Science Friday - House Science Committee, Superbloom, Snowpack. March 22, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

There’s been a changing of the guard in the U.S. House of Representatives. In January, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a democrat from Texas, took over as chair of the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology from her predecessor Lamar Smith. Smith was in charge of the House Science Committee for six years—an era that was defined by partisan attacks on climate science, and the issuing of congressional subpoenas to scientists. Chairwoman Johnson is looking to restore credibility to the House Science Committee, listening to the scientific consensus on climate change and aiming for bipartisan oversight of scientific programs. She joins Ira to talk about bringing science back to the committee, changes she plans to make from previous leadership, and how much progress will the new committee make when it’s up against an administration that’s been hostile to many of the agencies that conduct scientific research. Plus: This El Niño year has been dumping rain and snow on California's Sierra Nevada mountains. But water managers don’t just eyeball how much snow they think is up there, tucked away in those high mountain basins. Snow inventories these days are high tech, involving airplanes and lasers. Tom Painter of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech joins Ira to explain. The hills and deserts of the southwest have been putting on quite a show this spring—a superbloom that's better than some areas have seen in generations. Science Friday producer Christopher Intagliata headed down to Walker Canyon in Lake Elsinore, California, to check it out. See his photos and learn why superblooms aren't a regular occurrence in California. The New Mexico state legislature has passed a bill calling for the state to transition entirely to renewable energy by 2050. Laura Paskus, environmental reporter for the New Mexico Political Project, joins Ira to explain the details. And science journalist Annalee Newitz explains the surprising first results from Japan's Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu in this week's News Roundup. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll be talking with the new chair of the House Science Committee, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. Do you have a question for how Congress should spend your money on science research? Well, now is your chance. Give us a call 844-724-8255. That's 844-7-24-8255, or you can tweet us at SciFri. But first, this week, SpaceRour. researchers met in Houston for the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, and one of the big

topics was asteroids. Researchers from NASA's Osiris Rex mission talked about its trip to asteroid Benu, and members of the Japanese Hayibusa II mission gave the first science results from their encounter with Asteroid Rayugu. Here to talk about that and other selected subjects in sciences. Annali knew it's a science journalist and author based in San Francisco. Francisco. Welcome back, Annali. Hey, thanks for having me. Let's start off with Rayugu. What is it? Where is it? Why are people so interested in it? So this is an asteroid that is shaped like a spinning top, which means it's kind of wider in the

middle and comes to two points on the top and the bottom. And Japanese researchers were interested in visiting because it seemed to have a high amount of carbon on its surface, which suggests that it might have some of the molecular precursors to life, to life on Earth, because that's all we care about is life on Earth. And it might also have water. So they went and they found a couple of surprises. Like what? So first of all, sadly, it did not have very much water content or so it appears at this point. But it also appears to not be a solid asteroid.

It's actually more like a bag of... rubble being held together by gravity. So essentially, this is a ball of rocks that came together from an ancient collision, probably very early in the solar system's formation. And it created this spinning top shape at some point earlier in its history when it was spinning a lot faster than it is now. So basically, it's a bag of rocks. And the NASA mission, which is visiting a different asteroid, Benu, is actually visiting a very

similar kind of asteroid. It's also a top-shaped asteroid. It's also probably a bag of rocks. And it also suggests that the carbon content suggests there might be water. And there's already early signs that they may have discovered water there. So one of the big questions now is why are they so similar, yet one has virtually no water and the other one does? And also, both asteroids have had our probes land on them and are bringing back little pieces of asteroids to Earth. Some of the bag of rocks is coming back. That hopefully, yes. So in 2020, look out for that little tiny bag of rocks from Ryeugu.

I will quote you on that. Okay. Let's move on to other kinds of debris. There's new research into the things left behind by otters. That's right. So one of the many adorable things that otters do is they are the only sea mammal that we know of that uses rocks to get their food. And what they do is they use rocks like anvils. They smash them against shellfish to or smash them against abalone's to get them off of rocks and to get the yummy food inside.

