And the Countdown Begins!
Snow-Water Equivalent data offers insight into the impacts of changing climate on the Northwest Rocky Mountains, and can be quantitatively measured and analyzed in basic scientific snow pits. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
Well, it's been two weeks since PolarTREC training in Fairbanks and I'm certainly enjoying being back home in the Northwest Rockies. With spring well underway in North Idaho, I am getting more and more excited about my journeys to central Iceland this summer with Dr. Iverson and Dr. Hooyer.
As I begin preparing for the expedition in August, I've decided to use the next few months of journals and outreach to discuss and explore the current state of polar and climate science on local, national, and global scales. From classroom lessons, to community events, to anecdotal conversations with friends and family, I want to establish and encourage a healthy and fact-based avenue of dialogue regarding polar science and climate change with all of the followers of my PolarTREC Expedition from the get go.
Thanks to the wonderfully organized PolarTREC web environment, this kind of dialogue can be facilitated using the Ask the Team forum. Anytime a question or comment is posted, I will receive an email notification and can visit the forum to respond back. Pretty easy, huh?
Thinking Globally Starts Locally
I have found in my experiences teaching about the Polar Regions and climate science that it is a benefit to the learner to start small. The study of Earth's climate and Polar Regions is a deep, vast, and highly interconnected system of knowledge and observations, and can quite easily intimidate or simply confuse someone out of pursuing their curiosities if not properly introduced.
One of the most common questions I encounter from learners when I open up a lesson or unit on polar science and climate change is, 'Why does it even matter?'
It's a real good question that can be answered in a number of ways. With the Polar Regions so geographically and psychologically removed from most developed cities and cultures, they are all too commonly perceived as desolate, uninhabitable, homogeneous environments of wind, ice, and snow. Oh, and maybe a few penguins.
It's no wonder that their vulnerability to warming atmospheric conditions goes largely unnoticed by the general public. As an educator, this is why I find it most effective to begin teaching about these concepts at the local level.
By giving a learner a tangible set of raw data, and allowing them to draw their own conclusions about how their immediate environment is affected by changes to Earth's climate and Polar Regions, investigating similar changes on the national and global scale become more accessible and meaningful.
Trends in 20th Century SWE values for April 1st for the Pacific Northwest. Figure courtesy of the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group. http://cses.washington.edu/cig/
For the Inland Northwest and Idaho Panhandle, changing climate can be observed in raw data from regional mountain snow-pack. And thanks to the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service's SNOTEL Sites, accessing and analyzing this data can be done quite easily anywhere an internet connection is available.
In short, the effects of warming atmospheric temperatures are resulting in a decline in snow-water equivalence (SWE); a measurement that expresses the amount of liquid water available in a particular quantity of snow.
For the Inland Northwest this is an environmentally, economically, and culturally significant impact of climate change on our region. With 80% of Idaho's annual precipitation falling as snow, these changes in SWE will directly affect future access to much needed freshwater resources. From our local hydroelectric power industry, to our summer lake-tourism industry, to our agricultural industry, declines in SWE throughout the Northwest Rockies will widely affect society.
Here is a graph of historical SWE values for January 1st for the Lookout Pass SNOTEL site. This was done in a separate climate science activity conducted in my IB Environmental Systems and Societies class at Lake City High School.
That is why for Spring Break this year, I lead a week-long outdoor snow science expedition into the mountains with Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education; SOLE to provide local area youth the opportunity to measure their own snow-pack data and investigate the effects of climate change on SWE in a hands-on learning environment.
The group works to probe our snow pit site to make sure it is clear of debris and shrubs before digging it out. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
Students 'digging-in' to their field data. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
On the third day of our expedition, students traveled by ski, board, and snowshoe into the mountains of Northeast Washington. After learning the basic techniques of how to dig a proper scientific snow pit, identify individual layers of snow, and measure some basic physical properties of each layer (height, snow crystal type, temperature, etc.), students used snow density tubes to calculate the total SWE of their pit.
Using a hand lens to observe snow crystal shape and size. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
After identifying layers and measuring height, SWE can be calculated. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
Recording results and field data for SWE in snow pit #1. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
Back in the classroom that night at the Chewelah Peak Learning Center, students accessed SWE data from the Idaho SNOTEL site and worked collaboratively to create graphs of 20 year averages of SWE from 1952-2012.
Discussing the group's results of 20 year SWE averages for January-June 1952-2012. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
Three trend lines for average SWE values January-June: 1952-1972, 1972-1992, 1992-2012. Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
By analyzing their graphs, students were able to literally see the changes in SWE for our region over the last 60 years, and make concrete and hands-on connections with real, tangible, local, raw climate data.
Satisfied with SWE measurements in snow pit #1! Photo courtesy of Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education.
And, just as I explained earlier in this journal, once the local trends and impacts of climate change were observed and established by the learner first, the stage was adequately set for the students' 'big picture' and more globally-based curiosities about climate change and Polar Regions:
- 'What is causing the decline in SWE?'
- 'Is this happening anywhere else?'
- 'Is this kind of like how glaciers are melting all over the world?'
- 'What now?'
I concluded the lesson by helping the students take their new local awareness of climate change to the national and global scales by introducing them to the PolarTREC website and Virtual Base Camp.
From here, it is my hope that they have gained more perspective and insight into that one common question I hear all too frequently when opening a lesson on polar science or climate change:
Why does it even matter?