What is it like to do science nearly 2 miles above sea level?
At a majestic 10,500 feet elevation, Grand Mesa is the world’s tallest mesa, or flat-topped mountain. It’s also the site of an intense month of data collection by NASA’s SnowEx 2020, a ground and airborne campaign testing a variety of instruments that measure the water contained in winter snowpack.
Snow is vital for Earth’s ecosystems and humans, from its temperature-regulating reflection of sunlight and insulating properties, to its life-sustaining water as it melts in the springtime. SnowEx is taking coordinated measurements on the ground and in the air to compare how well different instruments work in different conditions. Not only does this help them improve measurement techniques in the future, but eventually, NASA can use this information in developing a future snow satellite mission.
The “golden” measurement they’re after is snow water equivalent, or SWE (pronounced “swee”).
“SWE is our measure of the volume of water held in the snowpack,” said Carrie Vuyovich, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and SnowEx 2020’s deputy project scientist. “It’s such a crucial measurement because the winter snow is a natural reservoir – when it melts in the spring, it feeds the groundwater, lakes and streams.”
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Image via NASA Earth Expeditions
