NASA IceBridge: Snow has thinned on Arctic sea ice

The probe, shaped like a ski pole, includes a basket that stays on top of the snow while the tip of the probe plunges down to the sea ice below. 

Credit: Chris Linder / Univ. of Washington.

From research stations drifting on ice floes to high-tech aircraft radar, scientists have been tracking the depth of snow that accumulates on Arctic sea ice for almost a century.

Now that people are more concerned than ever about what is happening at the poles, research led by the Earth Science dept of University of Washington and NASA IceBridge confirms that snow has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

A new study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, combines data collected by ice buoys and NASA aircraft with historic data from ice floes staffed by Soviet scientists from the late 1950s through the early 1990s to track changes over decades.

Historically, Soviets on drifting sea ice used meter sticks and handwritten logs to record snow depth. Today, researchers on the ground use an automated probe similar to a ski pole to verify the accuracy of airborne measurements.

"When you stab it into the ground, the basket move up, and it records the distance between the magnet and the end of the probe," said first author Melinda Webster, a UW graduate student in oceanography.

"You can take a lot of measurements very quickly. It's a pretty big difference from the Soviet field stations."

Webster verified the accuracy of airborne data taken during a March 15, 2012 NASA IceBridge flight over the sea ice near Barrow, Alaska.

The following day Webster followed the same track in minus 30-degree temperatures while stabbing through the snow every two to three steps.

UW graduate student Melinda Webster uses a probe to measure snow depth and verify NASA airborne data. 

She is walking on sea ice near Barrow, Alaska, in March 2012. 

Her backpack holds electronics that power the probe and record the data. 

Credit: Chris Linder / Univ. of Washington

The authors compared data from NASA airborne surveys, collected between 2009 and 2013, with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers buoys frozen into the sea ice, and earlier data from Soviet drifting ice stations in 1937 and from 1954 through 1991.

Results showed that snowpack has thinned from 14 inches to 9 inches (35 cm to 22 cm) in the western Arctic, and from 13 inches to 6 inches (33 cm to 14.5 cm) in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, west and north of Alaska.

That's a decline in the western Arctic of about a third, and snowpack in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas less than half as thick in spring in recent years compared to the average Soviet-era records for that time of year.

"Knowing exactly the error between the airborne and the ground measurements, we're able to say with confidence, Yes, the snow is decreasing in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas," said co-author Ignatius Rigor, an oceanographer at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA-JAXA GPM Launch: Mission to Measure Global Rain, Snow

A Japanese H-IIA rocket with the NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory onboard, is seen launching from the Tanegashima Space Center in Tanegashima, Japan. 

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), thundered into space at 10:37 a.m. PST Thursday, Feb. 27 (3:37 a.m. JST Friday, Feb. 28) from Japan.

The four-ton spacecraft launched aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan.

The GPM spacecraft separated from the rocket 16 minutes after launch, at an altitude of 247 miles (398 kilometers). The solar arrays deployed 10 minutes after spacecraft separation, to power the spacecraft.

"With this launch, we have taken another giant leap in providing the world with an unprecedented picture of our planet's rain and snow," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

"GPM will help us better understand our ever-changing climate, improve forecasts of extreme weather events like floods, and assist decision makers around the world to better manage water resources."

The GPM Core Observatory will take a major step in improving upon the capabilities of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), a joint NASA-JAXA mission launched in 1997 and still in operation.

While TRMM measured precipitation in the tropics, the GPM Core Observatory expands the coverage area from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle. GPM will also be able to detect light rain and snowfall, a major source of available fresh water in some regions.


To better understand Earth's weather and climate cycles, the GPM Core Observatory will collect information that unifies and improves data from an international constellation of existing and future satellites by mapping global precipitation every three hours.

"It is incredibly exciting to see this spacecraft launch," said GPM Project Manager Art Azarbarzin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the moment that the GPM team has been working toward since 2006.

