atmos-news

Environmental refuges to escape the heat

May 1, 2024

Environmental refuges to escape the heat

May 1, 2024

 

On April 30, the Salt Lake County Health Department’s 2024 Climate & Health Symposium brought together experts, including University of Utah scientists, to talk about how climate change impacts human health.

One speaker was Daniel Mendoza, research assistant professor in atmospheric sciences; adjunct assistant professor in internal medicine; and adjunct assistant professor in City & Metropolitan Planning at the U.

Mendoza presented a case study, titled Environmental refuges during summertime heat and elevated ozone levels: A preliminary case study of an urban “cool zone” building. Mendoza and coauthors measured indoor and outdoor temperature and ozone levels at the Millcreek library, a building designated as a “cool zone” for the public to escape increasingly hostile environment extremes by climate change.

Mendoza spoke with AtTheU about environmental refuges in advance of the event and how cities can better protect vulnerable individuals.

How are heat and health related?

In Utah, we’re very aware of air quality-related health concerns, but we’re not as aware of the dangers of extreme heat. As the climate changes we need to pay attention to elevated temperatures, not only during the day, but also the temperature at night.

There’s lots of attention when we hit record highs, but they obviously happen during the middle of the day where there are many opportunities to seek refuge in venues with air conditioning. We’re generally at work or at school or can go to the store, for example, because these places are open when its hottest. High temperatures during the evening are more insidious—you’re very vulnerable to your environment while you’re sleeping, especially for children, the elderly, or people with chronic health issues. When it’s too hot at night, you’re not recovering at a cellular level. This can cause chronic health issues that for some, can lead to strokes, among other negative effects. We always see an uptick in heat-related illness in the ER during heat waves.

Read the rest of the interview by Lisa Potter in @ The U. 

Jay Mace: Scientist of Clouds, Painter of Landscapes

April 30, 2024

JAY MACE: SCIENTIST OF CLOUDS, PAINTER OF LANDSCAPES

April 30, 2024
Above: In April 2023, Jay Mace (left) poses at kennaook/Cape Grim, Tasmania, with Roger Marchand. The two were on a site visit for the Cloud And Precipitation Experiment at kennaook (CAPE-k), a field campaign that got underway a year later. Mace and Marchand are co-principal investigators for CAPE-k. Photo is by Heath Powers, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

FOR ONE UTAH RESEARCHER, A CHILDHOOD ADMIRATION FOR NATURE, BY WAY OF THE U.S. NAVY, EVOLVED INTO A CAREER STUDYING EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

 

 

Mace painted this watercolor in January 2024 during a 60-day Southern Ocean voyage aboard the Australian research vessel Investigator. He estimates the deep-water scene was at about 50 degrees south latitude and 115 degrees east longitude. Photo is courtesy of Mace.

During his boyhood in northeastern Ohio, Gerald “Jay” Mace had two dreams.

One was to have a career that brought him close to nature. In those days, long hikes in the woods always included stopping by his favorite tree. It was a totem of the peace and fascination he found in the outside world and the knowledge it offered.

Today, Mace is an atmospheric scientist and professor at the University of Utah. He’s an avid hiker and camper. He bikes to work. He and his wife own a cabin in Idaho. He even paints, in oils, the nature he still loves. Always landscapes, always in one take, and always while seated outdoors. It’s a style of painting called en plein air, a French expression meaning “in the open air.”

His other dream was to get far enough away from Southington, Ohio, that he would never work in an auto plant. His father did assembly line work. Many cousins and uncles too. For him? Nope, never, and no way.

Mace calls his parents “progressive thinkers,” imbued with the sense of optimism the working class had in those days. “I picked that up.”

Optimism, the woods, and an affinity for science “were a big part of forming the way I looked at the world,” he says.

But optimism is not the same as having enough money for college. Halfway through his senior year of high school, Mace decided to join the U.S. Navy.

“My plans had not changed,” he says. “I was going to escape one way or the other. My ticket out was through the military.”

After basic training, only one Navy specialty resonated with Mace’s inclination toward the natural sciences: meteorology.

