Satellites Detect Winter Rains to Save Arctic Grazers
19.03.2008 - Other
Winter rain can turn out to be devastating for grazing animals when it falls just before it freezes. In October 2003, twenty thousand musk oxen starved to death on Canada's Banks Island from such a catastrophe. Thomas Grenfell, a University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences, and Jaakko Putkonen, research associate professor, have looked into the issue and found that microwave imaging could solve the problem.
As it rains on top of snow, the water seeps down to the soil surface. If the temperature then drops past the freezing point, a sheet of ice can form, preventing animals from reaching their staple food source at the soil's surface: lichens and mosses. Reindeer, musk oxen and other soil grazing animals along the tundra are then at risk of mass starvation, depriving the native people, whose livelihood depends on these animals, from an important source of food and clothing.
Having found evidence of this occurrence in passive satellite microwave imagery, the two professors believe that satellite microwave readings could become an important tool for forecasting such events throughout the Arctic in the future. This could make up for the scarcity of weather stations in the sparsely populated Arctic.
While rain-on-snow events have historically occurred along coastal regions, it is believed that climate change will cause winter rainfalls to appear further inland in the northern continents and large islands.
