PISCES (Pollution Impacts on Snow in the Cordillera - Experiments and Simulations)
The Pollution Impact on Snow in the Cordillera-Experiments and Simulations (PISCES) project will start the first week of August and continue until the end of October, 2014. The goal of PISCES is to test the following null hypothesis: “The increase in concentrations of aerosol particles in the atmosphere over the Andes have not made a significant contribution to the receding cryosphere in that region”. Given that precipitation is one of the key components in glacier mass balance as well an in yearly snowpack volume, the project will seek to determine how urban emissions are processed within the frontal clouds and deposited onto the surface in the high mountains and to determine if the deposition of BC onto the cryosphere occurs via cloud processing (wet scavenging) or via dry deposition onto the fresh snow, but in between the passages of frontal systems.
The specific objectives to be addressed are:
1) Evaluation of aerosol optical depth measured by satellites and ground based photometers to determine trends in aerosol emissions.
2) Collection and analysis of in situ pollution data (gases and particles) from a mountain site.
3) Numerical simulations using chemical transport and cloud models to test the hypothesis by i) linking the particle properties and gas concentrations to their source, ii) calculating the flux of BC to the surface and iii) simulating the formation of rain and snow from the CCN and IN.
A relatively large suite of in situ and remote sensing instruments have already been committed to this project from Chile, Mexico, the United States, Spain and United Kingdom, including many of the ones that have been listed in Table I.
The measurement site is located at the midpoint between the Queltehue hydroelectric plant and the highest point from which water is drawn. The coordinates of the site are 33°49'5.93"S, 70°13'2.79"W, 1500 m altitude. The figures below show the location with respect to Santiago (Fig. 1), a close up view (Fig. 2), a photo showing the valley below (with pollution) and Fig. 4 is a photo of the research team who scouted out the site.
The measurements will begin the beginning of August and will extend to at least the end of October with the possibility of extending into December.
More information can be found on Facebook