“They needed weather people,” he says, though he turned down an offer to be a nuclear engineer instead. “I’m an atmospheric scientist largely because I didn’t want to live in a submarine or in the bottom of some ship. I wanted to be able to see the sky.”

Read the full profile by Corydon Ireland, staff writer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in ARM: Dept. of Energy.

Hunting an underground epidemic

April 3, 2024

Hunting an underground epidemic

April 3, 2024

Above: The research team outside Toquerville, UT. Left to right: Kimberly Hanson; Kevin Perry; Alyssa McCoy; Katrina Derieg; and Schuyler Liphardt.

In 2001, 10 archaeologists working at a dig site in northeastern Utah suddenly fell ill with a respiratory illness that sent eight of them to the hospital, coughing and feverish.

The symptoms resembled pneumonia, but their diagnosis was unexpected. It was Valley fever, a fungal infection that spreads to people through spores in the soil and dust—and it wasn’t supposed to be there. Valley fever is more common in hotter, drier states; previous predictions of where the fungus could survive in the soil barely extended into the southwest corner of Utah. The archaeologists’ dig site, in Dinosaur National Monument, was hundreds of miles outside the disease’s expected borders.

The truth is, nobody really knows which areas of the state harbor Valley fever. But the archaeologists’ plight shows that its fungal culprit could be far more widespread than anyone predicted. And as the climate changes, the fungus will likely spread further, explained Katharine Walter, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah.

A person bends over samples in a shade tent.

PHOTO CREDIT: KATRINA DERIEG

Eric Rickart in the field outside Santa Clara, UT.

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“There have been incredibly intense recent changes in temperature as well as precipitation and drought here in the American West. These all impact the range of where the fungus can exist,” said Walter.

Walter is on a mission to map where in Utah the Valley fever fungus can survive and predict how it will move across the landscape as the climate changes. Walter and her collaborators—Katrina Derieg, vertebrate collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah; Eric Rickart, adjunct associate professor of biology at the U and curator of vertebrates at NHMU; and Kevin Perry, professor of atmospheric sciences in the U’s College of Mines and Earth Sciences—recently received a $375,000 Climate and Health Interdisciplinary Award through the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to power their fungus hunt and raise awareness of what to do for the people most at risk of infection.

Read the full story by University of Utah Health's Sophia Friesen in @TheU. You can read another article about this story at KSL.

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Measuring Black Carbon

February 22, 2024

Black carbon sensor could fill massive monitoring gaps

February 22, 2024

Black carbon is the most dangerous air pollutant you’ve never heard of. Its two main sources, diesel exhaust and wood smoke from wildfires and household heating, produce ultrafine air particles that are up to 25 times more of a health hazard per unit compared to other types of particulate matter.

 

^ The AethLabs microAeth MA350. ^^ Banner Photo above: Daniel Mendoza

Despite its danger, black carbon is understudied due to a lack of monitoring equipment. Regulatory-standard sensors are wildly expensive to deploy and maintain, resulting in sparse coverage in regions infamous for poor air quality, such as the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area in Utah.

A University of Utah-led study found that the AethLabs microAeth MA350, a portable, more affordable sensor, recorded black carbon concentrations as accurately as the Aerosol Magee Scientific AE33, the most widely used instrument for monitoring black carbon in real time. Researchers placed the portable technology next to an existing regulatory sensor at the Bountiful Utah Division of Air Quality site from Aug. 30, 2021-Aug. 8, 2022. The AethLabs technology recorded nearly identical quantities of black carbon at the daily, monthly and seasonal timescales. The authors also showed that the microAeth could distinguish between wildfire and traffic sources as well as the AE33 at longer timescales.

Because black carbon stays close to the source, equipment must be localized to yield accurate readings. The microAethsensor’s portability would allow monitoring at remote or inaccessible stationary sites, as well as for mobile use.

