Scientists studying why some Tahoe clouds produce moisture
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
A Gulfstream turboprop sits on the McClellan Airport runway under gray, gloomy skies. Kim Prather has waited two weeks for this day.
“I can’t believe there are finally clouds,” she says gratefully as she and her research team check and calibrate several million dollars’ worth of equipment stacked in the plane’s cabin.
Looking for answers in Tahoe's clouds. Photo/LTN file
After the plane takes off, it slices through a 9,000-foot-thick layer of storm clouds, zigzagging up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada to probe the mysteries of California’s rain and snow.
Onboard, a special instrument that Prather invented and named “Shirley” will blow apart atmospheric particles with a laser and map their chemical composition, all in real time. Other devices will count and measure millions of cloud droplets, record water content and analyze gases.
On the ground, in the Tahoe National Forest, another array of equipment will simultaneously sample Sierra air masses.
Prather’s team is trying to figure out why some clouds give up their moisture and others don’t as they roll across the mountain ranges that provide much of the state with water.
They wonder: Is urban pollution reducing precipitation in Northern California’s high country? Is Gobi Desert dust blown thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean boosting the Sierra snowfall? Will atmospheric rivers — the moisture-laden bands in the sky that drenched the state in December and March — dump even more rain with global warming?
How much is this costing the taxpayer, who is funding it and who authorized it?
Do you not think that better understanding our water resources in California is worth funding?
Conservatives will gladly benefit from the knowledge gained by this type of research and then whine about who pays for it. Too bad we can’t just exclude them from gaining from this knowledge.
Bongo, we’ve got to stop spending money we don’t have at SOME point! You haven’t met a government expense yet that you don’t like.
Scratch that. I remember, you don’t like the govt. spending money for our country’s defense.
With water, it could very well turn out that this study pays for its self in the long run.
You have little to no respect for science. That is fine. Yet benefit from it every day and are ungrateful. In the long run the resource of this society will be more secure because we spent the money. Many scientists are underpaid for what they do, especially when you consider what they contribute.
In the end the money we spend on those intelligent weirdos who bury their heads in books and wander around thinking all day pays off. It is how humans progressed from throwing rocks at rodents, to following herds of larger game, to agriculture.
An immense amount of money was spent developing satellites and sending humans into space. And even more money was gained from the technology developed during those projects.
Oh and please explain to me what those trillions of dollars in Iraq defended.
I don’t think that you realize that some of your ‘conservative’ ideas in practice would drive us back towards a feudalistic society.