Gus Goodbody and John Fitzgerald are standing in a snow pit checking snow density high within Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The snow depth is about 2.2 meters.
Click on image for full size
Courtesy of CLPX NASA Land Surface Hydrology Program
Super Scientists Study Snow!
News story originally written on February 21, 2003
Snow is fun! It can be made into snowballs or snow angels. It can even cause school to be cancelled. Many scientists think that snow is pretty interesting too.
This week, scientists and college students began a project to look at the snow that is in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. They are looking at it from many different places - from the ground, from in the air, and even from space!
In some places on Earth, water is frozen during the cold winter months. In other places, water is frozen all year long! The scientists hope to better understand the areas on Earth where there is frozen water. Keeping track of the amount of snow can help scientists figure out how much water cities and towns will have in the spring as the snow melts. They could also predict if melting snow will cause spring floods.
The scientists will look for the best way to study snow from space. NASA satellites will look at the snow from above with sensors. Hopefully, their research will help make the sensors better so that someday we can look from space to measure the amount of snow around the world!
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