POW!

Hello guys,

As promised in my last post: more on winters and how they're most likely getting shorter in the areas used for snowsports tourism. Also promised: an entirely different take on the topic this time.

Today I'm going to focus on the communication of climate and environmental change to people who often feel they are not personally affected by it. As far as direct effects go, shorter winters do have direct implications on a number of people. A shorter winter season is going to affect flora and fauna due to ecosystem change, tourists and especially the population of villages which heavily rely on winter tourism.

Only option: 'praying' for snow? (Source: shredstuff)

From experience I know that the winter sports community is a relatively tight knit one. Having a shared passion for an exhilarating sport unites people, and when you're on the same mountains for a couple of weeks per year at least, you'll always see familiar faces.

Oh so cheesy, but oh so true.

To get to my point: this bond is what POW uses to mobilise an entire community to become aware of climate change. POW stands for Protect Our Winters, an organisation that was set up in 2007, by pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones. Professional riders, such as Gretchen Bleiler and Nicolas Müller, get educated and then re-educate people at schools and universities. Because the faces of the snow sports industry are also the faces of this project, they can have a major impact on the usual 'I don't care because it doesn't affect me'-attitude. They've made climate change a topic that feels relevant to people of all kinds of background and education, because it is threatening something they all love: the snow and their sport.

"Our mission is to engage and mobilize the winter sports community to 

lead the fight against climate change."

As I've been following POW for a while and am a huge fan of this project, I have been in touch with the executive director on how a collaboration with UCL and the UCLU snowsports society might be a possibility. In the mean time, please have a look at their website and especially the POW SEVEN: the seven points to become involved and make a difference.

See you next time!

A 6 week winter season?

Hi there again, or better yet: Servus!

For now, a trip from the 66 degrees North of last week, to a more southern location: the Austrian Alps. Many of my friends in Austria have started to get very excited, because the first snow of the season has fallen and on the glaciers, the snowsports season has started. I cannot wait to get off the British dry slopes and on to the snow.

Let me introduce you to my paradise: I have the best work place in the world and

 I don't want to have to miss this.. so selfish, I know.

However, even though it's early for the first snow to have fallen and many think "Ah psshh.. global warming.. nonsense", there is a reason to be concerned. For skiing to be possible, a snow layer of 30 cm is the minimum, which is currently the case in the Austrian Alps for an average of 134 days a year. (Breiling, 2003) A typical, economically viable snow season is at least 100 days, but within the next 30 years, these seasons will be shortened by one month on average.

These averages however don't say much about the individual areas. The main factor in snow cover is still temperature, and thus altitude. Higher areas will be fine, while lower ones will have to close entirely because a 50 snow-day-season doesn't bring in the necessary money. (Elsasser, 2002) As Elsasser and Bürki explain in their article: this will cause a massive tourism shift to the Alpine glaciers, an already vulnerable environment.

So a question for you: is skiing/snowboarding also a luxury, that out of sustainability concerns, we should but still don't give up?

Next post: more on Alpine winters and the snowsports industry, from an entirely different angle.

''Dusty'' Glaciers

Hello again,

To continue the topic of last week, I am now presenting you with a case study that illustrates the influence of albedo change on melting.

First, I am pleased to introduce you to one of the most wonderful places on earth to find yourself for a day: the Langjökull Glacier in Iceland. Jökull in Icelandic means glacier and - on a different note - it is also the title of the national earth sciences journal, which is well worth reading.
Langjökull is the second largest glacier in the country and is located under the red dot on the map, or more specifically: 64°45′N 19°59′W.

Map of Iceland, red dot indicates Langjokull.

 Picture:http://www.hurstwic.org/photo/is2005/text/is052937.html

A picture I took on about 2/3rds from the glacier centre, in

July 2013. It is very clear that it is melting season.

WikiMiniAtlas

Second, the ones of you who wanted to fly between North America and Europe in April 2010 will remember very vividly: you could not. The eruption in Eyjafjallajökull caused large smoke plumes that obscured the sky for a while, but the lasting effect of this eruption is tephra fall. Tephra is the term for material produced in a volcanic eruption, regardless whether this material constitutes rocks or dust particles. In the context of glaciers, the most influential part of tephra is the dark grey dust, which is carried by wind and settles on the glacier's surface. It affects ablation, especially in the summer following an eruption, because it can reduce the glacier's albedo to values as low as 10%, or 0.1 (Bjornsson et al., 2008).

