Technology
Dust blowing onto high mountains in the western Himalayas is a bigger factor than previously thought in hastening the melting of snow there, researchers show in a study published Oct. 5 in Nature Climate Change. That’s because dust – lots of it in the Himalayas – absorbs sunlight, heating the snow that surrounds it. Qian and Chandan Sarangi, formerly a post-doctoral associate at PNNL and now at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in India, are corresponding authors of the study. More than 700 million people in southeast Asia, as well as parts of China and India, depend on melting snow in the Himalayas for much of their freshwater needs in summer and early fall, driving the urgency of scientists ferreting out the factors that influence earlier snowmelt in the region. In a study funded by NASA, scientists analyzed some of the most detailed satellite images ever taken of the Himalayas to measure aerosols, elevation, and surface characteristics such as the presence of dust or pollution on snow.