"The GPM Core Observatory is the product of a dedicated team at Goddard, JAXA and others worldwide."

"Soon, as GPM begins to collect precipitation observations, we'll see these instruments at work providing real-time information for the scientists about the intensification of storms, rainfall in remote areas and so much more."

NASA Aqua MODIS Image: Taklimakan Desert in Western China

Snow-covered deserts are rare, but that’s exactly what the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite observed as it passed over the Taklimakan Desert in western China on January 2, 2013.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response. Caption by Adam Voiland.

The day after the storm Chinese Central Television (CNTV) reported that the Xinjian Uygyr autonomous region was one of the areas hardest hit.

The Taklimakan is one of the world’s largest and hottest, sandy deserts. Water flowing into the Tarim Basin has no outlet, so over the years, sediments have steadily accumulated.

In parts of the desert, sand can pile up to 300 meters (roughly 1,000 feet) high.

The mountains that enclose the sea of sand, the Tien Shan in the north and the Kunlun Shan in the south, were also covered with what appeared to be a significantly thicker layer of snow in January 2013.

ESA Mars Express: HRSC Images - Mountains Look Frosty

This computer-generated perspective view of Charitum Montes was created using data obtained from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express.

The image shows the large breach in the northern wall of the crater, located near to the uppermost sand dune.

Centred at around 53°S and 334°E, the image has a ground resolution of about 20 m per pixel. The image shows the large breach in the northern wall of the crater, located near to the uppermost sand dune. 

The dusting of carbon dioxide ice is a seasonal feature in this region, which covers the crater floor and the surrounding plains.

CREDIT: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

ESA's Mars Express spacecraft orbiting Mars has snapped wintry-looking pictures of a mountain range on the Red Planet's southern highlands, where ridges and crater floors are dusted with carbon dioxide frost.

The pictures were captured by the high-resolution stereo camera on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express.

They show part of Charitum Montes, a large group of rugged mountains stretching over nearly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) near the southernmost rim of the Argyre impact basin. The brighter features represent a seasonal layer of carbon dioxide frost.

The images, which were obtained on June 18, show that the mountainous region is pockmarked with many large craters, which have been largely filled in with thick sedimentary deposits.

Annotated image of Charitum Montes.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

This colour-coded overhead view is based on an ESA Mars Express HRSC digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. 

The colour coding shows the very edge of the Charitum Montes mountain region at the top of the image, with the highest elevation, while the subtle pedestal craters that dot the image almost fade away with just a small amount of relief difference between the elevated ejecta and the surrounding area. 

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

NASA Cassini: Snowballs caught crashing into Saturn's weirdest ring

Saturn's weirdest ring is known for its sparkling displays, but now it's been caught in the act. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured the first video of snowballs crashing into the planet's distant F-ring, creating a mini-jet of sparkling ice crystals.

The event was captured while Cassini was filming Saturn's moon Prometheus approaching the ring. The moon, which orbits just inside the F-ring, following an elliptical path, brushes up against it every 17 years. During its approach, it's thought to create a ripple in the icy ring's geometry which causes snowball-like pieces to break off. These icy fragments are then thought to quickly crash back into it causing a sparkling mini-jet.

Based on the video, researchers were able to calculate the orbital direction and speed of the snowballs. Results indicate that they followed a very similar orbit to Prometheus and hit at a slow speed of about one meter per second. This points to the culprit being small snowballs created during the moon's previous approach, which survived and went on to strike through the F-ring itself.

"We had seen these mini-jets right from day one but, like most things with the F-ring, it's trying to understand what you're seeing," says Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at University of London in the UK. The group has found 500 such mini-jets after looking through 25 images of the F-ring. They now plan to examine them more closely to see if they fit the same description as the one caught on film.

NASA MODIS: Snow in Europe

In early February 2012, much of Europe shivered under the effects of a “Russian Winter” - intense cold and snow triggered by a strong Siberian anticyclone which hovered over northern Russia.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of the snowy landscape of France and the United Kingdom on February 11, 2012.

