Adirondack Mountain Research Center Tracks Industrial Pollution and Climate Change

Interview with Paul Casson, operations manager, Whiteface Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

High atop Whiteface Mountain, the fifth highest peak in the Adirondacks of northeastern New York, the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center field station has been measuring data for more than 50 years. There, leading atmospheric scientists investigate the interaction of chemical, physical, geological and biological processes that impact air, land and water. The lack of industrial development in the area over that half century means that the annual measurements have pretty much the same baseline.

During the last five decades, acid rain from coal-burning plants in the Midwest has devastated life in the area’s lakes and streams. Measuring acid deposition was one of the station’s main objectives, but that data has also assisted researchers in studying the effects of climate change.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus recently traveled to Whiteface Mountain, where she interviewed Paul Casson, the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center’s operations manager. Here he talks about the work that’s done at the field station on acid rain, climate change and more.

PAUL CASSON: The long-term datasets that have been collected here for acid deposition studies are very valuable going forward with climate change studies. This is kind of our golden egg. There’s been a lot of work done here on biological indicators too, like forestry measurements and things like lichens and mosses that are growing on the mountain. I believe it was 2016 when the New York state Mesonet started. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but we have a station here. There’s 126 of these weather stations across the state. And, they’re measuring, all uniformly with the same type of sensors in a very uniform scientific way the weather and hence, longer-term climate across the state, things like the rate of precipitation. We’ve been measuring precipitation here for the national atmospheric deposition program since 1983.

Not just the quantity, but the chemistry of the precipitation. Those datasets are really valuable. I mean, anyone who wants to see the decrease in acid deposition can just go to the NADP’s website and look at the chemistry of our rainwater samples on how it’s changed since 1983, till now. Over a full pH unit of improvement, which it’s a logarhythmic scale, so that’s really significant. And we’ve been seeing the same thing in our cloudwater samples that we collect at the summit.

To the extent that the whole chemical regime has changed of the cloud water, this work has been funded by NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. And I think our ground-based, cloud-monitoring platform here is really unrivaled in North America. And it’s one of the things that I’m really trying to focus on. I like to give tours and I always like to get back to the fact that the environmental monitoring that we’re doing here is to assess the effectiveness of pollution controls. The big one was the Clean Air Act. And, we’ve been measuring trace gases here. Ozone since 1973. Oxides of nitrogen. And, SO2. These are some of which are greenhouse gases and some are not, but very valuable datasets.

MELINDA TUHUS: How would you describe climate change happening in the Adirondack? So that’s one question and I guess the other thing is, could that be extrapolated to other mountainous regions of the country and the world, or are they all unique?

PAUL CASSON: Well, they they’re unique, but they’re all seeing the same. They’re all seeing effects. We have been collaborating recently with Mount Washington and Mount Mansfield. University of Vermont is looking to build an observatory on Mount Mansfield. Repurpose an existing building, actually. We’re looking to form kind of a network of mountaintop observatories, where, much like the Mesonet where we’re all using the same type of sensors, we’re reporting the data in the same format.

So you can compare apples to apples. But as far as the climate change effects, we’re definitely seeing increase in overnight low temperatures. That’s kind of the easiest thing to see, especially in the winter. So the Mesonet also has a snow measurement component to it. Now we only have about six years of data on that right now, but it’s important to see not only the depth of the snow, but the water equivalency. They’re looking at things like the moisture content in the soils, the water equivalency in the snowpack for flood forecasting.

So we have these melt events in late winter. Sometimes we’ll get these rain events and we’ll have two or three feet of snow on the ground. And it’s important to know for hydrologists and flood forecasting, how much water is gonna be entering this system.

I think it also should be understood that climate change is a problem that’s been evolving for many, many years and we’re not gonna change it in the short term. We’re not gonna turn the ship around in the next two or three years. That’s just not how it works. But we certainly can prepare and we can minimize our impacts by being less consumptive, using less energy, emitting less pollutants and just being more aware of the world around us.

I’m so thankful for where I live here. I think we are in a very good position going forward for a changing climate. I’m concerned about a lot of other areas of the country and the world, especially the western United States. I think we’ve taken water for granted and that’s to our detriment. I mean, there’s been mega-droughts in the past out in the western United States. And it looks like we could be entering another phase of that.

For more information, visit the Whiteface Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Research Center field station’s website at whiteface.asrc.albany.edu/index.html.

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