“Having a better idea of black carbon exposure across different areas is an environmental justice issue,” said Daniel Mendoza, research assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. “The Salt Lake Valley’s westside has some of the region’s worst air quality partly because it’s closest to pollution sources, but we lack the ability to measure black carbon concentrations accurately. Democratizing data with reliable and robust sensors is an important first step to safeguarding all communities from hazardous air pollution.”

 

Read the entire story by Lisa Potter in @TheU. 

Read the study published on Feb. 1, 2024, in the journal Sensors.

 

Read the full story by Sean Higgins at KUER 90.1.

Utah’s Warm Wet Winter

February 22, 2024

A warm, wet winter in Utah but don’t blame El Niño

February 22, 2024

For Jackie May, this winter’s rain in the Salt Lake Valley has led to a lot of second-guessing when it comes to taking the ski bus to the mountains.

 

She typically plans her work schedule around making time for snowboarding.

^ Michael Wasserstein. ^^ Banner photo above: Fog drapes the Wasatch Mountains near Cottonwood Heights as valley rain and mountain snow have been the standard storm pattern for much of Utah this winter, Feb. 20, 2024. Credit: Sean Higgins/KUER.

“Being down here, I'm like, ‘what am I doing? Should I go back to work?’” she said while waiting for the Utah Transit Authority ski bus at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. And then when I go up in the mountains, I'm like, OK, no, [winter] is still happening. This is how I want to spend my time.”

Although this winter has not had the same record-setting snowfall as last winter, not everyone is disappointed to see no snowbanks in the valley. “I don't like to shovel,” said fellow bus rider Dianne Lanoy. “I do have a good car in the snow, but I don't like to drive in the snow. So, keep [the snow] up in the mountains.”

Even with more rain than snow at the lower elevations and a slow start to the winter, snowpack levels for this time of year are above average statewide. It’s also an El Niño year. That’s when warmer, wetter weather from the Pacific Ocean moves in and usually creates more precipitation.

But don’t go blaming El Niño for this winter’s wacky weather just yet. “El Niño or La Niña really means nothing for snow and precipitation in northern Utah,” says University of Utah atmospheric sciences Ph.D. student Michael Wasserstein. “Prior literature has shown that El Niño can produce lots of precipitation in Utah, or it can produce little precipitation in Utah … I don't think we can draw any conclusions about this winter's weather based on El Niño patterns.”

Wasserstein is the lead author of a new study that dives into why the Wasatch Mountains get so much snow. As it turns out, it’s all about a diversity of storm types and weather patterns.

Read the full story by Sean Higgins at KUER 90.1.

Central Wasatch’s extreme snowfall

February 6, 2024

Where does the central Wasatch’s extreme snowfall Come From?

 

Utah’s famous mountains can wring a lot of snow from even low-moisture storm systems, according to new U research.

February 6, 2024

 

Jim Steenburgh displays a device for measuring snowfall. Credit: Brian Maffly ^^ Banner photo above: Little Cottonwood Canyon. Credit: UDOT.

Major snowstorms in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains are both a blessing and a curse. They deliver much-needed moisture that supplies water to the state’s biggest metropolitan area and fluffy light snow to support the world’s finest powder skiing.

But heavy snowfall also wreaks havoc on canyon roads and creates extreme avalanche hazards that can sometimes shut down busy winter recreation sites.  Alta at the head of Little Cottonwood Canyon, for instance, can be reached by vehicle only via a winding road that rises 3,000 feet in 8 miles, crossing about 50 avalanche paths.

University of Utah atmospheric scientists have set out to better understand extreme snowfall, defined as events in the top 5% in terms of snow accumulations, by analyzing hundreds of events over a 23-year period at Alta, the famed ski destination in the central Wasatch outside Salt Lake City. The resulting study, published this week in Monthly Weather Review, illustrates the remarkable diversity of storm characteristics producing orographic snowfall extremes in the ranges of the Intermountain West.

The orographic effect occurs when air is forced to flow up and over mountains, which cools the air and condenses its water vapor.

Some of the new findings surprised researchers. For example, they looked for an association between heavy snow and a weather factor called “integrated vapor transport,” or IVT, but found a complicated relationship.

