full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sue Natali: How ancient Arctic carbon threatens everyone on the planet

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So whenever I tell poelpe I’m an Arctic scientist, the first thing that they always ask me is: How cold is it up there?

(Laughter)

And yeah, the Arctic can get pretty cold. Trust me when I tell you that working outside at -40 degrees is really, really clnnegailhg. But in the smumer of 2019, it was anything but cold.

So that summer I was working with my research team in Alaska’s Yukon Kuskokwim Delta on the traditional lands of the Yup’ik and Cup’ik people. And we were up there hauling hnrddues of ponuds of equipment across the tnrdua in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave. It was 90 dgreees Fahrenheit. There was no breeze, nowhere to go for a shade and sienlgemy endless miles of tundra as far as my eyes could see. To make matters wsore, the land had drastically changed since we had been here just one year before. The ground was sinking and it was cracking. In places, it was literally collapsing baeneth my feet. I’ve been working in the Arctic for more than a decade, and I had never seen changes happening this rapidly ever before. The changes we saw were remarkable, and they were also really concerning. But we were there to measure changes that we couldn’t see. We were there to fill a major gap in our unnrnadtdiesg of how the changing Arctic is impacting the Earth’s climate.

Open Cloze


So whenever I tell ______ I’m an Arctic scientist, the first thing that they always ask me is: How cold is it up there?

(Laughter)

And yeah, the Arctic can get pretty cold. Trust me when I tell you that working outside at -40 degrees is really, really ___________. But in the ______ of 2019, it was anything but cold.

So that summer I was working with my research team in Alaska’s Yukon Kuskokwim Delta on the traditional lands of the Yup’ik and Cup’ik people. And we were up there hauling ________ of ______ of equipment across the ______ in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave. It was 90 _______ Fahrenheit. There was no breeze, nowhere to go for a shade and _________ endless miles of tundra as far as my eyes could see. To make matters _____, the land had drastically changed since we had been here just one year before. The ground was sinking and it was cracking. In places, it was literally collapsing _______ my feet. I’ve been working in the Arctic for more than a decade, and I had never seen changes happening this rapidly ever before. The changes we saw were remarkable, and they were also really concerning. But we were there to measure changes that we couldn’t see. We were there to fill a major gap in our _____________ of how the changing Arctic is impacting the Earth’s climate.

Solution


  1. challenging
  2. people
  3. beneath
  4. degrees
  5. worse
  6. tundra
  7. understanding
  8. pounds
  9. seemingly
  10. summer
  11. hundreds

Original Text


So whenever I tell people I’m an Arctic scientist, the first thing that they always ask me is: How cold is it up there?

(Laughter)

And yeah, the Arctic can get pretty cold. Trust me when I tell you that working outside at -40 degrees is really, really challenging. But in the summer of 2019, it was anything but cold.

So that summer I was working with my research team in Alaska’s Yukon Kuskokwim Delta on the traditional lands of the Yup’ik and Cup’ik people. And we were up there hauling hundreds of pounds of equipment across the tundra in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave. It was 90 degrees Fahrenheit. There was no breeze, nowhere to go for a shade and seemingly endless miles of tundra as far as my eyes could see. To make matters worse, the land had drastically changed since we had been here just one year before. The ground was sinking and it was cracking. In places, it was literally collapsing beneath my feet. I’ve been working in the Arctic for more than a decade, and I had never seen changes happening this rapidly ever before. The changes we saw were remarkable, and they were also really concerning. But we were there to measure changes that we couldn’t see. We were there to fill a major gap in our understanding of how the changing Arctic is impacting the Earth’s climate.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
arctic residents 4
greenhouse gas 3
gas emissions 3
global climate 3
climate policy 3
changing arctic 2
carbon dioxide 2
called permafrost 2
thawing permafrost 2
permafrost thaw 2
setting global 2
global emissions 2
climate change 2
permafrost emissions 2
human rights 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
greenhouse gas emissions 3
setting global emissions 2
global climate policy 2

Important Words


  1. arctic
  2. beneath
  3. breeze
  4. challenging
  5. changed
  6. changing
  7. climate
  8. cold
  9. collapsing
  10. cracking
  11. decade
  12. degrees
  13. delta
  14. drastically
  15. endless
  16. equipment
  17. eyes
  18. fahrenheit
  19. feet
  20. fill
  21. gap
  22. ground
  23. happening
  24. hauling
  25. heatwave
  26. hundreds
  27. impacting
  28. kuskokwim
  29. land
  30. lands
  31. laughter
  32. literally
  33. major
  34. matters
  35. measure
  36. middle
  37. miles
  38. people
  39. places
  40. pounds
  41. pretty
  42. rapidly
  43. remarkable
  44. research
  45. scientist
  46. seemingly
  47. shade
  48. sinking
  49. summer
  50. team
  51. traditional
  52. trust
  53. tundra
  54. understanding
  55. working
  56. worse
  57. yeah
  58. year
  59. yukon