is my passion? What is something that a job that I could do that could be boring and I would still be engaged? And I just drew back to my childhood and like my my um my love for storms and realized that like I would want to do something, I have the freedom to choose something that is something I'm actually passionate, which is storms and climates and clouds and stuff like that.

Claire 6:06

You keep referring kind of to you said like boring. You said like uh the lasers are kind of boring, and this is like a boring. And you're like, what can I do that's a little bit boring that still brings kind of joy to you? Or I'm not sure how you phrased it exactly.

Carlos 6:22

I'm saying it's boring. Probably a lot of people love this kind of stuff. Um STEM is nowadays very little observational physics, right? Like it's very much like uh computer science effectively. So um modeling is a very tedious uh mathematical approach where you're basically glued to a computer uh coding stuff up uh if you're lucky um on a very high-level programming language, and you you run models and you see what these results are and you try to interpret them, but you're not really doing much hands-on stuff. Like you're not um, you know, most of the time you're not running experiments. Uh if you're doing theoretical physics, you're thinking more about math. And so uh it can be very dry, it can be very slow, it can be very dry, it can be very monotonous, and it, you know, very often you'll be stuck in a pretty dank office most of the time. Uh and all of that is still true for the job I'm doing right now for the government of Canada, or for my PhD. It's very mathematical, it like it's modeling, it's coding, it's all that kind of stuff. But uh what makes it interesting for me is that I I enjoy the topic, right? It's an interesting problem, it's a compelling problem, and it's a you know, it's a topic I'm just interested in. And that makes a huge difference, you know. Word of advice from a PhD. Don't do a PhD in STEM if you don't care about the topic.

Claire 7:40

That is really good advice. Just some of the other really good advice I've heard from PhD candidate friends are just like, yeah, don't do anything you're not interested in, but also like advisors are really important too.

Carlos 7:54

Yeah, I like advisors, super super important, like having a good supervisor, having like a a good cohort around you, like people that you enjoy working with or even not working with, but like just can talk about what you're doing is good really good. And then just having a topic you care about, you're you're like you're gonna be doing it for like three, four, or five years. So like you have to be engaged to some degree. Not you're gonna burn out. I know a lot of people have quick PhDs. So how did you be aware of?

Claire 8:20

Good to know. Good to know. How did you pick Victoria? Or did you pick this program because Victoria's gonna get a good climate?

Carlos 8:28

This is when I confessed that I thought very little about um Victoria, as as unique as it is, I didn't really know much about it at all. I just uh knew I wanted to leave Edinburgh because uh I'd finished my program and I wanted to move on. Um I was reaching out to a bunch of like supervisors, I knew I wanted to do a PhD, I wanted I wanted to do in climate sciences, and I was reaching out to a bunch of potential supervisors, and I talked to somebody here at the University of Victoria and we had a really good conversation, they explained the project. I it was obvious that my skill set was very well attuned to what they w what they needed and what they wanted, and they kind of just offered me a job on the spot. And I was particularly excited because I did kind of want to come back to the Pacific Northwest because I'd really enjoy my time in Seattle. Had a lot of friends there, and I figured like Victoria's basically that it's run over close enough, right?

Claire 9:20

No, but you actually could just run over if you could afford the clipper.

Carlos 9:24

If you could afford the yes, I could be there like today if I could afford the clipper 100%. Um, you know, I don't regret that decision at all because like Victoria is a really special and beautiful place, and it is the Pacific Northwest and it does have the things that I was looking for coming back. Um and uh as a side effect I've discovered like a really awesome, unique place. I can gush a lot about Victoria or rather just like the the southern tip of the island and Vancouver Island in general. Uh and like I do with pretty much anywhere I live, I love to just really learn the ins and outs of where I'm living. You know, just like what makes it tick, where uh the what the people are like, what the living nate uh living environment is like. Um we were just having that conversation about like cute little spots in the city, little little hilltops.

Claire 10:17

Little slabs.

Carlos 10:18

So little the little slabs is how you describe them, which I think is adorable. Uh and I I love finding those, like discovering areas and filling up the map. And it's uh exactly the same when it comes to like the atmospheric um the climate and like the the weather or the the the cloud environment. I'm not really sure how I describe it. I just love knowing what it's supposed to be like throughout the year and like feeling that and feeling the weather and like you know, really learning a place.

Claire 10:45

Yeah, I feel like you know clouds and like what the clouds should look like on any given day and spring or fall or summer, just like how I know what birds should be.

Carlos 10:55

There's seasons for this stuff, you know. Yeah, yeah. We talked about, you know, well, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about like different seasons for seeing different birds, right? It's the same for clouds, right? There's there's times of the year that are just very exciting for um approaching weather uh on the island and in Victoria. And it's just it's just fun to be attentive, fun to treat them like events, uh, fun to treat them like uh phenomena that you can just go out and observe. Almost like the um the is it the the lyrides, the shooting stars that are coming by like this week, I think.

Claire 11:26

Oh man. I used to want to be an astronaut, so I wish I could like show up for you right now and tell you I know exactly what you're talking about. We're getting shooting stars, like just more frequently.

Carlos 11:34

We're getting a meteor shower uh this week. I think it peaked yesterday. Oh, cool. I think it might be the lyrics or the pro seeds.

Claire 11:43

Or is this like the grouping of meteors that are falling?

Carlos 11:48

Um yeah, we can talk about meteor showers. We we the the the Earth moves through certain regions that have like densities of um debris, I guess, and when we do that, like we see shooting stars basically and like a lot of higher frequency. Uh, and so we just happen to be doing that right now. Um anyway, my analogy was like certain times of the year they just have like exciting weather events that start to come by, you know. And Victoria just has that just as much as any well any other place. Yeah.

Claire 12:17

Do you have a favorite time of the year in Victoria for climate, for clouds, for anything?