“IVT is essentially a measure of the amount of water vapor that is being transported horizontally through the atmosphere, said lead author Michael Wasserstein, a graduate student in atmospheric sciences.  “In certain regions high IVT can produce extremely heavy precipitation. That can be the case for the Wasatch, but not always.”

In the West Coast’s Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range, by contrast, there is a stronger relationship between high-IVT storms blowing in from the Pacific and extreme precipitation and snowfall.

Spanning the years 2000 to 2022, the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, analyzed a total of 2,707 snow events, each covering a 12-hour period. The average amount of snow deposited during each event was 11.2 centimeters (4.4 inches), while the median amount was just 7.6 (3 inches). Alta ski patrollers did much of the data collection at the monitoring station located near the ski area’s Wildcat Lift.

The researchers homed in on “extreme” events above the 95th percentile, or 138 storms in which 30.5 centimeters (12 inches) or more snow fell. “Those would be snowfall rates of about an average of an inch an hour,” said Jim Steenburgh, the study’s senior author. The biggest 12-hour accumulation was 65 centimeters (26 inches), recorded on March 30, 2005.  They also examined “extreme” water-equivalent snowfall events above the 95th percentile, or 116 storms with at least 27.9 mm (1.11 inches) of water equivalent precipitation. The water equivalent of precipitation measures the amount of water in the snowfall and is important for water resources and avalanches.

Read the full story by Brian Maffly in @TheU. 

Presidential Societal Impact—Kevin Perry

January 16, 2024

Kevin Perry, Societal Impact Scholar

 

University of Utah President Taylor Randall has named five faculty members as 2024-25 Presidential Societal Impact Scholars for exemplary public engagement, including Atmopsheric Sciences Professor Kevin Perry.

 

The four include a range of faculty members whose impact varies from helping Utahns understand the danger posed by a shrinking Great Salt Lake to advocating for the rights and rehabilitation of incarcerated women and engaging college and high school students in projects that beautify public spaces with mural art.

Perry has studied the impacts of mineral dust for more than two decades, a research focus that took on major importance with the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake. Perry, riding a fat-tire bicycle, surveyed the 800-mile exposed lakebed and found dust from the lake contains high concentrations of toxic metals. To date, Perry has shared his research in three documentary films and more than 115 print, radio and TV interviews, including Popular Science, Discover Magazine, Outside Magazine, Newsweek, CNN, Le Monde and The Guardian. He has presented his findings to numerous policy-making organizations, such as the Utah Air Quality Board, Utah Clean Air Caucus, and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. Perry has presented to many health care groups, including the Utah Public Health Association and the Central Utah Healthcare Coalition. He also serves as a member of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team and the Dust Alliance for North America. Perry also has participated in educational outreach activities, focused mostly on high school students.

Other awardees are V. Kim Martinez, professor, Department of Art & Art History; Emily Salisbury, director of the Utah Criminal Justice Center and associate professor, College of Social Work; Baodong Liu, professor, Department of Political Science and the Division of Ethnic Studies; and Amberly Johnson, director of the Utah Poison Control Center and assistant professor (clinical), College of Pharmacy.

“What is obvious in this award process is that we have many exceptional faculty who are having a broad impact,” said President Taylor Randall. “As a university, we aspire to improve the communities we serve by sharing our research and expertise in a variety of ways. Our award recipients have engaged in public activities that showcase their scholarship, influence their fields of study and contribute to the betterment of individuals and communities.”

Each scholar will receive a one-time cash award of $10,000 and support from University Marketing & Communications to promote their research, scholarship and initiatives.

Read the full press release, including details of all awardees here.

Humans of the U: Sadie Dunn

January 2, 2024

“I am currently majoring in atmospheric sciences. I just love weather. I’ve loved it since I was probably in kindergarten. So growing up, I always knew that was what I was going to study in college. When I was looking at colleges, I was kind of shocked that the University of Utah is the only school in Utah that offers an atmospheric sciences degree. So that’s how I ended up here.

The For Utah Scholarship has been an amazing opportunity for me because honestly, I would not have been able to afford college on my own. This scholarship offered me the amazing opportunity to come and study here in the department I want to be in.