And this leaves behind a very characteristic wear pattern on the rocks because otters tend to keep the rocks that they use. They find an anvil rock that they like and they kind of keep it in their pocket. They actually do have a little otter pocket on their bodies. And so as they use it over time, these rocks kind of take on dings and bangs on them that are. that are characteristic of breaking open shellfish. And this gave zoologists an idea about how they might study otter populations using tools taken from archaeology, which I like because I like archaeology. And so what they did was they spent 10 years on the California coast observing a group of otters, first looking at their behavior with breaking open those rocks and then looking at the rocks themselves and found that just as when we study ancient humans, from 100,000 years ago or 500,000 years ago,

we know certain kinds of rocks have characteristic wear on them that show they were used as tools versus just being regular old rocks that have been banged around. They can do the same thing for otters. So they're using this technique to discover tool rocks as opposed to just regular rocks. And what this lets them do is actually quite amazing and it lets them recreate what historic otter populations

might have been in the coastal areas because otter populations are disappearing. So we'd like to know how many there were, you know, 100 years ago, a thousand years ago. But it also can add data to our understanding of how big otter populations are today. If we can find a number of rocks, that can help us understand, you know, are there 20 otters or there are a million otters? It'd be nice if there were a million otters. Maybe not, maybe not a million. So this is just a great example of how you can import tools from one science to another and learn a lot.

Interesting, interesting. There's a strange story this week about researchers who put zebrafish into contact with bees. Whoa. How do they... You're going to have to connect the dots on that one for it. This is basically the kind of story that comes along maybe once a year where your brain is just blown. Basically, these researchers in Europe decided that they wanted to figure out a way to get bees and zebrafish to communicate using robots. And the reason they picked bees and zebrafish is that these are two animals whose behavior has been really well studied.

They both exhibit social behavior and collective decision making. So what the authors of this study wondered was if we could get those two collectives, the fish collective and the bee collective, to talk to each other somehow, would they make one big decision as a group? And the answer is yes, strangely. they created a robot that could communicate with bees, that could get bees to move in a certain direction left or right. And they also created a robot that swims around that could get the zebra fish to swim left or right. So the question was, could they get the robot that was talking to the bees to communicate to the zebra or fish robot? You know, the bees are moving left. You guys should move left to two. So what they did in the experiment was first they had the bees move

in a certain direction. They were attracted to this robot because it was warm, and so in bees are attracted to warmth. So they all moved left. And then the bee robot said to the zebrafish robot, hey, get the fish to go left. So that fish swims left and kind of pushes the school of fish to the left. So that worked out pretty well when the bees told the zebrafish what to do. Zebrafish telling the bees what to do, Not so much. They couldn't really get the zebrafish. They do engage in collective behavior. It takes them a little longer.

They tended to be a bit more chaotic. And so they would communicate to their zebrafish robot. Hey, go whatever direction you want. We don't care. And the bees would kind of have what the scientists referred to as a lot of entropy in their behavior. But the great part is, ultimately, they were able to create a loop where the bees were communicating with their robot, which communicated with the zebrafish robot with the fish. and it created in under 30 minutes, they actually did reach a collective decision about which direction to move.

And this really, you know, the implications for it are, yeah, it's super cool. And what it means is ultimately there's some kind of principle underlying collective decision-making that transcends species. And that is just mind-blowing. Well, you're right. Puff, mind-blown, Emily. My work is done. Your work is done. And have a good weekend.

and Annale Newett, Science Journalist, and author based in San Francisco. Now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Science where you live of national significance. New Mexico is one of the nation's top producers of fossil fuels, ranking third in crude oil production, ninth natural gas.

So it might come as some surprise that the state legislature has voted to shift the state to an entirely renewable energy portfolio by 2050. Joining me now to talk about what's going on in New Mexico is Laura Paskas. She's an environmental reporter for the New Mexico Political Report. She joins me by Skype from Albuquerque. Welcome to the program. Thanks, Ira. So how close are we to making this a law?

Well, actually, the governor just signed the act a few minutes ago. I'm actually not reporting on the governor signing it because I'm talking to you. Well, your mind's in the right place. Thank you. So why is it so exciting? Tell us. So the vote kind of, it did move through the legislature kind of along party lines. But this law also had support from environmental groups, the state's largest electrical utility, and also business and labor groups. So it's really a lot of people coming together to support renewable energy and also to move forward with the retirement of a coal. power plant here in the state. So what does the law say? By 2050, 2,050, all the renewables are going to be

powering the state? By 2045, actually. So we're looking at 50% by 2030, 80% by 2040, and with the goal that the state's electricity will be carbon-free by 2045. So how is this all possible there? So part of the reason we're able to do this is we have a we have two coal fired power plants in the state and both of them are in the process of being shut down kind of in parts so the one that's that that's really a part of this bill is from the 1970s but the san juan generating station has been shut down in pieces because it hasn't been in compliance with federal air quality standards and also as you know the price of coal isn't as competitive as some of the other sources of electricity. So it's been a process to move this, and now the goal is for this plant to be completely shut down by 2022.