Carlos 12:23

That's really tricky. But I mean the the classic for Victoria obviously is our storm season. We have a pretty awesome, I'll make this contrast. How about this? It's definitely a tie between our two different storm seasons, right? There's the very well-known storm season in October, November, and December that a lot of people in the island know about because we get these huge storms that come by and cause a lot of awesome waves, and people love to surf them. And they're generally just like kind of spooky too. Like they cause huge flooding. Um, it's we the the word or the phrase atmospheric river gets thrown around a lot. Uh, but then on the other side of the year, I've noticed that Victoria just have some smaller scale thunderstorms that sometimes pop up in like uh April, May, and March. Sometimes we get hail, it's kind of exciting. These things just pop in through. Um those storms are super rare in this part of the world, so they're kind of fun to watch.

Claire 13:19

Okay, I have a question that maybe you know the answer to that I feel like some people might also be wondering. And just like what would be the difference between these, like, I'm assuming maybe larger scale climate models that you work with to like weather? Like our weather folks meteorologists, I guess they're called.

Carlos 13:41

That is that is the general difference, yes. And I is wait, was that sorry? I'm gonna change your question.

Claire 13:46

No, yeah, that's kind of it. It's just like what's what are they looking at versus what you're looking at? Are you looking at larger scale modeling and like climate over time?

Carlos 13:54

Uh well, climate is always weather over time, but and this does get at the heart as to why uh clouds are actually super important for climate modeling. That might be a good springboard. Um so meteorologists and weather forecasting, uh, you're interested in like telling what the weather's gonna be, maybe like in the tomorrow or like the next hour. And um this is a the weather and the atmosphere and like the ocean that's connected to it is a very complicated system. But uh predicting it precisely is extremely difficult, and it gets harder and harder the further you you go from where you're standing in the present, right? So uh weather forecasters are trying to be as accurate as possible, um as far as possible, right? So next week or or tomorrow, all those kind of things. And so they worry about things like precision, like is it going to rain at this specific location? Uh, how long is it gonna rain? How strong is the rain going to be? How windy will it be? These are like kind of facts that you'd be interested in if you were a weather forecaster, because you're trying to inform people who are like trying to go uh record a podcast outside or are trying to fly from one uh country to another, or are trying to uh navigate a boat or something like that. These are things you need to know. And so this is where forecasting comes from. Climate science is a lot newer and it concerns itself with completely different facts because we're tr trying to look at large trends. Climate by definition is about averages, and so we we are really not concerned with is it going to rain tomorrow? We're concerned with will the average amount of precipitation change in the next 10 years, right? Will uh average winds um change in the next year? Will um the average amount, like the type of precipitation change? Like we're talking about like much broader trends. And so the tools we use and the models we use just tend to be different. Uh I hope that answers your question.

Claire 15:55

No, yeah, that does that does answer my question.

Carlos 15:58

So and I can go off on on talking more about climate modeling.

Claire 16:02

Yeah, so just like going off on a tangent about climate modeling is totally welcome. I think most people have no idea what it means when we say climate is changing. Well, maybe they mean they understand that a little bit now just because it's very observable for us as regular humans on a year-to-year basis. But a lot of people don't understand what we say when we say, oh, it's gonna, you know, the average temperature is gonna be raised by this much, and then rainfall, we're gonna have less rainfall, but or sorry, less frequent rainfall, but more intense rainstorms and things like that.

Carlos 16:34

I I I've been teaching way too much math, so right now I'm genuinely thinking about how I would explain this if I had a blackboard, like a blackboard and some chalk.

Claire 16:42

Um we should have brought that next time.

Carlos 16:45

That'd have been cute. It would have been up to me just to like like wheel down like my little chalkboard or something like that. Yeah.

Claire 16:52

Oh, that'll be in a documentary follow-up.

Carlos 16:54

Describe this in words. So I'm gonna focus on two different core concepts to describe the difference between weather and climate and like what how to differentiate the two of them. Uh in math we have this concept called stochasticity, uh, which if you don't want to learn any fancy terms, it just means randomness. Yes. Okay, probability and randomness. So for lack of like a perfect understanding, and really it effectively is, the weather is stochastic. Right? It has all these random effects, and so it would look like just noise if you're looking at like um like a sound wave, you know what I'm talking about? You just like dart up and down in all these random kind of motions. Now, that's basically weather, right? There are trends, obviously, things don't happen just randomly, but like there's it's a very complicated system that just dart around quite drastically, especially when it comes to rain and predicting where rain rain is going to happen. So if you were sitting, let's just look at all these, like you can imagine it for listeners, as like a very jagged mountain range, and weather forecasting is basically sitting at the top of a mountain and trying to predict how far how tall the next mountain is, right? You're looking very close distances and you're just like like one peak to the other, right? Climate modeling is if you took that line and you smooth it out completely out of all those rough bumps and edges, right? It's just a single straight line that tells you the average of how things are gonna go. Things can jolt up and down, but like in the middle there's a trend, an average, and that is just as important to know, right? Because um very jagged mountains, uh let's say uh very jagged mountains here on the island are gonna be very different heights than very jagged mountains up in the Himalayas, right, on the Tibetan plateau. Does that does that analogy make a little bit more sense? Yeah, absolutely.

Claire 18:53

I love analogies.

Carlos 18:54

So we're talking about like um where this random noise and stuff is situated, really, and climate change or sorry, climate modeling uh tells us where this average is, where this base is going to be. And if that changes, like obviously like the the randomness is gonna change, but it's very hard to see from not sure if this analogy really works from explaining in words. Um that um so yeah, I'll put it this way, right? If you were trying to better analogy here.

Claire 19:33

I like yeah, I like thinking about it in terms of that centralized like point and just like talking about how important that like averages are really, really critical to see over um.

