ESSIC on State of the Climate in 2023
This week, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) released its annual State of the Climate report in 2023. Compiled by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information,
This week, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) released its annual State of the Climate report in 2023. Compiled by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information,
ESSIC scientists Chelsea Parker and Veljko Petković were honored at the 2024 Maryland Research Excellence Celebration for their “for their demonstrable elevation of the visibility and reputation of the University of Maryland Research Enterprise.”
Click here to read NASA’s Early Career Scientist Spotlight of ESSIC Postdoctoral Associate Dr. Allison Chartrand.
Allison Chartrand, ESSIC Post-doctoral Associate, has been selected for the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2024 Voices for Science program.
ESSIC Research Scientist Dorothy Hall is first author on a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters titled “Snowfall Replenishes Groundwater Loss in the Great Basin of the Western United States, but Cannot Compensate for Increasing Aridification”.
ESSIC Assistant Research Scientist Justin Pflug is an author attributed on the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. The congressionally-mandated effort provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States. Pflug is attributed on two chapters, “Water” and “Compound Events”.
1.2 billion people around the world rely on seasonal snow for their water supply. However, no snow-focused satellite currently exists. The satellites that do attempt to look at the spatial coverage and temperature of snow often struggle to retrieve information about snow in forested regions, which accounts for nearly half of Earth’s snow cover. The forest canopy blocks a lot of satellite remote sensing retrievals, forcing scientists to rely on models. However, processes that control how snow accumulates and melts are pretty different in forested and exposed locations. For example, warmer forests like in the US Pacific Northwest have larger amounts of snow intercepted by the forest canopy and winter snowmelt. This typically makes snow last longer in clearings than in the forest. The opposite is true in colder climates, where snow tends to last longer in the forest.
Dorothy Hall was awarded Life Member of the Eastern Snow Conference at the 79th meeting in Easton, PA, on June 7th. She also gave the banquet speech entitled “A Brief History of Advances in Satellite Snow-Cover Mapping”.
Cezar Kongoli, ESSIC/CISESS associate research scientist, Tom Smith, ESSIC/CISESS visiting research scientist, have a new paper in Frontiers in Earth Science titled “Modeling and estimation of snow depth spatial correlation structure from observations over North America”.
Dorothy Hall is first author on a paper recently published in American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) open access journal Earth and Space Science about the increasing desiccation of lakes in the United State’s Great Basin.