The Science

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February 20, 2012 | 3:38 PM | By

Alpine Chipmunks’ Habitat and Gene Pool are Shrinking

One of the few mammals unique to California is also one of the most threatened by climate change.

Risa Sargent

The alpine chipmunk only lives in California, and its habitat is shrinking.

The alpine chipmunk, found in Yosemite’s high country, has moved upslope as temperatures have warmed over the last century.

Now a new study out yesterday from the journal Nature Climate Change shows a warming climate may also be affecting the species’ genetic diversity. Listen to my radio story about the study on today’s California Report.

The alpine chipmunk is one of the smallest chipmunks in California. It’s also got a uniquely striped face. It’s hard to see these chipmunks in the wild unless you strap on a backpack and climb some 10,000 feet high in the Sierra.

That’s what study author Emily Rubidge did as a PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Geology. She’s part of a team that’s been ambitiously updating Joseph Grinnell’s historic survey of Yosemite’s wildlife from the early 1900s.

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FILED UNDER: The Science, alpine chipmunk, Biodiversity, Yosemite
February 19, 2012 | 10:25 AM | By

Wildfire Trends: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

New research includes first-ever global death toll from landscape fires: more than 300,000

Mike Kapusta / CTV

Flames and smoke from the 2011 Slave Lake fire in Alberta. Evacuations are likely to increase, partly from smoke.

Research continues to suggest that this century will be a brutal one for wildfires.

The reasons seem pretty straightforward: “The warmer it gets, the more fires we have,” fire scientist Mike Flannigan told reporters at a major science conference in Vancouver this weekend. Flannigan is a professor at the University of Alberta and also works for Canada’s natural resources agency.

Flannigan says fires already claim an area roughly the size size of India each year (If you’re wondering how that’s even possible, he says the acreage includes grasslands, which can actually burn more than once a year). And he says the toll will rise, driven by three main factors: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: The Science, fire, Wildfire
February 18, 2012 | 11:39 AM | By

KQED Science Team Takes Home National Award

Combined QUEST/Climate Watch unit wins for its report on rising seas

A team of producers and editors at KQED was honored this weekend with a prestigious Kavli Science Journalism Award. Only a few projects are selected each year by the Washington-based American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The KQED team, a collaboration of the QUEST and Climate Watch science reporting units, was recognized in the Television Spot News/Feature Reporting category for its segment on rising sea levels in the San Francisco Bay Area.


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FILED UNDER: The Science, AAAS, Kavli
February 17, 2012 | 7:20 PM | By

The “Magic Dust” that Brings More Sierra Snow

Dust from across the Pacific seeds Sierra snowflakes

Molly Samuel

Researchers found that heavy snowfall in the Sierra is connected to the amount of dust floating over from Asia.

In a weird twist on the “butterfly effect,” evidence is that Asian dust storms can mean more snow in the Sierra. The strange finding surfaced in research by scientists working on NOAA’s CalWater program. Scientists compared two Sierra storms, and found the one that contained dust particles from Asia had 40% more precipitation than the one that did not. The other storm had more particulate matter from sources in California, for instance, from burning trees or grass.

The researchers, including Kim Prather and Doug Collins from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego compared the two storms from the air.

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FILED UNDER: The Science, Water, aerosols, snow
February 17, 2012 | 6:55 AM | By

Six Citizen Science Projects that Help Keep Tabs on Climate Impacts

Count some birds, shoot a wave, set out a rain gauge — the sky’s the limit

Molly Samuel

An iPhone can be a field guide, a tool for recording observations and a way to share data.

Today is the first day of the annual Great Backyard Bird Count, when people all over North America tally the birds they see and record their results on the GBBC website. It’s a simple citizen science project to try. Even if you don’t know your birds, you can print out a list of what you’re likely to see in your area to help figure out which bird you’re looking at. And as the four-day project progresses, you can watch results come in from all over the continent.

The Bird Count is important to scientists, too. The information you collect helps answer questions about how bird populations are doing and how migrating birds are responding to the weather or climate change

But the Great Backyard Bird Count is far from the only citizen science project worth trying. While some science is done by people in crisp white lab coats, with specialized tools, a lot of it isn’t. Scientists don’t just work in labs, they don’t just use beakers and Bunsen burners, and most of the time they’re not wearing lab coats.