Carlos 19:45

Yeah, I'm thinking about mountains right now for some reason is my analogy.

Claire 19:48

Stick to the mountains.

Carlos 19:49

If you just dropped you down on the middle of a mountain somewhere and you had no idea where it was, and I asked you to um look at the next peakover and tell me how tall that was, right? That would be like weather forecasting. Climate modeling is like taking a view of from a satellite view and tell me what mountain range that was. You know, wide views of like the whole area rather than just like a specific point. I'm gonna stick with that one. Let's see how it works. Um yeah, so generally just like our aims and our goals of the tools we use to achieve that are just very, very different. And I can talk all about those different kinds of climate models.

Claire 20:26

Yes. Feel free to dive more in into those like different kinds of models. And like, are these models that you are we studying like new ways to produce these models? Are there certain climate models that are like true and true that we use, like whether we're in Canada or the US, like are we using similar climate models to um like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Institute? Or do they even still exist?

Carlos 20:50

I won't I wonder how much I can actually talk about the specifics. I you know, I like about what Canada does, but what I can do is I can talk about like generally the tools we're using for climate. There's not that much variety. Um so unlike weather, which is very local and very like specific, and it's uh this math tool or also AI tool, kind of depending on what you're using. Um climate modeling is not local at all. In fact, pretty much any good climate model is going to be modeling the entire planet if it wants to get something accurate. So something that surprises a lot of people that if you want to model climate here in Victoria or in Canada, you have to include the entire globe. So you have to include like the tropics and the entire area because it's all very interconnected. And so what you'd do is you'd create a uh a math model that includes the entire globe by discretizing it, which just means cutting it up into little rectangles or little squares of every little patch of earth, and then you're solving these um equations, these fluid dynamics equations, uh at every spot at every point. Almost like uh resolution for Like a digital resolution. So the big difference between like something that if you're doing some sort of weathering, weather modeling and climate modeling is that the resolution we're using for these climate models, because it's the entire Earth, it's going to be a lot coarser, right? We're talking about like much um wider grid spaces, if that makes sense. A lot less specificity. Because you know, we're trying to make predictions that are like hundreds of years from now. And so we're less concerned with like the specifics that are happening every little spot and more about like what is the globe as a whole gonna be doing.

Claire 22:33

So when we say things like, uh, I think we have a little bird here somewhere joining us. Um when we say things like, Well, as a biologist I've heard the term microclimate, like is that is that even a possibility, like to have like a micro climate?

Carlos 22:48

Oh yeah. That's that's totally that's 100% possible, 100%. That's more like um when I'm talking about like this large scale kind of thing, I'm talking about how we're trying to predict like the entire world's climate and to understand how like how do I explain this? Changes in our climate, or trying to predict how our climate might change, are going to be affected by changes that are happening thousands of miles from here. That doesn't mean that our climate can't be unique, right? Like it can be unique and really tiny, but it's still gonna be affected by things that are happening very, very far away, or from systems that are very, very large, right? Victoria has a microclimate, but that microclimate is affected by the Pacific, which is very, very big. Does that make sense?

Claire 23:38

That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Absolutely.

Carlos 23:40

Yeah.

Claire 23:41

And how do how do clouds pay play a key in these like climate models? Like, is that like are you learning information from these clouds and like putting these into like big data processing, or like you extracting temperature and wind and all these other things, and like learning how is it kind of vice versa, if that makes sense? Like you learn about cloud coverage from that data.

Carlos 24:04

Yes, that's that's a great question. Well, how where do clouds come into this these models and why are they important? So, two major ways in which we care about clouds in the climate. The first one is that um clouds are what are causing rain. There's a lot of um chemical microprocesses that are happening in clouds that cause rain and different types of rain. So the severity of rain, um how large the area that is experiencing rain, all of those things are gonna be affecting, are uh important for our climate, right? So, what kind of clouds we're getting, where we're getting them, those things generally matter for our climate. Um the second thing is that clouds are white, and that means they're really reflective. So they can have the same kind of effect that you'd expect snow to have in the sun. So I people have probably heard of the effect of like, well, hopefully they have, of like ice on the poles being like reflectors and like reducing the amount of like sunshine that's coming into the earth, and like that, like the fact that they're disappearing has a warming effect because now there's less reflectivity on the earth. People don't hear enough about how there's a clouds that have the exact same effect, right? So there are actually like really large cloud systems that are almost permanent over like the Pacific mostly and also the Atlantic, and these reflect a fair bit of sunshine, and those disappearing or those increasing would also change the energy budget of the Earth. So studying how these form and like how future climate change is gonna affect these is also important, right? Like we might have like an even greater runaway effect with climate change, or it might be a mitigating factor. We we don't actually know. Well, there's some theories, but like we don't really, really know. In fact, I I just read a paper talking about how these last two years have been even hotter than climate change climate models have predicted. And one thing could it could be potentially because these clouds are starting to disappear, they're just less likely to form, and so we might actually have additional heating on top of how as bad as things have been, right? Uh so clouds, they they can cause record-breaking heat during climate climate change, so they're important to know. And the thing about clouds is that they're actually really, really hard to model. Um the reason for that is they're very small, right? We're talking about this big climate system, this big uh climate model that's including every single bit of the earth, and clouds just are very tiny by the by the scales that we're talking about here. Um and they have complicated chemistries, so including them has been a long develop um sorry, a long devel dilemma in a lot of like climate modeling and a lot of the science and climatology for quite a while. The second part of your question was it was like, why do we care? So um I love talk, I love talking about things that like I feel like a lot of people like are, you know, a lot of people, especially like in our circles, talk about climate change a lot, and it's very important to be aware of it. I think we all understand that it's a crisis and it's here, but uh, I don't think a lot of folks have had to like engage in like a debate with someone who doesn't believe in climate change and like where the evidence actually comes from. So back in like the the 70s and the 80s and the 90s, we threw up a bunch of satellites to measure just like the energy that the earth was radiating off of it, and so um the energy budget is basically just how much energy is coming in, from like the sun mostly, and then how much energy is radiating out. And those those things generally should balance because if we have more energy coming in, then it's coming out, then the earth is going to heat on average, right? The earth isn't a uniform sphere, so it's not gonna be like radiating everywhere the same. It's also not going to be like um um receiving energy always the same from everywhere, but like roughly we can estimate how much energy is coming in on out on average, and that's gonna be the Earth's energy budget. Thank you. Is there anything else I should clarify?

