Digging a little deeper: Bradley Gay, Ph.D., discusses his permafrost research at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
Bradley Gay, Ph.D., describes both his career and life paths as a “long-winding, topsy-turvy journey,” but the long road he took to get to the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was clearly worth it. Gay is a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he studies permafrost carbon feedback in Arctic tundra. In this episode of the Further Together: The ORAU Podcast, Gay talks about his research, why it is important, his career trajectory and more. He also highly recommends the NASA NPP program as a place for up-and-coming scientists to find their place.
Center: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Bradley Gay, Ph.D., describes both his career and life paths as a “long-winding, topsy-turvy journey,” but the long road he took to get to the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (NASA NPP) was clearly worth it.
Gay is a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he studies permafrost carbon feedback in Arctic tundra.
“For the past 30 years, we've been undergoing this climate crisis, especially up in the Arctic,” Gay explained in a recent interview for Further Together, the ORAU Podcast. “There's a phenomenon called the permafrost carbon feedback, and essentially, what we wanted to do was to identify the problem, which is this kind of persistence of this carbon storage within permafrost being thawed out and released—liberated into the soil. The microbes essentially ingest the carbon, and then release methane into the atmosphere. So that’s what I gravitated towards for research, but also, I wanted to dig a little deeper.”
Gay’s research focuses on generating circumarctic zero-curtain maps. The zero-curtain is a physical boundary underground which prevents permafrost from cooling.
“It’s a lens, so to speak, belowground,” said Gay. “It's a period of time, too. It's a phenomenon. It's an effect. It's this kind of dynamic between this freeze-thaw. It's actually a period of time when the temperature of the active layer of the soil, which is above the permafrost table, remains near zero degrees due to the release of latent heat from freezing water. And that progresses through the season. Pretty universally, usually it would freeze up around September. And now, we are seeing it actually gravitating more towards the cold season, which is actually allowing more and more carbon to be released into the cold season. Which is, essentially, extending the growing season, and amplifying that warming effect.”
Gay was always a curious child—he said that as soon as he got home from school, he used to go to the creek behind his childhood home and study the ecosystem.
“I was enthralled by how everything worked together in unison to create this microhabitat that I became fascinated with,” he said. “Although my research tendencies have shifted to the Arctic.”
Gay found himself at NASA after being invited to help conduct research on the permafrost modeling team while he was working on his doctoral program. During the three years he was on the team, he was able to integrate the research into his dissertation.
“It's in my blood at this point, working at NASA,” he said. “I can't imagine not working at NASA. It just seemed appropriate for me to gravitate towards, not only the NPP program, but utilizing my skill sets that I had learned essentially from NASA and working with NASA colleagues. Again, utilizing my skill sets, and furthering their missions.”
Gay finds that one of the most crucial elements of conducting research at NASA is the collaborative environment. Not only is he able to network with the members of his team, but he also presents his research at conferences and is mentored by NASA researchers.
“It's just been a wonderful experience, and I'm very grateful to be given the opportunity to do this,” he said. “I can't think of another program that has that amount of flexibility, but also, has the X factor, in terms of, sure, it's great on a resume, but again, there's a reason why it's great on a resume. And it speaks to the toolkits, and the people that run it. And also, the opportunity.”