In the coldest parts of the year, when the intense cooling of the surface layers of air over northeastern Siberia occurs, the time is right for the formation of a Siberian anticyclone.

Also called a Siberian high, it is a semi-permanent system of high atmospheric pressure centered in northeastern Siberia.

The Siberian anticyclone is one of the principal sources of polar air masses, and outbreaks of polar air westward from the high-pressure area can cause severe cold spells in the European continent.

In early February, 2012, a strong anticyclone formed over northern Russia. On February 3, Mosfiloti Weather Service reported a high pressure of 1061 hPa in that area.

Set against a depression almost 70 hPa lower in southern Greenland, it was a driving force to push frigid temperatures across Europe.

On February 10, CNN reported that twenty-two countries had posted warnings for extreme cold temperatures and accumulating snow. Temperatures of -17 °C (1.4 °F) were reported in Romarantin and -16 °C (3 °F) in Bergerac, France on February 7.

The cold has reached as far south as Algeria, bringing a rare snowfall. The bitter cold and snow not only been inconvenient, tangling traffic and cutting off villages from essential services, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, but it has been deadly as well.

On February 14, the Telegraph reported at least 306 deaths across the continent. The Ukraine has been the hardest hit, with over 131 cold-related deaths reported.

Snowy Owl Invasion - YouTube

Snowy Owls lead nomadic lives and travel vast distances from year to year searching for productive feeding areas. Some years, most recently in the winter of 2011/2012, conditions cause them to come south in great numbers.

Get an intimate look at these white owls from the north through video and photographs captured by the Cornell Lab's, Gerrit Vyn.

ESA Live Online Videos: Snow Mountains

Earth from Space is presented by Kelsea Brennan-Wessels from the ESA Web-TV virtual studios. 

In the tenth edition we look at the snow-kissed Alps, Italy’s Apennines and point out some major lakes.

Click on the Image to visit the ESA site and play the Live video.

Steam train the Snow at Schierke, Germany

A narrow-gauge railway makes its way through a snow covered forest at the Harz national park near Schierke, central Germany. 

After a period of relatively mild weather a cold spell has reached central and eastern Europe

NASA MODIS Image: Winter Storm in the Pacific Northwest

The image is a false-colour scene that better distinguishes between snow and clouds. The Ice and snow appear red.


A severe winter storm pummeled the Pacific Northwest in January late 2012, icing roads, downing power lines, and prompting avalanche warnings.

On January 20, more than 250,000 customers were without electricity, as utility crews struggled to restore power, news sources said.

Rising temperatures and potential new rainfall raised the possibility of flooding in the days that followed.

Snow still blanketed much of Washington state on January 23, 2012, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images.

Liquid-water clouds are white, and ice clouds are peach. Vegetation is bright green.

Snow blankets the region east of Seattle and Portland, stretching all the way to the Idaho border. In the band of forest along the Pacific Coast, snow may be more prevalent than it appears, as it is sometimes hidden from satellite imagers by trees.

Warmer air blew into the region soon after the storm, adding to hazardous conditions. Flooding closed roads and forced some residents into emergency shelters.

On January 23, KVAL reported that a fresh storm was approaching the region and might drop several inches of rain.

The National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the Portland area, as the new round of rain had the potential to push rivers into flood stage.

Scientists Propose Use of Cryopreservation To Save Snow Leopards From Extinction

Scientists from the Monash University are pursuing the possible use of cryopreservation of genetic material for future cloning and other assisted reproduction techniques, particularly the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Cryopreservation, a process where cells or whole tissues are preserved by cooling to low sub-zero temperatures, aims to enable stocks of cells to be stored to prevent the need to have all cell lines in culture at all times.

It is invaluable when dealing with cells of limited life span, thus, this breakthrough procedure could help in the survival of the endangered snow leopard, a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central Asia, researchers said.

