2023 Doyle W. Stephens Scholarship Winner
University of Utah
Bio:
Nancy Sohlberg lived just outside of Philadelphia for the first 19 years of her life and is currently an undergraduate at the University of Utah. She is a rising senior majoring in chemistry and has been a member of the Hallar Aerosol Research Team (HART) in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences for 2 years. Her research combines work with instrumentation and data analysis to investigate potential increasing dust loads from the dry lakebed of Great Salt Lake and its impact on the Wasatch snowpack. Nancy has a growing interest in exoplanet atmospheres and in the future plans to pursue a Ph.D. in a related field to combine her love for chemistry and atmospheric science. Outside of research, Nancy greatly enjoys the Utah landscape and the vast array of outdoor activities it has to offer
Title: A Climatology of Dust Events Impacting Snow Melt at the Atwater Study Plot in Alta, UT
Abstract: The Great Basin of Utah contains several significant source regions that deposit dust on snow in the Wasatch Range and surrounding mountains; these regions include the Great Salt Lake Desert, Delta, and the dry lakebeds of Lake Sevier and Great Salt Lake. This dust darkens the surface of the snow reducing its albedo, which causes the snow to absorb more energy from the sun and melt faster. Heightened snow melt in the Wasatch Range has negative impacts on Salt Lake City’s surface water supply and shortens the ski season for the Wasatch resorts. Despite these adverse environmental and economic consequences “there are currently no legal water rights to maintain lake levels of Great Salt Lake” (Skiles et al., 2018), the Wasatch Range’s closest dust source region. An essential part of the effort to gain these protection laws will be a better understanding of Wasatch-reaching dust events, their origins, and their impact on snow melt. My research is working to construct a climatology of dust events impacting the Wasatch snowpack for the immediate past, present, and future spring seasons (2017-2024), with specific emphasis on increasing dust loads from the dry lakebed of Great Salt Lake.