Polar Reception and Nye Lecture
AGU Fall Meeting
Monday, 5 December 2005
San Francisco, California
Moscone Center West (Nye Lecture)
San Francisco Marriott Hotel (Polar Reception)
For more information, you may contact any of the following people from
the sponsoring organizations:
Wendy Warnick (warnick [at] arcus.org), ARCUS
Helen Amanda Fricker (hafricker [at] ucsd.edu), CFG
Carl Benson (benson [at] gi.alaska.edu), AINA
Larry Hinzman (ffldh [at] uaf.edu), USPA
Chris Elfring (CElfring [at] nas.edu), PRB
General information about the Fall Meeting of AGU is available at:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/
You are invited to attend the Polar Reception at the Fall Meeting of AGU
in San Francisco, hosted by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United
States (ARCUS), the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA), the AGU
Cryosphere Focus Group (CFG), the U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA),
and the Polar Research Board.
The Polar Reception and Nye Lecture will take place on Monday, 5 December 2005.
The schedule is as follows:
NYE LECTURE
5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Nye Lecture by Matthew Sturm, U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratory - Alaska
Lecture Title: "Snow Crystals, Shrubs, and the Changing Climate of the
Arctic"
Location: Moscone Center West, Level 2, Room: 2002
POLAR RECEPTION
6:15 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Location: San Francisco Marriott Hotel (55 Fourth Street),
Room: Golden Gate B1-B2
The Polar Reception will include light snacks and a cash bar.
***Please note that the lecture and the reception are not in the same
location. The reception will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel
located approximately one block away from the Moscone Center West.
General information about the Fall Meeting of AGU is available at:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/
Fourth Annual Nye Lecture
Matthew Sturm, U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering
Laboratory - Alaska
"Snow Crystals, Shrubs, and the Changing Climate of the Arctic"
At the peak of winter, snow covers more than 45 million km2 of the
northern hemisphere. More than 90% of this snow will melt before the end
of the following summer. In the southern part of this snow-covered area,
the seasonal pack is ephemeral, lasting but a few short weeks, but with
increasing latitude (or altitude), it lasts much longer. In arctic and
alpine locations it can persist for nine months of the year. In these
more extreme locations, the snow is an essential element of the
ecosystem, both acting upon, and being acted on, by the biota. For
historical reasons, our understanding of snow cover and its interactions
has come from two disparate scientific sources: geophysicists working on
glaciers and avalanches who were trying to understand snow properties
and to develop a physical basis for snow science, and ecologists who
were trying to understand the impact of snow on plants, animals, and
humans. With the recognition now that snow is both a passive and active
agent, we are seeing an increasing number of studies wherein both of
these traditional approaches are combined. Geophysicists are learning
the Latin names of shrubs while botanist can now identify wind slab. A
personal example that illustrates the necessity of this melding process
has been our effort to understand the climatic implications of arctic
snow-shrub interactions. We have had to combine traditional snow
geophysical studies (i.e., crystal growth, thermal processes, light
reflection) with traditional ecological studies (i.e., competition,
carbon and nitrogen cycling). Through this process we have discovered
that snow-shrub interactions, or more broadly, snow-vegetation
interactions, are helping to push the Arctic down a warming trajectory
that has global implications. Soil microbes and snow crystals,
wind-blown snow and shrubs, are all leading actors in a climate change
drama whose outcome is of concern to us all.