A picture I took from the massive car we drove

onto the glacier. I apologize for the awkward angle,

but this one shows best how gray the glacier

was.  July 2013



The mass balance of Langjokull is monitored at 23 locations on the glacier, since 1996. The specific mass balance for summer 2010 was -2.8 m/a. This is more than double the average negative mass balance that occured on the glacier in the warm years of 1996-2009, which was -1.3 m/a. (Gudmonsson et al., 2011) It is clear how serious the effects of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption are, also similar on the other major Icelandic glaciers.

Finally, my excursion onto Langjökull with a member of the glaciological society was fantastic, academically speaking, as well as painful. Actually being shown where the glacier ended a few summers ago and seeing where it ends now, was an interesting but mainly harsh confrontation with reality. The state of glaciers is precarious and we will not have them for much longer, at least not as the great ice masses they still are now.

Readings:

For anyone who is as interested in glaciers as I am (if so, please come talk to me!) or simply wants to know a bit more. The first paper I mention by Bjornsson et al. is a general overview of Icelandic glaciers. Very comprehensive, including meteorology, dynamics, geometry and a detailed future outlook.
The second mention links to a research abstract that discusses the 2010 volcanic eruption and the effect it has on the three major Icelandic glaciers. It gives some substantial numbers, and a more elaborate paper on the topic was published in Jokull.

Introduction

Hi there,

Let me start off with a few keywords: environment - change - humans - system earth - challenge. You will guess where this is headed: the global challenge of environmental change. It is one that affects all of us, whether we attempt to ignore it or not. It is present in the information we receive through the media, in what we study, and even in the (un)conscious choices we make, such as "Let's not go on holiday to Winterberg this year, as it might not have enough snow to ski properly."

The 'melting snowman' that will accompany you through these - granted - 
usually not very cheerful topics.

Other keywords for this particular blog are: snow - glacier - albedo - sea level - permafrost. I will discuss the effects of global environmental change on the arctic and on the winter season in various locations. The rationale behind this is not only my fondness of subzero temperatures, but mainly the ambition to explain how change in these different locations feeds into feedback cycles that concern system earth in its entirety. As we go along, I will have posts that concern changes on small spacial and temporal scales, as well as address how these are part of larger mechanisms that date back into the past and will impact the future.

To kickstart this blogging journey, I will address 'the big picture' with background on one of the most important feedback cycles concerning cold. This is referred to as the ice-albedo feedback cycle: the interaction between the cryosphere and global climate. The illustration below shows the very basics of this positive feedback cycle.

The most basic of illustrations of the Ice-Albedo Positive Feedback Cycle

Snow covered ice has an albedo of ca. 0.8, meaning it reflects the majority of incoming solar radiation, as opposed to melting ice with an albedo of ca. 0.6 and water, which has an albedo of merely 0.06. (Andreas et al. 2011) With the melting of snow and ice, the surface albedo changes, absorbing more solar radiation and hereby increasing the surface temperature. This again triggers further melting. The feedback cycle also functions in the opposite direction, with increased snow/ice cover as a result. Scientist James Croll was the first to link this to the global climate cycle of ice ages and warmer periods.
Currently, the ice-albedo feedback concept is mainly regarded in research of arctic sea mechanisms, for example in the work of Perovich et al. Their research addresses the variability of absorbed solar energy in the Arctic Sea Basin over the past few decades. Their results present a positive trend in absorbed energy in 89% of the upper ocean surface, which they link to the ice-albedo feedback cycle. (Perovich et al.) Besides considering this mechanism only in larger spacial and temporal frameworks, it is also included in  the analysis of seasonal cycles in one location, such as the sea ice retreat in the Sea of Otshok. They examine the effect of the ice-albedo feedback mechanism, among other factors such as upper ocean mixing due to wind, on the inter-annual variability of ice cover in this arctic sea. Their findings display a positive correllation between the feedback mechanism and ice retreat in the active melting season - mainly the month of April.  (Nihashi et al. 2011) Both articles have concisely explained methodologies and are well worth reading for more in-depth knowledge on the application of this major feedback cycle.

For now, this is it for the first 'melting snowman' post. More to come soon!