The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies serves the mountain science community and regional resource managers by hosting & conducting interdisciplinary research and conducting integrative 24/7/365 monitoring that captures weather, snowpack, radiation, soils, plant community and hydrologic signals of regional climate trends.
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Leading scientists from China, Japan and throughout the United States will be in Silverton June 20th – 24th to discuss the latest research on the effects of dust and soot in snow and ice. The Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies is hosting this ‘first of its kind’ Impurities in Snow and Ice Workshop at Silverton’s Town Hall with support from the National Science Foundation.
Recent research has revealed that black carbon soot deposited in Arctic has had significant impacts on the observed global warming signal. In addition to global industrial emissions of soot, widespread land use change in the world’s desert regions has resulted in increases in dust emission that in turn is forcing mid-latitude mountain snow cover to melt as much as one month earlier. The Silverton workshop will address the urgent need for improved monitoring, modeling, and reconstructions of the climatic and hydrologic effects of dust and soot in snow and ice cover worldwide.
The 18 participating scientists, led by Dr. Thomas Painter of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will present research to their colleagues from the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalaya, Greenland and other parts of the Arctic, the Sierra-Nevada, as well as from the Colorado Rockies. They plan to establish an international ‘ISI’ working group leading to common monitoring protocols and an integrated approach to understanding the effects of soot and dust impurities in mountain and polar cryospheric systems.
Silverton’s Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, in collaboration with Dr. Painter, has taken a leading role in understanding the effects of dust on snow melt processes. As a direct outcome of CSAS dust-on-snow research, water managers have gained new insights into the snowmelt process and are already applying those findings using real-time monitoring by CSAS throughout the Colorado mountains.
The Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies is an independent not-for-profit organization whose mission is to enhance the interdisciplinary investigation of the snow system's behavior and role in human/environment relationships by offering resources - people, information, and facilities - for field-based research and education.
For additional information and photographs, please contact:
Chris Landry, Executive Director, Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies
Center: 1428 Greene Street, Suite 103, Silverton, CO 81433 Mail: P.O. Box 190, Silverton, CO 81433
Telephone: (970) 387-5080 Fax: (970) 387-5082
Email: clandry@snowstudies.org Web: www.snowstudies.org