Claire 28:00

I can do a lot of and so if we're if like is the idea then that we are like receiving more energy than we are putting back out into the upper atmosphere or even like space, like if if climate is if the global temperatures are warming, does that mean that we're just like because of the erasure of clouds or like um of course with the complex like interactions of greenhouse gases, like we're now like uptaking more energy?

Carlos 28:31

Yeah, so uh you can in the simplest terms you can think of climate change as just like uh the earth has um a uh energy emissiv emissiv emissivity, right? Which is just like the energy that we radiate off into space as heat. It's measurable, and satellites do this kind of measurement. And that like emissivity depends on the qualities of the surface of the earth, like its color, um well, its color and the composition of the atmosphere. You could think of it as the difference between a pair of black pants and a pair of like white pants, like how toasty are they gonna get in the sun, right? That color is making a f and uh making a difference, right? Um so these different as these different properties change, how hot the earth gets is gonna change with it. I mean the uh the input of the sun and how bright the sun is also changes a little bit, but we can calculate that as well. So generally, um climate change is just we're changing the properties of the earth, and so its ability to retain heat is increasing, while the amount of sun from the sorry, the energy from the sun isn't changing that much. Does that make sense?

Claire 29:47

Yeah, absolutely.

Carlos 29:49

Yeah.

Claire 29:50

And that's why I guess we see people, I mean, this is just like a very small scale, but people are like, oh, like one of the easiest like climate solutions is just painting.

Carlos 30:00

Which is which is honestly kind of um underscore, like it actually would have a surprising effect. Yeah, and and there's all these different ways that we didn't realize that um we could change our climate locally quite quite drastically. Like um, our climate models include things like um how much of the land surface is is trees, because they have a different kind of reflectivity. How much of it is cloud, like I just told you, has a different kind of reflectivity. Hard to model because clouds change a lot, but we need to know on average because it tells us how much of this energy is going to be shot back out into space. Um the amount of like cities have the same kind of it's equally important. Um yeah, all of these things are changing, like again, the properties of the Earth that allow it to retain heat versus sending it back into space.

Claire 30:47

So I remember taking this science uh climate modeling course, and just like a big component of it is you know, it's it's always like it could be it could be better, it could be about as we think it's gonna be, or it could be way worse. Is that kind of correct?

Carlos 31:05

This is slightly outside of my purview with what I do, because I do a lot of model development, not so much like error mitigation or like analysis of the results. Um so I'm not super sure where our margins go, but we tend to try to encompass all the possibilities because these are really complicated um models, right? They have like so many different components. We usually run what's called an ensemble. So um every like a lot of countries have their own models, and these models have a lot of parameters that you can tune and change, and we so what we do is we just run all of them and compare all of them together and run them into different configurations, and we see what all of those results look like. There's a pretty broad spread, and we're actively comparing to them what is actually happening, right? We actually now have what 30-50 years of like actual climate change data to compare to, so we can see how well our models our models have done in the last 20 years to predict what's happened. And so all of those things work together to try to um make the predictions more accurate. It's never going to be perfect. Uh we we can't strive for perfection, it's not possible. Um but we can create like a pretty um wide margin of error and like kind of compare and see what what seems to be more accurate, if that makes sense. But generally, what I'm saying is that like there are a lot of models out there, we can see what seems to be the most extreme possibility, what seems to be the the least likely possibility, and we can look at that whole spectrum and like make helps us make decisions about you know ideally policy, but just generally what we can expect.

Claire 32:47

Have you had any like interesting conversations as a climate as a climate modeler? Just like with yeah, yeah, I won't say that you know, I really don't like to give light to like the the tr the train of thought that's like we're not debating climate change anymore. Like that's just so over. But yeah, like have have you had any has your research like led you down any places you didn't really think you were gonna end up?

Carlos 33:14

Like, okay, I I have and talked to um and just engaged online with people who are fairly familiar with a lot of like a lot of data and like a lot of um real uh climate modeling and just come up with completely different, you know, different conclusions. These aren't experts, um, these aren't scientists, but there's obviously like a lot of um interest in you know proving that this isn't true. Yes, I guess. So it's it's interesting. If anything, it's like I found it fun at times because I get to question my myself a little bit. Uh I'll go ahead and say climate change is real, um, and it's a crisis. But um it's worth taking some time to to really look at the numbers and really look at like how we know this. Like, what are the systems you put in place that like tell us that this is a real thing? Um and also just realize that um, at least for me, one of the more interesting things. This is a debate I had online with somebody, and I I realized I was wrong, even if the conclusion wasn't that climate change isn't real, is that um someone was saying, like, oh, the climate is changing all the time, and this is not something to be worried about, right? Which is something I hear very often. Yes. Um, climate changes all the time, don't worry about this, it's totally natural. People use the word natural a lot in this context. Um and if an interesting fact is that the climate is does change a lot, a surprising amount. We've done a lot of research in like paleoclimate, which is just the study of climate before we have any kind of historical records. And it does change a surprising amount. Um and a fact I did not know was that about between 8,000 and 5,000 years ago, it was in fact hotter than it was today. Uh, which is well within it's like around where the pyramids were being built. And there was in fact no glaciers in all of Europe and Scandinavia at that time. So in human history, it actually has been hotter than it has been now, which I think is something that most people don't know. Uh, why is that different from what's happening nowadays? Well, and why we should be alarmed and concerned about climate change. Well, that change where it was hotter back then happened over the course of thousands of years as opposed to decades. So the the speed of the warming should concern people. But um engaging those conversations, you always end up learning something you didn't know. Absolutely. Especially if you're willing to look into it and like do the research, right?

