TheSnowpit.com News Blog

Return from India, Denial that Spring has Sprung

• National Snow and Ice Data Center Discovers Sensor Drift Error in Ice Estimation (Ooops)
• Microbes under Antarctic glacier discovered
• International Polar Year spawns snowflake tracking project
• Reindeer herders obtain high-tech snow tracking abilities

Well, I return from the heat of India only to discover winter is over and spring in Canada has begun. Wah! My first Canadian winter was great, I hope for many more.

But, to remain in denial, let's talk about some ice. First of all, our friend Slashdot reports that the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who are essentially at the forefront of depicting the effects of global warming on ice recession, have discovered an error due to sensor drift in their calculations.

Essentially, by using older SSM/I data to track sea ice, the researchers overestimated the direness of the sea ice melting situation. And, they had people calling them asking why they were showing open ocean at areas in which the newer AMSR-E data showed healthy sea ice. By using the older data, NSIDC can track ice over longer periods, but by doing so they missed that 2009 sea ice extent is actually bigger than 2005-2008.

Go figure.

Speaking of actually receding ice, reindeer herders are having a tough time finding adequate climate for their charges. Help has come, however, in the form of an organization called Polar View, supported from groups like the European Commission and the European and Canadian Space Agencies. Polar View, quite simply, provides useful maps and other information to reindeer herders to help predict where the snow line will be.

The International Polar Year (yes, that just ended in March, for all of you who've been in the closet) has not only inspired projects -- like the reindeer herding maps -- for tracking snow on a global scale, but also for tracking snow on a micro scale...

...For that, NASA has started a program called HOW (the History of Winter) which, among other educational things, contains the Global Snowflake Network. You too can discover cool snowflakes out there, record them, and sent them in to be immortalized for a NASA-scale eternity.

And finally, microbes have been discovered in the water flowing out from the base of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica. We've already been over why ice is important to life, particularly for exposed harsh areas like Mars and the Poles.

This discovery of microbes under a glacier is cool for two reasons. First, it is a pretty primitive environment, and can give clues about how life thrived before good oxygen supplies existed, much less highways and Coca-Cola. Second, as researcher Jill Mikucki says about glaciers:

“People said there wasn’t life,” she said. “The paradigm has shifted. People now see glaciers as ecosystems.”

And that's it, folks, the beginning-of-not-spring news roundup. Get it while it's cold.

Snowstorm on Mars
NASA's Rubber Duckies take a ride through a glacier
Juneau considers avalanche warning system for residents
New research refutes CO2 release from permafrost

Well, it's that month...October...yes, October, when the early ski season pass purchase time has come and gone, the leaves are turning colors, and everyone is basically just waiting for it to snow. Well, you can take solace in the fact that winter is coming to Mars: snow is circling the sky and the temperatures are well on their way to -200 degrees! Yikes!

Not that our planet is quite as warm as we think. Many have worried that one of the major 'tipping points' in our global warming cycle will be when the permafrost melts and releases huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Well, scientists up here in Canada have found 700,000 year-old permafrost that has lived through many such ice-age-and-subsequent-warming cycles, so it seems as if we don't actually have to worry about that as much after all.

But we are a worrying creature, we humans, and sometimes with good reason. Some Juneau residents have long been living in fear of avalanche: many of them living in houses established in avalanche paths. The city goes back and forth between funding a warning system for the residents, and this year it's back on the table. However, the article has an interesting point that despite the warning system, residents still have to take matters into their own hands and actually leave their houses which, from the article, seems a focal point of mixed emotions.

And finally, in perhaps this year's greatest mix of 'cute' and 'cool', NASA has released 90 rubber duckies and one technical floating probe into a meltwater moulin in a Greenland glacier. Moulins are holes which give access to the often massive amounts of meltwater which flows through and inside of a glacier. Glacier flow rates are not well understood in general, and meltwater channels even less so. The duckies have return contact information written on them in three languages, and the technical probe measures GPS location, pressure, acceleration, and other information.

Global warming on Mars
Two avalanche fatalities at end of Canadian season
Avalanche burial simulation 'Robocoaster' at Les 2 Alpes

Welcome to the first of (hopefully) many Recent Snow News Roundups from Calgary, Alberta, Canada! It is a pleasure to finally be here. And although waking up to 7 degree (Celsius) temperatures in early September might not give creedence to any sort of warming, global warming has had a few new interesting notes about it lately, so I'll start with it. Science Daily is talking about polar bears being found 60 miles offshore as their homes melt, and the Telegraph in London ran a story about satellite photos from mid-August showing, for the first time in human history, that the Arctic ice cap has become an island and the Northwest passage a reality. Yikes!

But, at the same time as things are changing on Earth, things are also changing on Mars. We know from Russian research a while ago (2005) that global warming is also occurring on Mars - at least by indication of its solid carbon dioxide 'ice' caps receding. And a more recent study from Science Daily hints that the major glacial valleys on Mars are undergoing some of the same changes as those in our very own Antarctica. Mars...eh? I guess it's because of all those cars they drive there...

Remember, the ice was much thicker on this planet about 15,000 years ago, but as to the ebb and flow of the last major ice age, well, we might not have even finished the last one. Which means before it gets colder again, it probably will continue to get warmer still. But despite that, when I read headlines like Glaciers in the Pyrenees will Disappear in 50 Years, the snow lover in me cries a little. But as long as some glaciers keep growing (as do Shasta's glaciers) and doing crazy things like nearly damming up enormous rivers like the Alsek in Canada, then there will be plenty of interesting snow things to talk about.

Unfortunately as much as I'd like to just report on global warming and other natural occurrences, an avalanche on Mount Athabasca region killed two German climbers in the last weekend of August. The avalanche ran to the ground (up to 80cm) and buried the climbers 1.5-2m deep. The timing puts the incident in the 2007-2008 season (bringing the Canadian total up to 18 for the year) since the 'avalanche season' loops over September 1.

But in preparation for the upcoming season, wild and wacky training ideas are already coming out of the woodwork. Les 2 Alpes has announced an avalanche simulator known as the Robocoaster will be available to guests this coming season. Essentially, it seems to involve being in a dark snow cave alone for 20 seconds with "the sounds of a dog scratching". The resort calls it "both fun and educational" so I'm curious to hear what folks think of the experience this winter.