Science Alliance

Dr. McKenzie Skiles first became interested in snow and climate change growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, and found that pursuing snow hydrology was the perfect way to combine her love of snow and mountains with her interest in earth science and climate change. She is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at the University of Utah, where she directs the Laboratory for Snow Hydrology from Research to Operations (Snow HydRO Lab). She has undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Utah, and a PhD from UCLA.

Her research is interdisciplinary and aims to contribute to our understanding of how much water is held in the mountain snowpack, when and how fast it will melt, and how that is changing over time using a combination of field observations, remote sensing, lab analysis, and numerical modeling. One of her main research trajectories is investigating the impacts of aerosol deposition on snow. She has published widely on this topic, including an invited review on the topic for Nature Climate Change. She was also a contributing author to the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

McKenzie believes in the importance of effective science communication and outreach and advocating for science informed policy. She has visited Washington DC to speak with law makers on multiple occasions. She is also an ambassador for the citizen science Community Snow Observations project, Vice President of the International Commission on Snow and Ice Hydrology, Incoming President of the Snow International Working Group (SINTER), and serves on the American Geophysical Union Cryosphere Focus Group Executive Committee.

David Hill is a professor at Oregon State University and a National Geographic Explorer. He has degrees in aerospace engineering (UIUC) and civil and environmental engineering (UC Berkeley). For over 25 years, he has studied how water behaves from snowy mountain headwaters to the coast. He collaborates with other scientists interested in water’s response to climate drivers and works with stakeholders to provide information on water resources. Hill is one of the founders of the Community Snow Observations project, which teams up with backcountry enthusiasts and professionals to improve models of snow distribution in mountain environments. Hill has also twice been an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. No matter the hemisphere, if it is springtime, you’ll find him out on skis sampling the snow between mountain summit and trailhead.

Charles Post is a Montana based ecologist, creative and ecological brand consultant, co-founder of The Nature Project (501c3) and a National Fellow at The Explorers Club. His academic and field experience stemmed from a baccalaureate and graduate school career at U.C. Berkeley while mentored by evolutionary ecologist, Dr. Stephanie Carlson, and later by the esteemed food web ecologist, Dr. Mary Power. Charles has participated in research projects spanning a diversity of vertebrate and invertebrate groups across North America from songbirds and salmonids to mayflies and stream dwelling amphibians. After completing his graduate work on the ecology of the American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), Charles focused on developing connections between science, ecology and the general public. Through creative outlets like film and writing, and consulting positions in the outdoor and technology space, Charles continues to pursue opportunities with the potential to help save our home planet.

Dr. Seth Campbell is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maine, an intermittent Research Geophysicist for the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory, and the Director of Academics & Research for the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP). JIRP is the longest operating polar research and educational program in North America. Over the past fifteen years, Seth has conducted glaciology, permafrost, climate, near-surface geology, and geomorphology research using a range of in situ, remote sensing, and numerical modeling methods. Seth has participated in over 50 field expeditions for research in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, South America, Antarctica, and the contiguous United States. His current research focuses on quantifying changes occurring to the cryosphere and the impacts of these changes on the planet. Additionally, through his affiliations, Seth works to promote a collaborative, international, and inclusive Earth science community, one that can more effectively tackle global environmental challenges we face. Seth generally spends his free time paddling and fly fishing or in the mountains, skiing and climbing rock or ice.

As a Climate Data Scientist at Rhodium Group in Oakland, CA, Ian builds tools to understand and communicate extreme event risks in a changing climate. His work blends earth system modeling with economics to understand how changing extremes will impact communities around the country and the globe. Recently, high-resolution climate impacts forecasts generated by Ian and colleagues in the Climate Impact Lab have appeared in a wide range of outlets, including public reports on climate risk by BlackRock, Inc. – the world’s largest asset management firm – and a new tool on Realtor.com and Redfin displaying property-level flood risk projections. He is particularly passionate about the climate of the American West, where he can be found sliding around on snow, dirt, or rocks depending on the season.

