{"id":1710,"date":"2015-01-10T17:16:55","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T22:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2015-01-10T17:17:45","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T22:17:45","slug":"agriculture-contributing-to-darkening-of-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2015\/01\/agriculture-contributing-to-darkening-of-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Agriculture contributing to darkening of snow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new large-scale study by University of Washington scientists shows that agriculture as well as oil and gas production is contributing to the darkening of snow fields across the Northern Hemisphere, according to <em>Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres<\/em>. \u00a0This is of concern for long term climate balance since normally white snow reflects most sunlight back to space rather than keeping the solar energy near the ground. \u00a0As snow gets darker, it reflects less sunlight and absorbs more energy, leading to increased melting of ice caps like the one in Greenland as well as Arctic sea ice. \u00a0While oil and gas production and burning has always been considered the leading source of black soot, the study shows that dirt blowing off of bare ground in agricultural areas can also fly a long way and contributes to the darker ice and snow conditions. \u00a0You can read the full article describing the study at the <em>American Geophysical Union<\/em> blog <a title=\"Soot and dirt in North American on snow\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/geospace\/2015\/01\/08\/epic-survey-finds-regional-patterns-soot-dirt-north-american-snow\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1712\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1712\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/01\/dust-2-k7127-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1712\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/01\/dust-2-k7127-4-300x205.jpg\" alt=\"Source: USDA ARS\" width=\"300\" height=\"205\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/01\/dust-2-k7127-4-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/01\/dust-2-k7127-4-202x138.jpg 202w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/01\/dust-2-k7127-4.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1712\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: USDA ARS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new large-scale study by University of Washington scientists shows that agriculture as well as oil and gas production is contributing to the darkening of snow fields across the Northern Hemisphere, according to Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. \u00a0This is of concern for long term climate balance since normally white snow reflects most sunlight back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":1712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1714,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/1714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}