I often find that telling a story visually is more effective than the written word. These examples show how visuals build understanding and allow a communicator to tell a story from different angles.

The fastest glacier retreat in modern history

In late 2022 and early 2023, Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier experienced the fastest retreat recorded in modern history: the glacier lost nearly half of its ice in just two months. CIRES publicized this work with a press release; I created this animation to illustrate how the glacier retreated. I felt a visual aid would boost readers’ understanding of the story because the written explanation involved introducing technical terms related to ice shelves that most readers would be unfamiliar with. Showing what structures like an ice tongue and an ice plain look like helped readers grasp what these terms mean.

The narwhal soundscape

With the help of Inuit hunters, geophysicists recorded the various calls, buzzes, clicks and whistles of narwhals as they summered in a Greenland fjord in 2019. The recordings provided scientists with valuable insights into the behavior of these shy, mysterious creatures.

I highlighted this research with a press release but also created an animation to illustrate how narwhal sounds match the animal’s behavior, showing views how vocalizations change depending on what the animal is doing.

Illustrating the unseen

A 2025 study analyzed groundwater levels from the Last Glacial Termination, a period of warming, ice sheet loss, and major environmental change that occurred between 20,000 and 11,000 years ago. The work suggests aquifers in the U.S. Southwest, which are crucial sources of freshwater for millions of people, may be more sensitive to shifts in climate than previously thought.

I designed this infographic to explain how groundwater levels changed after the Last Glacial Termination, giving readers a visual understanding of what the water table is and how Earth’s underground water system changed in eons past.