Claire 35:45

You know, you said a phrase there that you never hear, and it's that I was engaged in an internet conversation that I was wrong and I learned something from it because everyone feels very, very much like centered in their opinions, it seems, like especially on Reddit or comments on the internet.

Carlos 36:06

Yeah.

Claire 36:06

So that's really cool.

Carlos 36:09

Nowadays, the word climate has very like strong connotations with like alarms and crises and like um a very scary future. But for me, it's still an interesting and like it's this it's interesting phenomena uh uh topic that's just worth studying, and I I find it very pa very passionate about it, and learning something new about it is just always gonna be interesting for me.

Claire 36:39

Yeah, so that's really interesting. Like, yeah, I think that you're one of the first people that I've talked to in not only just like through the podcast, but in general in my like biology career, where you're not, yeah, like you obviously care about climate change and you're like this is like a crisis that we're facing, but it's like birds.

Carlos 37:03

Yeah, I mean oh my god.

Claire 37:05

You love them, yeah, you love the clouds.

Carlos 37:07

I would be doing this research in in in an amazing, beautiful world where climate change wasn't a real crisis we were facing. I would still be doing this research, and it would still be just as interesting for me, and I think it'd be I still as worth studying. Right? Like, because I think I've alluded to this before, like there's the the climate change reasons that I I write in my papers and I include to get the kind of funding to do this kind of research and and I I make it um publishable and I make it um make it lucrative. Yeah, lucrative is not the right word either. Anyway, appealable appealing. Yeah, makes it like justifies the research, right? Using things about the crisis and climate change is like it's the justification, uh especially for governments. But um I still hold that understanding your local climate and your local weather is just a really powerful and important way of engaging with your environment, you know, of knowing the place where you live. And I think we live in a society where um our detachment from that weather has never been greater, right? We could spend all our days indoors and and almost never think about it, especially if you live in a place like Victoria where like um there are a lot fewer hazards than other places, you know. Um but I think that that connection is is just as important as with our living environment, and I think it's worth knowing like what is happening up there in our skies and in the atmosphere. Yeah.

Claire 38:32

Do you know how regular people like me could become more acquainted with what's happening up there? Other than I guess having a friend that's a good thing.

Carlos 38:40

Yes.

Claire 38:41

I mean be Carlos's friend.

Carlos 38:43

I think, I mean, like find a cloud friend. I think that's a great idea. Find a weather watcher friend. There's a lot of us out there, I'll be totally honest. Um, there's some fun Facebook groups where people just post like fun what is happening out there in the weather today. But outside of that, um just learning like a little um fluid dynamics related to weather, and then like learning a couple of the cloud types, I think it would get you a long ways. And then the most important one, just spend some time outside looking at the skies. Just ask yourself, what is the weather like today? What does it feel like? And or even just looking at the forecast, looking at a forecast tool that's a little bit more um informative and elaborate than Google, for example. I think those are ways to start.

Claire 39:28

Those seem like really good ways to start. You mentioned the um cloud types. What can you tell us about the like what are like certain cloud types that we can look out for? I'm sure it's different depending on where you are. But there are some that are that are the same everywhere, right? Like chemulus.

Carlos 39:45

Yes, this is when I get to drop my my favorite word, um nephology, which is the the study on of clouds.

Claire 39:54

Okay, nephological.

Carlos 39:55

I describe myself as a nepologist rarely ever, but it's a fun word that it exists. I love that word. I love it.

Claire 40:00

There's gotta be an ology episode.

Carlos 40:02

If not, she should interview you. Oh, that'd be fun. Um yes.

Claire 40:07

Um Alley Ward, if you're watching this.

Carlos 40:09

Yes, all about clouds. My gosh. So we also have to talk about oh look at that castrel. Look at that. Oh. Oh, there's a like a look at that falcon.

Claire 40:20

Whoa, I only got a glimpse of it, but that's adjustable.

Carlos 40:25

Now that we're looking at the skies, we get to talk about how we we chose this lovely setting to hopefully do some cloud watching. It is the clearest day we've had.

Claire 40:32

There's one cloud. Is it the cloud? That's definitely gotta be a cloud.

Carlos 40:38

Just look at that little guy.

Claire 40:40

Hanging out by Mount Baker. I think that's Mount Baker.

Carlos 40:43

That is Mount Baker, yeah.

Claire 40:45

So yeah, just to the little left of Mount Baker. She's the only one in this. Oh no. That's that's like a cloud.