You know, we're seeing the effects of climate change all over the country with the flooding in Nebraska and Iowa, with the fires, the wildfires in California. Are the folks in New Mexico seeing this also in saying we'd better get a move on? We are. I think across the state, we're seeing the impacts of climate change, whether that's been some of the really big wildfires that we've had. We also have really stark water challenges in the state, not just surface water from our rivers and streams, but also our groundwater levels are depleting. So that's a, you know, that's a big concern for the ag community as well as for cities and rural communities. So, you know, we're also seeing even public health impacts from dust storms and the spread of certain infectious diseases. And so, you know, climate change really is on the front of lots of people's minds in New Mexico.

Well, Laura, thank you for being so loyal and staying with us when you should be, you know, in state capital. Thank you for caring about New Mexico. We do. We do. Thank you very much, Laura. Paskis is an environmental reporter for the New Mexico Political Report. We're going to take a break and we come back. What can the 116th Congress do for science? We're going to ask the new chairwoman of the House Science Committee. Eddie Bernice Johnson is going to be with us, and you can ask her what you'd like.

A lot of questions, 844-8255, or you can tweet us at SciFri. Stay with us. We'll be right back after the break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. There's been a changing of the guard in the U.S. House of Representatives. A little less than three months ago, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, took over as chairwoman of the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology from her predecessor, Lamar Smith.

Smith was in charge of the House Science Committee for six years, an era that was defined by partisan attacks on climate science and the issuing of congressional subpoenas to scientists. Now, under new leadership, Chairwoman Johnson is looking to restore credibility to the House science. Science Committee, listening to the scientific consensus on climate change, aiming for bipartisan oversight of scientific programs. But how much progress will the new committee make when it's up against an administration that's been hostile to many of the agencies that conduct scientific research? Well, joining me now to talk about bringing science back to the House Science Committee is

chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson coming to us from her home district in Dallas. Welcome to Science Friday. So glad you could take to you. time to be with us today. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. Congratulations. In January, you became the first woman and the first African-American chair of the House Committee, but you're not a new member, right? So what drew you to the House Science Committee when you first came to Congress so many years ago? Well, I'm from a science background. I'm a nurse, and I was interested in scientific research. And at that time, that was very, very, very,

open to me and so I decided to accept the invitation and join and I've been fascinated by the committee and the content all of the areas that under the jurisdiction of this committee we've had some dynamic chairs and we've had some interesting chairs we just finished six years of a science denier but I think that we're gonna get on track so forth We have begun to move ahead. We've had the status of science hearing. We've had the status of climate change, climate science, and the status of STEM education,

which has been a long time interest of mine because I think that is the future. Let me follow up on that STEM education. I know there's something called the STEM Act, the building blocks of STEM Act, is in a bill introduced by Congresswoman Haley Stevens from Detroit, I think, and Congressman Jim Baird of Indiana in the House. And she writes, Stevens writes, will strengthen early childhood STEM education, lead to more effective policies and practices to increase the number of women in our STEM workforce.

You agree with all of that? Oh, indeed. As a matter of fact, that's been our focus a long time. I'm delighted to have her. she's very enthusiastic. As a matter of fact, we have a very energetic committee that's very interested in getting started, and I'm excited to work with all of them. And you seem to be having bipartisan support on some of these bills. That is something refreshing, is it not? Indeed it is. You know, I don't know what happened, but I can say that so far we're not getting the pushback that we were a couple. to have in the last six years. The chairman, the ranking member, Congressman Lucas from Oklahoma,

and I have worked on this committee a number of years together. We've shared trips to go to research labs around the world. And I think he is a little bit more open and pragmatic and accepting our scientific findings. He happens to be a former. from Oklahoma. But he is not a negative person. I'm delighted that we've been able to make some plans to work together. You know, you're familiar with the news this week that suggests President Trump has been resistant in giving congressional committees information they're asking for. Will you think, do you think you will be running up with that same kind of resistance, or will you have more success with your committee request?