The study, which is part of the PhD project of Rajneesh Verma, supervised by Dr Paul Verma, both from the Monash Institute of Medical Research (MIMR), could allow scientists to create reproductive cells from adult snow leopard tissues, which will then be used in breeding this animal.

According to the researchers, the use of iPS have never before been generated from a member of the cat family. For the study, researchers used ear tissue samples taken from adult snow leopards at Mogo Zoo in NSW to generate the iPS cells.

"The power of stem cells is that they can differentiate into all the cell types in the body. This means, they have the potential to become gametes. In fact, mouse iPS cells have given rise to entire off-spring, so the possibilities are enormous," Dr Verma said.

"By generating these stem cells, we've taken the first step in creating reproductive cells from adult tissues of an endangered animal. In the future, we aim to harness the potential of the iPS cells and create off-spring. This would help save species from extinction," he added.

According to Dr. Verma, the breakthrough was significant due to the difficulty of obtaining reproductive cells, or gametes, even from animals in captivity. However, he plans to apply the same techniques to other members of cat family, including the Bengal tiger, the jaguar and the serval.

Associate Professor Peter Temple-Smith of Monash University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Professor Michael Holland of the University of Queensland also collaborated in this study which was published in Theriogenology.

Russian Winter Wonderland ImageLunar halo

Russia in a winter wonderland. The north. Yakutia. Settlement Ajhal. Night with 8 for January, 9th. 

The full moon was accompanied bright halo! The taiga all was shone in a moonlight ! - 37 degrees on цельсию. 

Removed chamber Nikon D3, a lens 16 mm the fish eye.

See more at Lunar halo

Sharpless 2-106: The Snow Angel

The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel.

The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium.

Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. 

This hot gas creates the "wings" of our angel. 

A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Successful Soyuz launch in the Snow: Supporting ISS operations

(Image: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images)
 
Snow and Icy temperatures didn't stop the long-awaited launch of the first crewed Russian Soyuz rocket since all such missions were suspended following the crash of a cargo module in August.


The rocket took off at 4:14 am GMT from the snowy Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying two Russians and one American to relieve the current ISS crew.

With the US shuttle fleet now retired, NASA relies totally on Soyuz rockets to deliver fresh crew and supplies to the station. And, with the current ISS crew set to return to Earth on 21 November, there had been fears that the station would be left uncrewed for the first time.

With the success of today's launch, Soyuz rockets are set to resume full-time service ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS.

Despite the technology being almost half a century old, Soyuz looks likely to continue being the ISS's sole life-support system for at least the next several years.

Pluto's rival is tinier but shinier than thought

Pluto may be the king of the dwarfs after all.

New observations confirm that Eris, the dwarf planet whose discovery got Pluto kicked out of the planet club in 2006, is almost exactly the same size as Pluto and may be a bit smaller.

When Eris was discovered in 2005, images from the Hubble Space Telescope suggested that it was 2400 kilometres wide, 5 per cent wider than Pluto, which is only about 2340 kilometres wide.

Later observations with the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope made Pluto's case even worse, finding Eris's diameter to be around 2600 kilometres but both measurements left room for doubt.

Last November, astronomers got a chance to know for sure which rock ruled the outer solar system, when Eris passed directly in front of a distant star and cast a small shadow on the Earth.

Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory and colleagues compared the shadow's size from two different sites in Chile, and found that Eris's diameter is 2326 kilometres, reported Scientific American's Observations blog. That's hardly different from the best values for Pluto's size.

"It could be smaller, it could be larger; basically, it is a twin," Sicardy said at the meeting, according to the Planetary Society Blog. Sicardy presented the results at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Nantes, France, on 4 October, and they will be published in an upcoming issue of Nature.

Eris is still the dwarf planet heavyweight, though. It is much more massive than Pluto, meaning it is substantially denser.