I am from Chicago and I grew up with really severe summer storms in the Midwest, so I guess that’s what really fostered my love for weather. Then I moved to Utah when I was 13 and just kept loving weather. There’s a ton of snow out here and crazy windstorms which sparked my curiosity.

All throughout junior high and high school, I knew studying weather was my goal. So when I was a senior in high school, we had an internship class and I got to intern at ABC 4 news in their weather department, which was cool. That was definitely the moment when I was like, ‘This is real. I’m working towards this and this is the goal.’ So it’s really exciting to take this love I’ve had since I was little and turn it into a career.

While interning at a broadcast station was fun, it’s not something that interests me as a career. But my atmospheric sciences degree can take me a bunch of different places. It offers research opportunities with organizations like the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). You can also work with private organizations. There are serious meteorologists in every field, which I think is one of the coolest parts about this job.

I’m still kind of feeling out what I want to do. It’s a STEM major and it’s very math- and physics- and chemistry-heavy. I consider myself to be smart, but I am not a natural in those courses. So I don’t think research is something I will do. I am really passionate about climate change, so I’m looking more into the field of sustainability.

Since I grew up with a love of severe weather, I would also love to be able to get a career that helps with the effects of those disasters, because it’s hard with hurricanes and tornadoes. You can’t stop them. They are going to hit and destroy everything. So I would love to find ways to lessen the effects of those or find better ways to prepare the communities.”

—Sadie Dunn, recipient of the For Utah Scholarship

This story originally appeared in @TheU.

Holiday Greetings from Dean Trapa

December 20, 2023

HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM DEAN TRAPA

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As the fall semester draws to a close, I want to take a moment to wish you and your loved ones a happy and restful holiday season.  This time of year invites reflection on all that we have to be thankful for.

Here at the College of Science, I am grateful to our exceptional students, faculty and staff, whose passion for discovery and commitment to excellence make the College a vibrant place of learning and innovation.   I also want to thank our alumni and donors for their steadfast support, making possible transformative educational opportunities and enabling us to pioneer new research directions.  I am deeply grateful for all of you and for your involvement and investment in our mission.

Warmest thoughts and best wishes for a joyful holiday season and a wonderful New Year!

Sincerely,


Dean Peter Trapa
College of Science
University of Utah

Snowflakes Falling

December 18, 2023

The science behind snowflakes

In a study that could enhance weather forecasting, Utah researchers discover that how snowflakes move is astonishingly predictable.

 

Tim Garrett

Tim Garrett has devoted his scientific career to characterizing snowflakes, the protean particles of ice that form in clouds and dramatically change as they fall to Earth.

Now the University of Utah atmospheric scientist is unlocking the mystery of how snowflakes move in response to air turbulence that accompanies snowfall using novel instrumentation developed on campus. And after analyzing more than half a million snowflakes, what his team has discovered has left him astonished.

Rather than something incomprehensibly complicated, predicting how snowflakes move proved to be surprisingly simple, they found.

“How snowflakes fall has attracted a lot of interest for many decades because it is a critical parameter for predicting weather and climate change,” Garrett said. “This is related to the speed of the water cycle. How fast moisture falls out of the sky determines the lifetime of storms.”

“Letters sent from Heaven”

The famed Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya termed snow crystals “letters sent from heaven” because their delicate structures carry information about temperature and humidity fluctuations in the clouds where crystal basal and prism facets competed for water vapor deposition.

While every snowflake is believed to be unique, how these frosty particles fall through the air—as they accelerate, drift and swirl—follows patterns, according to new research by Garrett and colleagues in the College of Engineering. Snowflake movement has important implications for weather forecasting and climate change, even in the tropics.

“Most precipitation starts as snow. How the question of how fast it falls affects predictions of where on the ground precipitation lands, and how long clouds last to reflect radiation to outer space,” Garrett said. “It can even affect forecasts of a hurricane trajectory.”

Read the full article by Brian Maffly in @TheU.
Read additional coverage of this article in Earth.com  and Science News.