Carlos 40:52

Oh, yeah, like the one in between the trees right over there in the great distance. We are really starved for getting things to look at. It's so funny. So, what are what are the different cloud types? So, um, I'm gonna be careful here because a lot of people who enjoy clouds on these online communities we alluded to earlier care a lot about cloud classifications and being like really strict with them. I find them to be kind of fun and cute to know, but their utility is fairly limited, especially if you're more interested in like what's going on up there, right? So there's a lot of like cloud types and classifications and fancy Latin words that have been established, and there's like a rigorous system that's defined by like the um Noah, I can't remember who defines them exactly. It's it's an organization, it might be the the UK one, I'm not sure. And some people love to know these and to spot these kind of clouds, but not all of it's particularly useful, we'll put it that way. Fun to know sometimes, other times it's kind of silly. Okay, anyway. Um, but uh some of the classifications, some of the genera as they're called, do tell you a bit about where these clouds are, so how high they might be in our atmosphere, and then also the mechanisms that cause them, which is what I'm more interested in. Right? I'm more interested in like what is happening in our atmosphere, a local atmosphere that's causing these to form. And it's really where like cloud watching can be a powerful tool because it it's an important component of forecasting and like knowing what's happening on uh that day in the weather, because it says a lot about motions of air and um systems that might hit be headed your way. So let's take, for example, our beautiful clear, clear sky day. Um, there is barely a cloud in the sky, and the few that are well, the one that we saw over there is pretty much evaporating up, and a little little misty over there probably will too. Um little misty. What can we say about it? I mean, do we do we want to just go into full like cloud forecast?

Claire 42:58

Yeah, just what what does an empty sky say when you can't find a cloud?

Carlos 43:02

Does it say a lot of things here in Victoria? It tends to be that we have a high pressure system coming through. So Victoria is very special. Um, well, it's not like unique, but it the thing that makes Victoria special here is that we are sitting at a spot in the mid-latitudes, so fairly north, where we um are either we're getting crossed by the jet stream all the time. Uh and what that means, especially in the mid-latitudes, is that we get smacked by these big, big, wide pressure systems uh relatively occasionally. These are they actually come in waves, um, they're called Rossby waves, don't worry about that. Uh big atmospheric systems where we'll have high pressure and then they'll be replaced by low pressure and it'll happen semi regularly with a certain period of time. High pressure generally means no precipitation, no clouds. Well, like it's more like the processes that make Clouds are mitigated. Um, often you'll have like a cap on top of your local area of high pressure. It'll be like um warmer, dry air that kind of like prevents air from rising. Downward air currents also prevent that. So we've got all these mechanisms that just prevent clouds from forming. And it leads to a very clear sky, usually smoggy skies too, because it also traps out like different kinds of like human activity emissions, and depending on the position, it can also cause uh heavy winds. Again, it depends on where the system is.

Claire 44:34

When we're saying like high pressure systems and like jet streams, like is wind involved in this?

Carlos 44:39

100%. Yeah. Is she there?

Claire 44:40

She had the party.

Carlos 44:41

Is is is wind there and what does she do?

Claire 44:43

Yeah, what is she doing? It's it's starting to get windy now, actually.

Carlos 44:46

A little bit is a little windy, yeah. Um, gosh, wind is such a broad term, uh, right, because we're just talking about like air moving from one place to another. So a lot of things, different things that cause wind um mechanisms, at least, but generally wind is just moving between like one area of high pressure to one of low pressure, right? So uh that can be caused by a lot of things, right? Temperature can cause pressure. So the most generic wind that you get is called sea breeze. We're probably getting that right now, honestly, which is that uh land heats up a lot faster than the ocean does or the sea does, and that air will rise, cause low pressure, and then wind will come to replace that air that just rose. Right? So probably what we're getting right now.

Claire 45:30

She's hearing it, they're hearing gentle, which whatever, whoever's out there.

Carlos 45:35

Um on a much larger scale, we've and for reasons that I won't talk about too much, um, these big, big low pressure, high pressure systems will form, like these big centers of low and high pressure. And low pressure tends to rotate counterclockwise. It's called cyclonic, and high pressure systems tend to rotate and also much uh softer um clockwise. And so you've got this like big almost like hourglass um structure that'll gravitate over us, and then like where that's um where that is located relative to us is where the wind is gonna be like. These are like um what are called the prevailing winds, so they're like the average large-scale winds. These are like small, slow, uh small scale like sea breezes, like I talked about. So in winter, when we get smacked by those November storms like we talked about, that's just one big low pressure system that's hitting us pretty much dead on. And um these are big, big storms, right? They're causing like a lot of precipitation to happen and like really heavy winds. Um more often than not, if we're getting hit by a storm here in Victoria, uh Haida Guay is also probably being affected by the exact same weather, but talking about thousands of miles long, kilometers long systems. Does that make sense?

Claire 46:55

Yeah, absolutely.

Carlos 46:57

Um how does wind affect a cloud? Is that the question again?

Claire 47:01

Yeah.

Carlos 47:03

Well, it's depending on the cloud. If I had an example I would 100% show you. Yeah.

Claire 47:08

But um And depending where it is in the atmosphere, right?

Carlos 47:12

All of those things. So um different um, I should say, like because of all these different and pressures and stuff like that that cause wind, um as you go up in the atmosphere, the wind is gonna change. It's gonna be different, it can change completely the direction it's pushing, it can just be a lot stronger, all of those different kinds of things. And if you want to form like a big cohesive cloud, you don't want too much wind as you're going further up. So, um in an example where it's like a super chill day like this, uh obviously we've got no clouds, but if a cloud were to form, it'd be able to tower up and be really, really lovely and stay cohesive. But in a scenario where there's like low winds below and then high winds above, you can actually see these clouds get torn and sheared, and sometimes it can prevent them from developing into anything larger.

Claire 48:01

Wow, kind of violent.

Carlos 48:02

I use very violent language but torn and sheared. But generally, like it's just like a cloud that kind of has this um um it's kind of like diagonal shape, and you can see as it's being pushed uh h uh stronger at higher up than lower down. And at a certain level, these kind of winds can actually like help storms develop. And when it's too powerful, they'll actually prevent storms from developing. So you can actually like look at the the like the the profile of a cloud and it can tell you what is going on further up in the in the atmosphere, which is why I like clouds, right? I'm talking about like they're a a visual cue and a manifestation of like how the air is moving above you. They tell stories, actually see it, yes.

Claire 48:48

They're like biological indicators. That's kind of a nerdy word.

