Liz's Lab Notebook

Snow is one of nature’s best reflectors.  A fresh snowpack reflects up to 90% of the sun’s energy and help keep surface climate cool.  But what happens when that clean white surface is sprinkled with fine dust particles?  Thing start to heat up.

The small dust particles deposited from dust storms, like the most recent one in Colorado, will absorb the sun’s energy and convert it to heat.  The heat generated by the dust particles melts the snow and a thick, heavy snowpack is very rapidly reduced to melt water.

Scientists at the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies and Colorado Dust On Snow Group isolate and sample snow containing dust from an event April 8th and 9th, 2013.

The recent snow events in Colorado have been a blessing for water resource management, bringing the statewide snow water equivalent to 90% of normal.  The snow will no doubt serve to relieve drought stress and keep forest fires at bay.  The issue is that the dust in the snow, once exposed to the sun, will speed up melting of a snowpack that otherwise might persist for months.

Colorado snow water equivalent comparing 2013 (dark blue) to 2012 (light blue), 2011 (yellow), and the long term median (thick red) and average (thin red). As of late March, snow water equivalent in Colorado had rivaled the extremely low snowfall year of 2012.

Fortunately, in New Hampshire we don’t have to worry too much about dust storm events coating our snow packs.  We do, however, worry about the effects of pollution on our snow.  New England is considered the ‘tail pipe’ of the United States because major storm tracks bring pollution into the region from the mid-West, Pennsylvania, and the Washington DC/New York corridor.  What exactly ends up in our snow packs?  We’re not really sure, but UNH Master’s student Jacki Amante collected many snow samples this past winter.  We’re hoping to find out what impact impurities like black carbon, sulfates, and nitrates have on snow albedo in New Hampshire.

A blog post by Ph.D. candidate and best selling author, Maria Konnikova at Scientific American.

Though there may be snow in the forecast for Wednesday night into Thursday, it’s time to start thinking Spring.  I noticed this weekend that the crocuses (croci?  crocii?) in my front yard are now in bloom and it brought to mind one of my favorite citizens science projects- Project BudBurst!

www.a-gc.com

Project BudBurst is really simple.

1. Register
2. Sign up for Regular Reports (i.e., report every year on the same plant in your yard or field site) or for Single Report (i.e., report on one plant one time).
3. Have fun!

It’s really that easy.  The reports made nationwide become part of an invaluable database for studying phenology (the timing of specific biological events) and climate change.

Henry David Thoreau was not only a famous author and poet but also a diligent phenologist who provided scientists with one of the most complete phenological records in Massachusetts.  You can read the 2008 Ecology publication by Miller-Rushing and Primack, which begins the introduction with the following Thoreau quote:

It is astonishing how soon and unexpectedly flowers appear, when the fields are scarcely tinged with green. Yesterday, for instance, you observed only the radical leaves of some plants; to-day you pluck a flower.

—Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau 1962)

The authors found that plants that are very responsive to changes in temperature are blooming earlier today than during Thoreau’s time, and the plants that did not respond rapidly to changes in climate have decreased in abundance.

Front Cover from Michael E. Mann’s latest book: The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines
(Columbia University Press, 2012).
Available at UNH Dimond Library Level 5, QC903 .M36 2012.

Death threats, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, personal attacks, lawsuits, and accusations of misconduct… it’s all in a day’s work for climate scientists like Michael E. Mann.  While I have not yet read Mann’s latest book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, it is available at the UNH Dimond Library and I look forward to reading it in the near future.

The ClimateGate scandal of 2009 launched Dr. Michael E. Mann into the public spotlight when he was accused of manipulating data in his 1999 publication with Dr. Raymond S. Bradley (UMASS-Amherst) and Dr. Malcolm Hughes (U. Arizona).  What could possibly be so insidious about a graph that it leads to death threats?  Here is the graph, below:

The version of the ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph that appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report (2001).

At first glance, the graph appears quite benign.  Simply put, it’s just a time series of temperature data from 1000 AD to 2000 AD.  The controversy arose because the data suggest that humans (and more specifically the burning of fossil fuels) are the driving force behind recent temperature increases.  Please revisit my previous post on the PBS documentary “Climate of Doubt” to learn why certain groups adamantly oppose the idea of human-caused climate change.

Edit: I think our SciComm class could learn a thing or two from Dr. Mann.  He already tweeted about my blog entry less than 24 hrs after I posted it.  The man is on top of his social media, very impressive!   Thanks for visiting my blog, Michael!

Tomorrow our research team will be flying our second of two hyperspectral imaging flights in New Hampshire.  What is hyperspectral imaging?  Allow me to start with an analogy:

Our research group uses varying levels of albedo measurement technology. With each level of technology, we improve the spectral and spatial resolution of albedo. We will compare the different resolutions and assess how albedo changes with land cover and snow cover.

The Apogee MP-200 is used by the CoCoRaHS Albedo volunteer network and provides the fastest and simplest way to measure albedo.  We have over twenty volunteers using the Apogee MP-200 in the Community Collaborative Rain, Albedo, Hail, and Snow Network measuring albedo across the state of New Hampshire.  The Apogee MP-200 averages albedo over the range 380-1120 nm, which includes visible and near-infrared light.

I use two Kipp and Zonen CMA6 instruments set up in Durham to collect albedo over a pasture (as in the photo) and over a forest canopy. Like the Apogee MP-200, the CMA6 averages albedo but over a wider range (285-2800 nm) to include more UV and longer infrared wavelengths.

The ASD FieldSpec4 is a portable spectrometer that I use to collect spectral albedo over the pasture and canopy. Instead of averaging albedo like the Apogee MP-200 and Kipp and Zonen CMA6, the ASD FieldSpec4 provides albedo data at each individual wavelength (aka: spectral albedo) over the range 350-2500 nm.

This winter Spectir is helping us collect airborne hyperspectral albedo over several field sites in New Hampshire, including Thompson Farm in Durham, NH.

As a follow-up to Dave Howland’s visit yesterday, I highly recommend watching the PBS Frontline documentary Climate of Doubt.