Dr. Jim White is the Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and a Professor in both the Department of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the founding Director of Environmental Studies Department at CU, which now has about 1,000 majors per year. He is actively engaged in exploring new paradigms of interdisciplinary education, and has worked steadily to break down barriers between the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, journalism, arts and business to better educate and train students and conduct research in the area of sustainability and environmental change.  His two main research areas are paleo- environmental reconstructions from ice cores and past and modern controls on the carbon cycle. He worked with Danish colleagues to first document the astonishing speed and magnitude of abrupt climate changes as seen in the Greenland ice cores.

He is an author on over 150 peer-reviewed publications, including more than thirty in the high-profile journals Science and Nature. He is a member of ISI Highly Cited, a group of the most highly cited authors that comprises less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers in the geosciences.

He has served on a number of national and international committees including the Chairmanship of the Polar Research Board of the US National Academy of Science, two US National Academy studies (chair of one on abrupt climate change), and co-leader of large multi-national research programs, most recently the North-Eem deep ice core in northern Greenland.

Watch Dr. White discuss “The Future of Skiing and the Science Behind the Snow” on a panel hosted in April 2017 at Arapahoe Basin and watch his interview with POW Riders Alliance member Jake Black at Dr. White’s offices at INSTAAR about science and politics in March 2017.

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From New Zealand, he obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been prominent in most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific assessments of Climate Change and has also extensively served the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) in numerous ways. He chaired the WCRP Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) project from 2010-2013.  He has also served on many U.S. national committees. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He has published over 520 scientific articles or papers, including 234 refereed journal articles, and has given many invited scientific talks as well as appearing in a number of television, radio programs and newspaper articles. In 2017, he was the recipient of the AGU Roger Revelle Medal for outstanding contributions in atmospheric sciences.

Read Dr. Trenberth’s blog post on Trump’s March 2017 executive order on climate. Watch the Denver Channel’s 2017 interview with Dr. Trenberth on “How will climate change affect Colorado?,” the 2017 Vail Symposium that discusses science, politics, and climate change with Dr. Trenberth as a panelist, and his 2015 lecture “What’s going on with El Nino?”

Dr. David A. Robinson is a professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University and since 1991 has served as New Jersey’s State Climatologist. A NJ native, he earned a bachelor’s degree in geology at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and a doctorate in earth sciences at Columbia University prior to arriving at Rutgers. Dave’s research interests are in applied climate, especially related to New Jersey, and in climate dynamics and change, particularly focused on global snow cover. He is a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the National Climate Assessment, and sits on the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. Dr. Robinson is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, has been named a NOAA Environmental Hero, and is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. He recently received the Rutgers Presidential Public Service award.

Read The Washington Post’s 2013 interview with Dr. Robinson, “Ask a state climatologist.”

Dr. Tad Pfeffer is a glaciologist, geophysicist, and photographer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a Fellow of the University’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering. Pfeffer’s research is focused on glacier mechanics and dynamics, and particularly on dynamics of ocean—ending glaciers and glacier contributions to sea level. He has done field research for more than 30 years in glacier regions from Alaska to Antarctica to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Pfeffer also leads the long-term study of Columbia Glacier on Alaska’s South Central Coast, one the world’s most extensively studied and most rapidly changing glaciers. He has served as an advisor to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP), and is a Lead Author for Chapter 13 (Sea Level Change) in the IPCC Fifth Assessment/Working Group I. He also operates WT Pfeffer Geophysical Consultants, LLC, providing consulting modeling, analysis, and assessments on sea level rise and glacier-related hazards.

In addition to his scientific work, Pfeffer’s photography has appeared in many publications in the US and Europe. He is the author of The Opening of a New Landscape: Columbia Glacier at Mid-Retreat, published by the American Geophysical Union in 2007. His most recent book is The Hand of the Small Town Builder, published in March 2014, by David R. Godine.

Dr. Thomas H. Painter is a Research Scientist of Hydrology and serves as a Principal Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and a Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the Principal Investigator of the JPL Airborne Snow Observatory, an integrated imaging spectrometer and LiDAR system to give the first-ever comprehensive, near real-time maps of snow water equivalent and snow reflectivity in mountain basins. His areas of interest are snow hydrology, radiative impacts of light-absorbing impurities on snow and glacier melt, water resources from mountain snow and ice, multispectral remote sensing and imaging spectroscopy. Dr. Painter has pioneered our understanding of the impacts of dust emission from land use change and black carbon from industrialization on snow and ice cover in mountain systems and the hydrologic response. He has also developed cutting edge remote sensing and field models for snow properties from spaceborne and airborne multispectral to imaging spectrometer sensors. He received a Ph.D. and MA in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a B.S. in Mathematics from Colorado State University. He is President of the Cryosphere Sciences Focus Group of the American Geophysical Union.

