TheSnowpit.com News Blog

In this issue:

• Windmill-based remote weather stations track snowmelt
• Ancient ecosystem creates red ice in Antarctica
• Bead avalanche size can be predicted from system disorder

We'll start out with a new type of weather station in Maine: an off-the-grid windmill and a bucket. No, really. These snowmelt measuring weather stations can go far off the grid because they are both solar and wind powered -- getting a distinct winter-time advantage from the fact that when the sun is hiding, the wind may be accompanying the clouds.

Then, it's one thing to find a self-contained ecosystem behind glass and sponsored by the government, but yet another to find it naturally and blatantly spilling out in red glory from an antarctic ice shelf. The microbes involved in the odd color of the ice floe live in very cold salty water and munch on iron and sulfur -- much like conditions would be for living on the moon Europa.

Finally, remember the theory link between snow avalanches and self-organized criticality (i.e. sandpile avalanches?) Well, a new bit of research shows that the size of bead avalanches can be predicted by the disorder in the system (pile) prior to the avalanche occurring. Their measure of disorder was the 'space factor', or space between the 4 mm steel beads, and piles included up to 55,000 beads at a time.

Beads, windmills, and red ice. Whatever will July bring?

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.

As a break from avalanche accidents, I hope you enjoy these two interesting uses of snow and ice in science.

First, Science Daily has a piece on how Inuit trails document not only their travels, but their social networks, their adventures in conjunction with the weather conditions, and some of their cultural identity. From the article:

Using a combination of historical documents, ethnographic research, geographic tools including GPS, GIS and Google Earth, as well as a recent journey following Inuit along a traditional trail, Dr. Aporta shows the geographic extent of the Inuit’s sophisticated network of routes....

The article continues, saying that the routes are not documented on any map, but rather are shared through stories and other oral methods which also include the actual experience of traveling.

Next, Slashdot gave a short intro to a telescope under construction called Ice Cube. Built to detect neutrinos rather than light, the telescope involves digital detectors buried more than a mile under Antarctic ice.

The time for the ice over it to freeze, bubble free, is about seven weeks. When finished, the telescope itself will occupy more than a cubic kilometer of ice in the South Pole. ZDnet has more, including a diagram with a (tiny) Eiffel tower for scale.