That suggests Eris is mostly composed of rock, with a relatively thin icy mantle. Models of the solar system's composition at various distances suggest it should have had a thicker layer of ice if it formed where it is. If so, much of its original ice may have been "blasted away" in a catastrophic impact.

The new observations also revealed that the dwarf planet is brighter than fresh snow, and possibly the second brightest object in the solar system, after Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

That hints at a surface layer of nitrogen or methane frost, the remnants of a collapsed atmosphere which goes through a cycle of freezing and thawing as the small world wheels around the sun.

Snowman goes to the desert

Panasonic's SPARKS team tests out the company's various “eco-technologies.” When they received a Facebook message from a Bahraini girl named Amna who wanted to show her brother Saleh snow for the first time, the proverbial “sparks” started flying.

Sure, they could ship a snowman in a refrigerated case – but that would be too easy. Instead, they sent it in a standard cardboard box, and thanks to a new Panasonic vacuum sealing technology, Frosty arrived in finely frozen form.

The snowman was fully assembled in the mountains of Japan, complete with carrot nose. The Panasonic team loaded it into the box, sealed it with their U-Vacua insulation panels that decompress to keep out all heat, and popped it on a plane to Bahrain for a 5,300-mile journey.

Dozens of kids came to greet the snowman in the sweltering, sunny desert, and after a few snapshots with the foreign visitor, the kids couldn't resist digging into ol' Frosty for a snowball fight.

The paper-thin vacuum panels are impressive, appearing to add very little in size or weight to the original box. And they clearly kept the snowman chilly enough throughout the 40-hour trip. If only he could have lasted that long out of the box.

The Sno-Ped a Snow Bike for Bad Weather

Designer Michele Marin has dreamed up a human-powered snow machine that will get you over the powdery hills without the need for a fossil fueled engine -- and alternative for those of us who want to enjoy zipping over hills with more finesse than a snowmobile can offer, if not the same amount of speed.

Whipping along icy streets on a bike isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so for those who miss the exhilaration of an outdoor commute during the winter months, this human-powered snow vehicle could be right up your alley.



Outside of the obvious green advantage of not using fossil fuels, the construction of the vehicle itself also gets a high grade on the eco-friendly scale with a frame made of recyclable, bent-aluminum sheets.

It may never replace skis as the preferred mode of winter travel, but a cup holder and solar-powered bumwarmer could change that in a snap

ESA GlobSnow - Use satellites to know your snow - images

Example of a snow water equivalent map for 4 November 2010, generated by GlobSnow in near-real time for the northern hemisphere.

Credits: FMI/ESA GlobSnow

As winter approaches, northern dwellers will get assistance from space to help them face the harsh weather. Satellite information on snow cover is now available through ESA’s GlobSnow project soon after it snows.

As well as posing a hazard to communities through transportation shutdowns and floods, snow cover is one of the most important elements influencing the planet’s climate, meteorology and water systems. Understanding snow conditions helps us to predict floods and advance climate studies.

Seasonal changes in snow cover mostly occur in the northern hemisphere. The average winter expanse in these regions affects 20-40 million sq km, with an equivalent water volume of 2000-3000 cubic km – about 1 000 000 000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

This image of Trans-Labrador Highway, located in Canada's province of Newfoundland and Labrador, shows a heavy excavator bucket and a snow plow clearing snow from the road.

Credits: A. Khan, Goverment of Newfoundland and Labrador

The sparseness of meteorological networks on the ground, especially in the remote areas of Eurasia and North America, makes it difficult to map and quantify the amount of snow.

GlobSnow, led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, overcomes these limitations to improve information on snow characteristics in the northern hemisphere by using European and US Earth observation satellites.

The one-year, near-real time demonstration service makes information about snow cover and snow amount publicly available online on the GlobSnow website.

A number of northern institutes will test the data for use in hydrological modelling, flood forecasting and water resources management.

Snow covers the Mount Hamiton Observatory in San Jose

Snow covers telescopes on Mt. Hamilton's observatory in San Jose, California
Picture: AP