Author: Tung Nguyen

By Dianyi Li, Special to the Transcript

With global warming increasing at a rapid pace, no one would believe a country went cold.

In January of 2016, there was an extreme cold wave which attacked Southeast China. From January 20th to 25th of 2016, the strong cold air pushed the Chinese snowline southwards to its southernmost position since 1951. The average temperature was 6 to 8 degrees (Celsius) below the normal temperature.

Dianyi Li’18 conducted her student research project on exploring the relationship between Arctic Oscillation (AO) and this cold air outbreak in Southeast China.

Arctic Oscillation is a counterclockwise wind around the arctic area and could be quantified with AO index. When in AO index in a positive phase, the pressure over polar area is lower than normal, and the jet stream is as stable as a wall to prevent cold air in the arctic are from moving southward. While the it is in a negative phase, Air pressure is higher than average over the Arctic and lower than average over the mid-latitudes and the jet stream around arctic is weak, allowing an easier southward penetration of
cold arctic air masses.

When talking about the reason why she tried to correlate the cold wave with AO, Li said: “At the beginning part of this research, I generated climate maps of the general situation and the studied
weather event period. By comparing these maps, an abnormal location and more extreme value of the high-pressure center and low-pressure center are overserved.” These two pressure centers are the Siberian High and Aleutian Low which are major influential factors of winter climate of east Asia.

“Since the AO index is a projection of the anomalous atmospheric pressure patter, and there were papers studied similar relationship between AO and temperature, I decided to adopt this method to my study on this event,” Li said.

She then chose four weather stations to collect temperature data and ran regression between temperature and the corresponding AO index.

“The four weather stations I chose located from north to south, and from costal to inland,” Li said. “Temperature plotting of these stations show similarities between the trends. And when I plotted the 2016, January temperature data with the AO index, I noticed that before the temperature came to the nadir, the AO also came to a negative phase since the beginning of that month and came to a nadir on the 16th”

However, the regression results did not show a significant relationship. She used the regional average data instead of data from single weather stations and rerun the regression. However, the results also did not show significant correlation.

“This might be because AO only affects the extreme abnormal weather event but in this research I included general situations into analysis.” Li said.

The further work of her research will focus on picking up the days with extremely abnormal low temperature and rerun the regression with corresponding AO.

As a student majoring in economics and geography, she expects to combine her majors into these research projects.

“This January cold-air outbreak not only brought cold weather to Southeast China but also cause a huge amount of economic loss because of freezing and snow hazards came up with the low temperature,” Li said. “Many people lost their home because of the cold hazard. Agriculture and fishery also got hurt
seriously.”

Li said that the investigation of the relationship between AO and extreme cold wave would help explain propagation of the migration of extreme cold air over this region. She expects the result will help to develop a more precise forecasting and prediction of the extreme cold winters in Eastern China.

“With the global trending of climate change, there is potential danger of the increasing intensity or frequency of extreme weather. Beside taking measures to mitigate climate change, we should also think of how to protect ourselves from those disasters.” Li said, “Once we could use AO to improve the prediction, I then want to take use of my economic background to help mitigate the social and economic vulnerability of the freezing and snow hazards.”
Li has conducted this research as an independent study under the direction of Dr.Rowley from the geology and geography department. She will also develop a senior thesis on this research to apply for graduating with geography departmental honor.

By Chris Pessell, Special to the Transcript

When people think of large areas of ice on Earth, it’s a given that Antarctica is thought of first, with it being a continent sized wasteland of ice and penguins. However, most people forget that
snowy neighbor to the north, Greenland.

Greenland is the second largest ice sheet on Earth’s surface and, unlike Antarctica, has a significant amount of people living on the island. Greenland is actually a very important ice sheet, especially with the growing concern of climate change. When it comes to climate change, the polar regions of the Earth are most the most susceptible as even small changes to climate can lead to big changes in ice and snow accumulation. As temperatures continue to rise in the Northern hemisphere, an increase in melting and calving in Greenland occurs. Scientists predict that if all of Greenland were to melt, sea levels would rise by a little over 7 meters.

For the last year, research has been continued with Dr. Nathan Amador Rowley, Assistant Professor of Geology and Geography, from his dissertation on supraglacial lakes on the Ilulissat
Glacier in Western Greenland. The Ilulissat Glacier has the largest concentration of supraglacial lakes on the ice sheet and is responsible for 7 percent of mass loss for the ice sheet. The goal of the study was to better understand how temperature, data that is typically more accessible, relates to the volume of water seen filling up depressions on the surface in satellite images.

Mapping techniques, temperature data, satellite images, and a temperature index model all showed that, in the summers of 2013, 2014, and 2015, snow and ice melted enough to cause large volumes of meltwater to flow into these supraglacial lakes. This water would then flow out into other lakes or to the bed of the ice sheet. For instance, one of the lakes increased from over
13,000 cubic meters to over 3,630,000 cubic meters in a matter of days. A little more than a week later, most of the water was gone. That is the equivalent of 1,452 Olympic-sized swimming
pools coming in and out of one lake during one month of one melt season. The results of the temperature model showed that temperature was responsible for 70 percent of the volume increase.

