"Snow and Ice: Adventures in Scientific Study of our Cold, Cold World..."

Dan Berisford, PhD  Technologist, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab will talk about Mountain snowpack:  lifeblood of the American west and water supply for 1 Billion people globally.  For the skier and mountaineer, the snowpack presents a delicate balance of allure and danger.  For the water resource manager, it presents an ill-constrained water storage mechanism.  For the scientist, it presents an incredibly complex challenge to measure, predict, and attempt to understand.  In this talk, we will discuss how snowpack properties are measured with traditional and state-of-the-art technology, as well as a few new experimental techniques that may change our understanding of how snow gets deposited and allow accurate water runoff prediction.  We will also discuss some of my personal experiences in the quest to study snow and ice, from the San Juan to the Arctic, both on the ground and from the sky.