Newspaper Article About Crow Sham’s Trip to the Arctic

The article below recently appeared in a Sinhalese newspaper in Toronto about Crow Sham's trip to the arctic. Some of her great pictures were used in the article, which she tells has a few extrapolations by the author about Sham's background and the project. So if you can read it take the article with a grain of salt and if you can't enjoy some great pictures of the True North on a hot day (at least where this Crow perches!).

'Eureka moment' provides unique opportunity for students #westernu

Western News reporter Jason Winders quoting Crow Emily in: 'Eureka moment' provides unique opportunity for students

“Suspenders. Don’t forget suspenders,” McCullough said. “We’re both kind of short. All of our Arctic gear, which is loaned to us, even the super-powered snowpants, are a little on the big side. So the suspenders keep your pants up. But, it’s even better than that.

More Arctic Life Advice from Crow Emily to cheechako Crow Sham on their current Arctic travels in the article. Emily is safely back South and Sham is continuing to run the lidar as part of the Canadian Arctic ACE/OSIRIS Validation Campaign.

CANDAC’s Eureka Observatory Featured in the #GlobeAndMail #GlobeNorth

Crow Emily is featured in this timely article on the important scientific work being done in the Canadian high arctic at Eureka:

For Emily McCullough, a Ph.D student at the University of Western Ontario who is working at the lab, its key benefits include the powerful lessons she’s learned about how to do professional research, from planning a major experiment to anticipating problems like “what happens if the wolves come and chew my cables.” 

But it’s also a place where she feels the work she does has an impact on Canada’s relationship to the rest of humanity. “Canada’s got a heck of a lot of the Arctic,” Ms. McCullough says. “It would be really great if we could contribute something to the understanding of it as a whole.”

How Canada’s Arctic lab keeps a watchful eye on climate change - The Globe and Mail

Getting ready for Polar Night in Eureka | CREATE Arctic Science

Crow Emily gives a plain-language summary about her research in the Arctic at the CANDAC facility in Eureka.

The Crow Asks: Can you explain these odd contrails?

Last week near sunset I noticed some contrails about (as typically in the YXU at this time of year). But check these out. If you look at the photos you’ll see that “above” each trail the trail looks normal but “below” it is a series of round, puffy clouds, not unlike cirrocumulus clouds. Definitely not billow shaped clouds ones would expect from some kind of gravity wave interaction.

Can anyone tell me is this an altitude affect, dynamics, or is it a function of the type of airplane engine which emitted the water vapour?

The Old Crow Lectures on the Aurora: Friday, 19 April @ RASC-London

The Old Crow Lectures on the Aurora: Friday, 19 April @ RASC-London

I’ve been invited by the Royal Astronomical Society of London to give a public talk:

The Aurora Borealis and Space Weather
Space Weather is the study of the interaction of the particles which flow from the Sun with Earth’s atmosphere. This talk will describe the visual result apparent to us on the surface, the Northern (and Southern) Lights, as well as give a lay description of a cutting edge of research: how can the particles from the Sun affect weather on the surface?
Come on out if just to heckle :–)

MSIS Atmospheric Model: on your iOS device!

Atmospheric Model on your iOS device

Kudos to Al Hedin, who for several decades now has been the leader of a project to make the most comprehensive model of the atmosphere from the surface to the the exosphere (e.g. 500 km altitude). I never thought pouring over the MSIS FORTRAN code as a grad student that someday I would have (not only!) a phone in my pocket but one that could run that model, which needed a DEC VAX to compile (yup, pre-PC/Mac).

My new favourite iPhone app! This free app will be a useful professional, student and outreach tool.

Discovery of upper atmosphere bacteria that affect weather

Research: Discovery of upper atmosphere bacteria that affect weather - National Paeleontology | Examiner.com

Whether the microorganisms routinely inhabit this portion of the atmosphere – perhaps living on carbon compounds also found there – or whether they were simply lofted there from the Earth’s surface is not yet known.

Cool. Live and mutate a 1000 generations at 6 km altitude, coalesce into a raindrop, fall to the survive. Cause a plague.

via the American Meteorological Society

Prof. T. Duck asks about the missing $35million the #HarperGovnt promised for atmospheric research? #TOStar #westernu

OpEd piece from the Toronto Star.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1140330--ottawa-squan...

 

High Arctic troposphere is cleaner in the summer than the winter?

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L16805, 6 PP., 2011, doi:10.1029/2011GL048221

 The role of scavenging in the seasonal transport of black carbon and sulfate to the Arctic

Key Points

• Arctic aerosol have a strong seasonal cycle that is dominated by wet scavenging


• Both soot and sulfate are affected nearly equally by wet scavenging processes


• We can anticipate from this study that a warmer Arctic will be a cleaner Arctic

Timothy J. Garrett, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Sara Brattström, Meteorologiska Institutionen, Stockholms Universitet, Stockholm, Sweden

Sangeeta Sharma, Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Douglas E. J. Worthy, Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Paul Novelli, GMD, ESRL, Boulder, Colorado, USA

In a prior study, a decade-long dataset of ground-based aerosol and carbon monoxide measurements from Barrow, Alaska (71°N, 157°W) was used to show that surface air in the Arctic is clean during the summer, less due to inhibited transport of pollutants from mid-latitudes, and more because of efficient wet scavenging at temperatures near freezing. Here, the analysis is extended to light-absorbing aerosols, such as black carbon, and to measurements from Alert, Canada (82°N, 62°W). The data imply that both light scattering and light absorbing aerosols have similar seasonal cycles, independent of location, and they are controlled nearly equally by wet scavenging. Removal is particularly efficient at high relative humidities and warm temperatures, which suggests that a future warmer and wetter Arctic may also be cleaner. Assuming aerosol pollutants generally have a warming effect in the Arctic, such an increase in wet scavenging would represent a negative Arctic climate feedback.

Citation: Garrett, T. J., S. Brattström, S. Sharma, D. E. J. Worthy, and P. Novelli (2011), The role of scavenging in the seasonal transport of black carbon and sulfate to the Arctic, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L16805, doi:10.1029/2011GL048221.

via agu.org

This recent paper uses aerosol and temperature measurements from Barrow and Alert to show that warmer, wetter summers cause the air at high latitudes to be cleaner in the summer than the winter. No quite what I expected, I'll have to look into this further.

Discovery's Final Launch Viewed From a Commercial Jet: how cool! Note how strongly stratified the lower atmosphere is.

via youtube.com

As an atmospheric physicist it is neat to see (via the exhaust trail) how generally stratified the atmosphere was for that launch, must have been a relatively smooth ride. Best of luck to the crew on their mission. Thanks to former student VL for sending me this!

Cranes/large telescope/flying laser tables, movie of the Purple Crow Lidar's move to our new observatory online. Check it!

A summer of hard work and we have moved from the Delaware Observatory to our new facility, Echo Base. Our next step in the project is getting our new laser installed, which we hope to have done before year's end. We'll keep you posted!

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/17037859 w=500&h=283]