What does this mean? Basically, as air surface temperatures in Greenland increase, so does higher volumes of water flow through these supraglacial lakes before flowing out to the ocean. This statement may seem obvious, but there are many different factors that also lead to increased meltwater production, like solar radiation for example.

When relating this research to increasing sea levels, things look grim and indeed, this research does present a warning that more and more snow and ice is melting. However, temperature data
in this study is just used as proxy for a real-world prediction. Melt is driven by many processes and reality is much more complex than any temperature model could show on its own.

Hopefully, this research and others like it will be a driving force in environmental concern that will fuel continued policy change and environmental movements such as the Paris Climate Agreement.

By Reilly Wright, Managing Editor

There is not too much more an Ohio Wesleyan student can ask for before final exams other than food, music and, of course, dogs.

The first celebration of Poochella, a community wide dog festival, was held on Ohio Wesleyan’s JAYwalk Sunday, April 22. Hosted by Pet Pals, an OWU student organization dedicated to helping animals and animal-related issues, tables lined with local businesses and visiting canines filled the area.

“We came up with the idea of Poochella in order to connect the students on campus and the people in the Delaware community with amazing local businesses that are dedicated to improving the lives of our animals,” said senior Alex Medina, president of Pet Pals.

Over 70 people attended the festival, expanding into both the Ohio Wesleyan and Delaware communities. Sophomore Courtney Fobel, treasurer of Pet Pals, said the event’s turnout for its first year was amazing.

“I am so grateful that so many people showed up to support our club, see the adorable dogs and visit with our pet-friendly businesses,” Fobel said. “The whole festival was a blast and I couldn’t have asked for a better day.”

Along with the dog-related businesses, Pet Pals also had stations for visitors to color, create dog toys, eat at Dan’s Deli and receive awards for memorable dogs.

According to Fobel and Medina, the club contacted over 40 businesses offering registration forms and space for advertisement in Pet Pals pamphlets. Five total vendors attended, but others donated to the available raffle prizes. Medina said the club hopes to contact even more businesses earlier in coming years and invite back those from this year.

“I would love to see if we can get more businesses to come so the festival can be even bigger and to expand our community outreach,” Fobel said. “I would definitely love to expand the festival and get more businesses involved with the OWU community.”

The festival’s location directly in front of Beeghly Library was welcomed by some students for a quick study break.

“Poochella was an amazing event for a student like me to destress and relax with all the ‘puppers’ there,” said junior Penell Paglialunga. “I loved the stations to create your own bandana and tug-of-war toys for the dogs. It was super cool to see the vendors that had their free samples for owners to try out for their pets.”

Fobel said members of Pet Pals are grateful for those that supported by visiting, but they want to see it grow in continuing years.

“Poochella will definitely happen again next year and I can’t wait for it to grow and bring the community together with our shared love for dogs and living a cruelty-free lifestyle,” she said.

By Tung Nguyen, Online Editor

Music, a burger in hand and competitive cornhole matches are all it took to make the world a better place.

Cornhole for the Cure 2018, organized by Delta Tau Delta and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) raised hundreds of dollars to help cure Type 1 Diabetes (T1D.)

JDRF is one of the leading organizations in funding for T1D research with the exclusive focuses on the worldwide effort to end T1D as well as accelerates life-changing breakthroughs to cure and prevent the disease’s complications.

Ahmed Wiqar, Philanthropy Chair of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity and who also organized this event, said: “With this event, we raise money for JDRF by charging teams for registration fees. It speaks volumes about the students at our university that we received a lot of extra donations.”

Two main requirements had been set out prior to the event. They were to raise as much money as possible and to have fun, which were both satisfied, according to the organizing team of Delta Tau Delta.

In total, there were twenty teams participated which contributed to the fund by paying registration fees, food fees, and personal donations.

“Last year, we raised approximately $400, and this year, we have gone nearly a hundred over that figure,” Wiqar said. “This is certainly a nice improvement and we hope that it benefits JDRF in its vital research.”

Ankit Singh, an Ohio Wesleyan University freshman, said: “the event was scheduled on a really great, warm sunny day. I am glad that this event helped to raise funds for JDRF and a lot of people seemed to enjoy it. Great work and great food also by Delta Tau Delta.”

One of the biggest surprises was the winner of the cornhole tournament: a non-Greek team.    Unlike the previous years in which Greek teams kept dominating the competitions, this year’s event marked the success of Hollis Morrison and Scott Hughes with their two consecutive wins.

Wiqar said: “we hope this encourages greater attendance of non-Greek participants in all future Greek philanthropy events.”