Carlos 48:51

I think they're exactly like that. I I just want people to learn their clouds, you know. I think it's not that much to ask. I don't think it's that crazy. Drop some cloud names, drop names people some can go out on the internet and find beautiful cloud pictures because there's some types that I think are really well worth it. The qu the question I thought you would ask me, because everyone asked me this question, is what is your favorite cloud?

Claire 49:11

So I'm so sorry.

Carlos 49:12

No, I'm gonna do I'm gonna ask you that question. What is your favorite cloud? Describe it and I'll try to identify it. How about that?

Claire 49:17

What's my favorite cloud? I've got lots of cloud photos to I have apparently 28 results whenever I look up clouds, which I definitely have taken way more cloud photos than that. In fact, some of these aren't even clouds. Oh, okay, here's a good answer. Yes. Um so this cloud specifically is very like, it's almost like a slinky. Like it's elongated and it's kind of wispy like this.

Carlos 49:44

It's elongated and wispy.

Claire 49:46

Alone in the world. There's not a lot of other clouds around her.

Carlos 49:49

Oh, wow. Okay.

Claire 49:50

Um I give you a tricky one.

Carlos 49:52

You're gonna describe. Is that what I'm trying to do? You're not gonna show me the picture.

Claire 49:56

I wouldn't know if you were right, but if it's okay, I'm gonna have to see this.

Carlos 50:01

Okay, I'll show you. Elongated and wispy. Oh, that's you know, there's actually a term for this. Okay. So there's a lot of people who who um, you know, when I was talking a little bit about how important some of these cloud features are, like the ones that are like kind of reflecting back the sun and stuff like that. Uh, there's like uh some research of people who try to like classify them with AI and uh identify them with like sat from satellite pictures. It's like image recognition with AI. Um and those are actually called fish fishbones.

Claire 50:30

Fishbone. Fishbone like a fishbone cactus.

Carlos 50:33

Yeah, and they do look at that. Actually, it might be a a cam uh uh contrail.

Claire 50:40

The contrail.

Carlos 50:41

Yeah, so contrails are really like I'm gonna talk about contrails, like they're fun clouds, but they are fun clouds because they'll like make these like you know very uniform streaks, and it's water that's condensed, but then because it's way high up, it'll freeze or glaciate, as we say in the biz, and then the wind will drag it into these fish bone structures. And they're really, really pretty.

Claire 51:00

Like kind of like watercolor, like smearing it.

Carlos 51:03

That's it's it's almost like you're taking uh a Bob Ross S butt brush and you're just streaking them down with white paint along your your sky.

Claire 51:11

That happy little cloud is now streaked. I love it. That's awesome.

Carlos 51:15

I'm gonna show you my favorite kind of cloud. This is called for everybody, it's called an asparatus.

Claire 51:21

Sounds like asparagus.

Carlos 51:22

Which is exactly how I remember the name. Asparitus. It sounds like asparagus, but it's asparatus. So um asparitus clouds are caused by like flat layers of clouds. Okay. And so as these clouds are moving over uh a layer of probably like colder, drier air, uh, they won't mix, right? They're like very distinct layers of of air, but at the interface between the two, you'll you'll get like friction will start to happen, right? The exact same thing as what happens when you blow over the surface of like a bucket of water, ripples will form. And as it starts to, at that interface starts to mix, um, evaporation will happen of this cloud, and that evaporation heats the air and will cause pressure differentials, like we talked about, and that'll drag down some bits of the cloud, and it'll give like this wavy kind of pattern that'll start to happen throughout the layer. And the more intense the difference between the warm air and the cold air, the more intense these wavelets can be. They can be so beautiful, especially on like with um low like lighting, it'll make these like really deep, beautiful grays and whites, and all these like you can really see like the structure of the cloud when you start to get the good lighting. They're awesome. Asparatus clouds. Um, my favorite because they were actually classified not too long ago. I think it was like less than 10 years ago. They were like, we need a new cloud type. I'm gonna call it an asparatus.

Claire 52:44

I love that. I love and I love that you called them wavelets too. Like the the wave. That's like the odd, it's like olita, like the little cute Las Olitas.

Carlos 52:52

That's exactly what it's like.

Claire 52:53

Las Olitas. How cute.

Carlos 52:55

So often nowadays, paying attention to the weather is only happens when we're like distressed.

Claire 53:02

Right.

Carlos 53:02

Or like concerned for our well-being, or we have something to say about climate change, right? Like, oh, it's too hot probably because climate change. And like the number of times that I'm like, I have no idea if that's true. Like, like, have I checked the average? Do I know if this is unusual? Does it get this hot usually in Victoria? Like, I think it's worth studying these things. I think it's worth knowing. Not because like I think that we need more rigor about proving that climate change is real or anything, but like just making so that the only time that we think about the weather isn't when we're worried about our future and worried about the climate climate change, you know, worried about the crisis.

Claire 53:35

Yeah, being more mind I like what you said about just like inviting more mindfulness into it and not just like replicating what we do see on the on the internet and on social media, which is true, you know, it is like there is ca there's plenty of cause for concern, but to just like really not let it just be something that you experience. It was like with birds, like there's a nut hatch right now that's calling behind me. I love I love the nut hatches, they're so wonderful. Um, and just recognizing things for what they are versus just like accepting them as part of our everyday narrative. Yeah. Yeah, I think clouds and birds really there's a similarity there.

Carlos 54:10

I did not know I I'm so bad with the birds, but I do have a soft spot for the hummingbirds. Yes. And I'm sure you know why because I was just like riddled with them.

Claire 54:19

Absolutely. Coli colibri.

Carlos 54:21

Los colibris.

Claire 54:22

Los colibris.

