Dark Snow Project

[phantom power]

I've waited with this blog post to kick off a second round of donations for this worthy project, aimed at measuring the impact of changing wildfire and industrial soot levels on snow and ice reflectivity.

Because of a lack of government funding Dr. Jason Box from the Byrd Polar Research Center (here's his blog) is now trying to raise through crowdfunding the money that is needed to fly to the top of the Greenland ice sheet and take samples. This data is very useful, as the reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet has been decreasing steadily for a while now. The effects of this decrease have been documented here and elsewhere around the web last summer, when practically all of the surface of the ice sheet was melting at some point, a rare occurance.

Lower reflectivity of course means more melting, so reducing soot emissions might be a great help in slowing down the current melting trend of the Greenland ice sheet (and perhaps some of the Arctic sea ice melt as well), but for that we need to know how big a role soot is playing in all of this.

You can donate at the Dark Snow Project website:
http://darksnowproject.org/

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/dark-snow-project.html

[XemaSab]

1. .

:kick:

[Junkdrawer]

2. The WeatherChannel just covered the project....

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/05/15/the-weather-channel-covers-darksnowproject/