Liz Morris on Antarctic adventures and the melting polar ice sheets

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A frozen, white world at the far-reaches of the globe, where you're surrounded by snow and silence, might sound rather appealing. Factor in temperatures that drop to -57°C and a few of us might be put off - but for glaciologist Liz Morris, that's very much her happy place.

Liz is an Emeritus Associate at the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute, and was among the first British women scientists to work on the planet’s coldest continent, Antarctica. Over the course of her career, Liz has gathered vital data on polar ice sheets and how they’re affected by climate change. She's also made numerous research trips across the Greenland Ice Shelf, and has a glacier named after her in Antarctica.

In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Liz discusses her fascination with glaciers and ice - and explains her unwavering determination to break into what was once a heavily male-dominated field.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced for BBC Studios by Lucy Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why do some big successful brands go bust?
0:05.0	Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.
0:11.0	I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.
0:15.0	They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.
0:19.0	And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?
0:25.4	It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.
0:30.3	Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.9	You're about to listen to the latest series of The Life Scientific.
0:37.7	Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.
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0:48.2	First on BBC Sounds.
0:54.8	Imagine a frozen white world at the far region. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:59.1	Imagine a frozen white world at the far reaches of the globe,
1:04.7	temperatures plummeting down to a bone-numbing minus 57 degrees Celsius.
1:10.9	All around you, nothing but snow, ice, silence, and the occasional snowmobile.
1:16.4	That's the happy place of today's guest, a glaciologist who was among the first British women scientists to work on the planet's coldest continent, Antarctica.
1:21.3	Liz Morris is an emeritus associate at the University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute,
1:27.0	where her work focuses on polar
1:28.8	ice sheets and how they're affected by climate change. Liz has crossed the Greenland ice sheet.
1:35.2	She's had a glacier named after her in Antarctica, and she was once attacked by a penguin in South
1:40.8	Orkney. Argumentative flightless birds aside, Liz's fascination with the physics of ice and her
1:47.4	determination to break into a male-dominated world have made her trailblazer in glaciology.
	...

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