Carlos 54:23

Ah, which are my favorite. Just jumping off that I guess you said we were wrapping up, but um now I'm like thinking about the the philosophy then of like mindfulness with weather and stuff like that. I think I made this point at the talk I gave on on weather, which is that we um the um I don't know, like nowadays, like so much of like the weather we talk about is catastrophized as like disasters and stuff like that. It's like the weather we mostly pay attention to. But um atmospheric rivers, as we've called now nowadays call them, and heat waves aren't new. They're not really a a new part of this living environment that we're in, you know? Um First Nations have their own ways of describing them, relied on them for seasonal for seasonal rain for like millennia. And it's just only now that we pay attention to them only in regards to like is this an indicator of our impending doom? Yeah, as opposed to just part of the place we're living in. They're definitely changing. It's definitely getting hotter. We there are things to be concerned about. But I don't know. As far as like should we always be focused on in this kind of like doom perspective? I don't know.

Claire 55:36

Well, I don't I don't think it's that helpful. I don't think it's more productive.

Carlos 55:40

Because you know, uh you don't want to feed like uh a kind of like doomsday, no hope kind of mentality, as it is.

Claire 55:48

Because then you take no action.

Carlos 55:49

You take no action.

Claire 55:50

It's don't look up. I think of it. Yes, exactly.

Carlos 55:53

You know, when I first came to Victoria, I I got myself really involved in the environmental restoration club. And I found it as like an incredibly important way of getting to know this the city f by by from a living environment perspective and knowing what is invasive and what is like a healthy environment, all these kind of things. I think of it exactly the same with with the weather, right? Like if you look at everything and you have no um reference point of like what is a healthy environment and what isn't with the weather, then just everything is hostile or everything is doomed rather than like what is normal and what isn't. Right? There's a there's a way you can discern these things, and I think it's worth knowing. But the same way that I I want to know when I'm looking at a forest that's completely covered in ivy, and knowing that that's a problem, problem that we can do something about, as opposed to um me. Which okay, there's some blackberry over there, but other than that, it's pretty lovely.

Claire 56:47

No ivy. No ivy at least that I see.

Carlos 56:50

This is all invasive grasses, but we're gonna ignore that. Yeah, yes.

Claire 56:52

That's why we're fiddling. That's why we put our director's chairs on.

Carlos 56:58

Yes, in spite.

Claire 57:00

I think I heard a hummingbird very close for you. Um in spite, yes, in spite. Yeah, and ecological restoration is such an easy way. Like climate, it's really hard to take everyday action to like be like, I fixed this, or I've done better today, other than like being mindful of energy consumption. But when it comes to ecological restoration, it's like hands on, it's something that you can be like, oh, like I left this place a little bit better. And you can do that in climate too. It's just like a bigger scale, I believe. Whoa. Sorry, big vulture. CM landing like flying over there. Well, Carlos. Yes, I think that that was lovely chat. I think we could chat more. I would love to chat more. Um, however, we do have uh one more podcast we have to get to today. Oh, we do another one today. We're doing another one today, but it was a joy having you. I'm so glad you agreed to coming on our cute little podcast. Our podcast. Well, we talked a long time, so it's not that little, but but it was um it was a joy. And I think that everyone should have a climate friend and a cloud friend. And is there anything else you wanted to say?

Carlos 58:06

Or it's like a sign-off, I guess. Yeah.

Claire 58:09

Handshake.

Carlos 58:11

What?

Claire 58:11

Okay, what did you say? A cloud handshake.

Carlos 58:13

A cloud handshake. What would that even look like? That's my maybe I'll maybe I'll take this opportunity to um promote the Contra dances that I can do.

Claire 58:27

Absolutely.

Carlos 58:27

Yeah, how can we the the in the Victoria? I also help organize really fun social dances called Contra dances that are super fun and they happen. You can just look them up, Victoria Contra Dance. How about that?

Claire 58:41

I certainly will.

Carlos 58:42

Just haven't talked about that at all, but I figure I'd bring that up anyway.

Claire 58:45

Yeah. Is this on social media or is it? Yeah, yeah, it's a website. Okay.

Carlos 58:49

Yeah, Victoria Contra Dances. Is there any other You don't have to include this by the way? That's totally fine. No, I will.

Claire 58:54

I will. Is there any other way we can like you? I guess you work mostly for federal government, so I'm not sure if your work is like ever outward facing. Is there any other way to keep up with keep up keep up with uh your cloud research or climate modeling? Or do you like do you have any publications that gosh you could point to?

Carlos 59:12

You know what? Honestly, there's nothing yet. Um I'm going to publish some work, but it's all gonna be super dry, um, technical climate modeling stuff that we haven't even talked about really, and I think that's not really worth anyone who like I didn't talk about it because it's not that interesting at the end of the day, it's very technocratic. Um I have an Instagram where I post uh occasional cloud pictures. I like that. Uh uh I'm Cloudlose Sevilla on Instagram, which is just exactly how how public-facing I'm gonna be about this is I I've not really done much without that, but I love talking about it.

Claire 59:46

So I would follow you like so like I like everything you've talked about today, like I think people need such like I need I think people should be showing their clouds, if you know what I mean.

Carlos 59:59

I would like that just to be a trend. I don't want to be like a cloud influencer, but I would love for people just to like have that intention in their hearts. We'll put it that way.

Claire 1:00:06

I'll start showing mine. I'll start showing mine. Amazing. All right, I think that's it.

Carlos 1:00:12

Yay!

Claire 1:00:12

Yay, okay. Logging off.

Carlos 1:00:15

I hope that wasn't too much.

Claire 1:00:16

Special thanks to our camera operator, Brittany McCubbin. This podcast was produced with support from Tell us Story Hive. Shout out to the Starfish Canada for helping bring this vision to life. I'm your host, Claire Marshall, and this is Seeds of Hope. We'll see you next time.