NASA Airborne Snow Observatory Seeks Answers for California Drought

The droughts in California are still lingering and causing problems for farmers throughout the region. To get a closer look at the issue, NASA has deployed the Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) to see if snowmelt can help the droughts in the coming months.

Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in collaboration with the California department of water resources, are flying over the Sierra Nevada mountain range to measure the snowpack's depth and water content. Tom Painter is the lead investigator for the ASO mission, and notes that 75 to 80 percent of our water comes from snowmelt. He hopes to find promising information in the nearby mountain range so they can estimate when the drought will end.

The Airborne Snow Observatory is an imaging spectrometer and scanning lidar system that is used to quantify snow water equivalent and snow albedo. The ASO is equipped with an ITRES CASI1500 imaging spectrometer and an Optech Orion-H scanning lidar. The current mission, known as the ASO Demonstration Mission 1, is flying over the Tuolumne River Basin, Sierra Nevada California, the Uncompahgre River Basin, and the Rocky Mountains. It is recording information from all of these areas to better control and plan for water management.

The ASO will provide their findings to power-plant managers, water districts, farmers, and state officials. The instrumentation is very accurate, as NASA officials have said that it can calculate snow depth within four inches and water content within 5 percent. But how does it do all of this by simply flying over a given area?

First, lasers scan the snow to determine its depth and reveal how much water is contained inside. Then, the ASO takes an image to measure the amount of sunlight reflected and absorbed by the snow in order to figure out how quickly it will melt. This information can provide important local water suppliers and farmers with the information they need to prepare for dry or wet periods.

The ASO plane will conduct both weekly and monthly missions to track and record the information they need. The areas that they're examining supply water to many areas in the western United States.

To read more about NASA's ASO program, visit this Guardian news article as well as the ASO page on NASA's website.