Snow Problem? Why Arctic Snow Matters in a Warming World

At its winter peak, snow covers nearly half of the Northern Hemisphere’s land, yet it remains one of the hardest parts of the climate system to simulate accurately.

Professor Nick Rutter's inaugural lecture explores why Arctic snow matters and what is gained by getting it right.

It begins with early work in cold regions hydrology in mountains and forests, before turning to the Arctic tundra, where research has concentrated on simulating snow and its influence on the environment beneath it.

Snow acts as a thermal blanket. How that blanket is represented in models shapes soil temperatures and, with them, the winter release of carbon dioxide and methane from northern soils.

Small errors in simulated snow can become large errors in understanding how Arctic ecosystems will respond to climate change.

The lecture will highlight the team behind this work, from field crews and modellers to collaborators and PhD researchers, and ends with the reminder that life comes before science.

Professor Nick Rutter

Nick Rutter is a Professor in Physical Geography and Environmental Science. He is interested in the hydrology of cold environments and how the frozen land surface interacts with the atmosphere. Most of his current research focuses on making improved field measurements of seasonal snow and applying this knowledge in order to better constrain uncertainties in environmental models. Models he works with include catchment scale glacio-hydrological models, snow-forest-atmosphere components of climate models, and radiative transfer models used in microwave remote sensing of snowpacks.

Professor Rutter has extensive experience of making snow measurements in boreal and mid-latitude forests (e.g. Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Rocky Mountains in Canada and USA), Arctic and sub-Arctic tundra (Alaska, USA, and Manitoba, Canada), sea ice (Canadian high-Arctic), and on Alpine and Polar glaciers (e.g. Switzerland, Svalbard). As many of these environments are rapidly responding to a warming climate, better measurement, modelling and critical evaluation of variations in seasonal snow contribute to improved projections of climate change and our understanding of cold regions hydrology.

Register here.