Dr. Anne Nolin is a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University where she heads the Mountain Hydroclimatology Research Group. Her research interests focus on snow and ice in the climate system, particularly with regard to water resources. She has published articles on “at risk” snow in the Pacific Northwest, glacier melt contributions to rivers from Oregon to the Andes, and new ways of mapping snow and glaciers from space. She received her Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of California-Santa Barbara in 1993 and from 1993-2002 she worked as a research scientist at the University of Colorado, spending several field seasons on the Greenland ice sheet. She is a member of the NASA Science Team for the MISR and teaches courses in snow hydrology, climatology, and satellite remote sensing.

Learn more about Dr. Nolin’s 2017 trip to the remote Wrangell Range in Alaska to study the iconic Dall sheep. Read POW’s blog post, “Sheep, Locals, and Wet Snow” here.

Dr. Gregory B. Greenwood, a natural resources specialist trained in agricultural ecology, population ecology, and ruminant nutrition, is Executive Director of the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) in Berne, Switzerland. His mandate is to develop a strategy to increase and focus global change research in mountain regions throughout the world as part of IHDP and IGBP programs, and as a policy objective of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Greg Greenwood was previously Bioenergy and Climate Science Advisor for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Resources/Science Advisor for the California Resources Agency, Sacramento. He has extensive experience with and publications on land use development and ecology, including global change in mountains. MRD Assistant Editor Susanne Wymann von Dach interviewed Greg Greenwood in August 2005.

Dr. Jennifer Francis is a research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, studying Arctic climate change and Arctic-global climate linkages, with roughly 40 peer-reviewed publications on these topics.

She has been at Rutgers since 1994, where she has taught courses in satellite remote sensing and climate-change issues and co-founded and co-directed the Rutgers Climate and Environmental Change Initiative. During the 13 months from July 2009-July 2010, her family of four spent a year sailing through Central America. She and her husband circumnavigated the world in a sailboat from 1980-1985, including Cape Horn and the Arctic, which is when she first became interested in Arctic weather and climate.  Francis earned a B.S. in meteorology from San Jose State University and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington.

Dr. Elizabeth Burakowski is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire.  Her research focuses on New England winter climate, snowpack properties, and the exchange of water and energy at the land-atmosphere interface.  She uses climate models, remote sensing, and ground-based observations to study how changes in snowpack intersect with changes in land cover.  Dr. Burakowski partnered with Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources Defense Council to produce a landmark report, Climate Impacts on the Winter Tourism Economy in the United States. Liz also coordinates a citizen science snow sampling network whose volunteers have collected snow depth, snow density, and snow albedo measurements for over five years in New Hampshire.  She teaches Introduction to Climate and Paleoclimatology at the University of New Hampshire.

Read Dr. Burakowski’s article, “If you like skiing or snowboarding, you should care about climate change,” published in The Guardian.

Dr. Jason Box is a research scientist and currently lives in Copenhagen.  He has made sixteen expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet since 1994 and his time on the inland ice exceeds 1 year. He was awarded a NASA grant to support the installation and maintenance of Greenland EIS cameras. Dr. Box is active in Greenland fieldwork for EIS and is using EIS photos from Greenland to measure glacier speed changes, putting precise numbers on glacier flow sensitivity to climate. As an authority on the relationship between Greenland glaciers and climate, he’s authored or co-authored more than 26 peer-reviewed publications directly related to ice and climate and has led, since 2003, the annual Greenland entries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and American Meteorological Society’s “State of the Climate” report. He was a contributing author to “Climate Change 2007″, the definitive report on the science of global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Follow Dr. Box’s blog posts on Dark Snow, read his 2015 New Yorker article with Naomi Klein on “Why a climate deal is the best hope for peace,” and his Huffington Post piece titled “Earth’s ice is melting much faster than forecast. Here’s why that’s worrying.”