Module VI

Module VI: What’s in the Air up There

1. Explain:

This week’s module has been an excellent reminder that polluting the air in one area of the world pollutes the air for the entire globe. I am reminded of a saying that brings this idea down to a more comprehensible and immediately palpable scale. “Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool.”

Although air pollution might not make its self apparent in the short term, its effects are serious and dangerous to be sure. Sadly, this is born out in arctic populations who eat many mammals and fish that are high in mercury and other lipophilic organochlorides (pollution nasties that are stored in fat). Mothers can transfer these chemicals to their infants and these infant's developing neurological and immune systems are attacked by this pollution.

Even though the pollution in the air is having ill effects on Natives who depend on sea mammals, the air its self has been an excellent medium for flight. Providing the bush with supplies and transportation can be a matter of life and death. I found the discussion about using ancient native knowledge about the weather to predict good flying weather in the Bush – especially when “scientific” weather forecasts signal conditions that are unflyable to be very interesting. The Native understanding of the clouds, ice in the air and even the slightest nuance in the winds allow them to fly more safely and informed about the coming weather.

One idea that I would like to push back on from this week’s lesson is the premise behind why air pollution concentrates more at the poles than it does elsewhere on earth. In the videos explaining the impact of pollutants on Natives and the ARCTAS mission there seems to be a common hypothesis that pollution collects at the polls because there is a  lack of sunlight in the arctic - providing for little air circulation. 

I am not sure how this can be considering that it’s usually windy in Barrow. Also, there are many more days that see the life giving warmth of the sun than there are days of total darkness. I commented on Kevin’s blog with regards to this and would like to clarify my understanding of this hypothesis.

In this picture you can see clouds surrounding the polar jet and forming Rosby waves!

Along with forcing me to ask some questions about the material for the week, I really enjoyed reviewing about Rosby waves and the global heat budget. I did not realize that heat and moisture moving over the earth accounted for so much of this exchange of power within our atmosphere. Dan Adair’s blog really helped me understand this idea.

Lastly, while reading Alison’s blog I came across a neat historical lesson about changing phase. In her blog Alison raised a question wondering if folks flash freeze fish by changing the atmospheric pressure around the fish. I don’t believe this is a cost effective option because I only found evidence of people flash freezing food products at very cold temperatures in traditional style freezers.

While researching the history of flash freezing I came across the story of Clarence Birdseye and his observations of Arctic cultures. He found it amazing that when Eskimos prepared food that had been frozen it tasted almost exactly the same as it did when it was prepared fresh. 

Birdseye figured out that freezing foods very quickly at very low temps allowed the meat and produce to keep its cell walls intact and keep the moisture and nutrients in the food. Fast freezing means very small ice crystals which do not harm the food like large slow growing crystals do. Large knife like crystals burst cell walls and break down flavors and nutrients. Birdseye went on to make a mint in frozen foods!

2. Extend:

The TD resources about weather patterns and how the oceans and winds work together will be a big help to me in explaining weather patterns that have affected both ancient and more recent cultures. A lot of the information from this unit provides the foundation to explaining why people settled where they did based on the surrounding weather and climate.

3. Evaluate

I found these resources and the information presented to be very informative on atmospheric pollution and how it effects Native populations in Alaska. I believe that having a good understanding about weather and how it works is important to understanding very common events. Storm fronts, bodies of warm and cool air – all of these can be easily modeled and explained using the tools from TD in this unit.

3 Colleagues

1. I appreciated Alison’s concern for the environment in her recent conversion to using organic products and extended some of her ideas about flash freezing.

2. I learned a lot from Dan’s graphic and relation of the latent heat flux to a real amount of power.

3. Finally I enjoyed Kevin’s inclusion of ice core data in the deposition of heavy metals in the Arctic as well as his discussion of the amount of light in Barrow.