Also: you don’t have to be a scientist to do science.

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FILED UNDER: Get Involved, The Science, apps, Citizen Science
February 15, 2012 | 5:56 PM | By

The Case of the Disappearing Sierra Snowfall

A new report says snowfall in the Sierra hasn’t shrunk, but not everyone’s buying it

Molly Samuel/KQED

Snow has been sparse in the Sierra Nevada this winter.

There are good years and there are bad years, but overall, snowfall in the Sierra hasn’t declined in the past century. That’s according to a new study by University of Alabama climatologist John Christy (who, it’s worth noting, has come under fire as a climate change denier).

The San Francisco Chronicle had a story about the report, “Searching for information in 133 years of California snowfall observations,” (link is to the abstract; full article is behind a pay wall) in today’s paper:

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FILED UNDER: The Science, Water, Sierra Nevada, snow
February 15, 2012 | 12:19 PM | By

Leaked Documents Describe Corporate Agenda to Discredit Climate Science

Bay Area climate scientist named in disputed document

The climate corner of the Blogosphere exploded this week with the alleged leak of numerous documents from one of the nation’s most ardent opponents of action to slow global warming.

It started when DeSmogBlog published a series of documents that its editors said were leaked to them, revealing much of the playbook for the Heartland Institute. If authentic, the documents would validate longstanding complaints that corporate interests have been bankrolling a deliberate campaign of disinformation, aimed at casting doubt on legitimate climate science, and that Heartland has been an important channel for this campaign. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, The Science, climate skeptics, Heartland Institute, Peter Gleick
February 14, 2012 | 6:09 PM | By

Take Me to the River (Without Leaving My Desk)

A new project to visually map American waterways will start with California’s Sacramento

Craig Miller

The Sacramento River is a lifeline for California.

By the end of the summer, you may be able to float down the Sacramento River from your computer, thanks to the Riverview Project. It’s an initiative to document and map rivers, using similar tools to the ones Google used to create Street View, and with similar results: the ability to drop into a place on a map, click to move down the street (or float down the river), and take a look around.

“There’s reams of data (about rivers),” Jared Criscuolo, one of the founders of the Riverview Project told me. “But the thing we’ve noticed we’re missing is a visual piece.”

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FILED UNDER: The Science, Water, Citizen Science, Sacramento River
February 13, 2012 | 5:56 PM | By

Next-Gen Snow Surveys: “Activate the Laser”

New technology could provide a much clearer picture for water forecasts

Craig Miller

Frank Gehrke conducts a manual snow survey using a "Mt. Rose gauge," essentially a hollow aluminum tube shoved into the snow at predetermined locations.

In California, where most of our water comes from the mountains, being able to accurately measure the snow pack is vital. And it is in outlier years like this — very dry years, though the same goes for very wet ones — when water managers have the hardest time making accurate predictions.

“Knowing the water content of the snow in an entire watershed is the holy grail for snow scientists,” survey guru Frank Gehrke told me.

During the winter, Gehrke trudges into the woods on a monthly basis to do manual snow surveys for the state Department of Water Resources. DWR uses remote snow sensors, too. But even with all that data we don’t get an exact picture of the snow pack. So scientists from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are developing tools to measure snow with lasers. This new technology has the potential to be that holy grail that Gehrke’s looking for.

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FILED UNDER: The Science, Water, snowpack, Water
February 7, 2012 | 6:59 PM | By

This is Your Atmosphere on Drugs

A new report on extreme weather compares climate change to steroids

Julie Denesha/Getty Images

The tornado that tore through Joplin, MO in May was one of the worst of last year's extreme weather events. But tornadoes have one of the more tenuous connections to climate change.

As we’ve noted before, last year was packed with extreme weather events, but it’s difficult to out-and-out blame any particular one of them on climate change. Explanations are often along the lines of, “This is the kind of thing that could become the norm in the future.” The science just isn’t quite there to able to pinpoint any single event and say exactly what caused it.

To try to sort out what we know from what we don’t, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a consortium of universities doing earth science research, has a new feature on its website, “In Depth: Weather on Steroids,” about that science: the science of attribution, as in, what can we attribute to climate change?

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FILED UNDER: The Science, attribution, extreme weather