We'll see. We'll see. One thing. I can say about the president. He's made sure that he's recommending cuts almost everything we're trying to do on this committee. We've got to discuss that with him. So we hope that he will have people available to us to explain why he wants to shut the door to the future. Can you give us an idea of what kinds of cuts you're talking about? Well, you know, we have the jurisdiction of NOAA that does all the weather reporting, the National Science Foundation, EPA, the Department of Energy. EPA's funding has been recommended to be cut severely and even rolled back some of the changes that have been made to move us forward. The National Science Foundation has been very irritated by the interference with the scientific,

grants that go out that provides us with the research that we need so badly to move forward. We have an educational responsibility to educate the president in his cabinet in these particular areas, and we hope that we'll be given the opportunity to do that. Do you think, because you are a science committee and you have to have a wide-ranging impact with science. Do you have to educate your committee members about science? In many ways, yes, but we have a number of scientists and persons with scientific backgrounds that have joined the committee, which helps a great deal.

We have different and new members as well on the Republican side. And so I feel very good that we're starting out on a very positive number. I don't believe that what we're experiencing now with all this weather change and the kind of responsibilities that we are picking up with all the damage. I just can't imagine anybody not wanting to look into what helps with that. What changes that? What saves the dollars? Prevention, of course, will be a focus. It's common sense to me.

So that's why I just feel positive that we'll be able to get. this message over. Someone who has gotten themselves elected to Congress. We really ought to have enough intellect to understand what we're talking about and what the research shows. That's interesting. I couldn't agree with you more. We had the new NASA administrator on a couple weeks ago, and he talked about his budget for wanting to go back to the moon as one of his high priorities. How do you see, since you're in control of the NASA.

budget. What are your priorities for NASA? NASA has been one of the greatest investments we've ever made for every dollar that has been spent in NASA. We have gained back at least $5 from the investment. So I know there are many people that don't understand all that we've gotten from NASA space research, but it has been phenomenal. It's been the greatest investment that this nation has ever made. And we do need to go back to the moon. We need to look at what we're going to do with the space station, which has been quite a place of research and sharing around the world.

And, you know, we're trying to get to Mars by 2030. We have been the committee that's opened the door to the future through all of the research endeavors at this committee. many covers, but NASA has absolutely been the best investment the nation has made. All of the satellites that NOAA uses to predict the weather came from NASA, the robots, and so many innovations that we need to continue to make in order to be competitive in the world. We have a tweet.

Our phone calls are coming in. We have a phone number is 8447-24255. We have a treat from Eileen Shabu who says, how will you value and promote basic research? Often these studies are the ones targeted by anti-science pundits and Pauls as, quote, useless, but doing science without basic research is trying to build a house starting at the roof.

I couldn't agree more. And yes, we do get targeted. But we feel so strongly about the positiveness of what we get from research, what we've gotten from research, what is it meant to us not only through health care, but through all types of increases in our economy, and just think about how many simple things have come from wireless technologies. All of this started through basic research.

You know, I live in an area where there's Texas instruments who develop the chip. That semiconductor has changed the way we live. can carry little computers in our hands now that we call a mobile phone and get any kind of information we want. That didn't just happen. It happened because human beings did the research and came up with the technology. You've said that climate change is a key issue. The U.S. needs to address. Does the House Science Committee have a plan for policies it wants to support or legislation it will introduce to address climate change? We're working in that direction. We're working on legislation. We're trying to make sure that we cover all our bases and getting the research out,

visiting where we do have research going on, and I must tell you that the corporate industry has shown as much interest in finding answers as others. The CEO of ExxonMobil was the first one to visit me after the election, and ExxonMobil has a fantastic research lab in New Jersey that we plan to visit. We plan to move in continent. with our basic researchers and listen to that research so that we'll have a clear path. We know that we're dealing with much of climate change globally. It didn't get this way overnight, and we're not going to clear it overnight, but we're on the path to address it.

We need to. The only way we can save dollars with all of the damage we're experiencing is to do the research and implement. Madam Chairwoman, does the committee take a stand on the Green New Deal at all? Are you just sitting and waiting for more of it to see what comes out of it? The committee has not taken a stand on that Green New Deal. There's a select committee on environment that is charged with that responsibility. However, we're working together with all of the committees that are looking at the climate change and what we need to do to address the issues we're experiencing. It is global. We can't do it all alone. But what we are noticing

is that we've got to catch up with China. They're investing heavily while our administration is pushing back. We can't afford that. We've got to address it. When you think of all of the dollars it cost us to clean up behind these major weather catastrophes, we must learn how to prevent it, and we must learn how to withstand it. You know, we got to deal with resilience of materials. We've got to predict better when we're expecting it. We've got to plan how we're going to build and where are we going to build. And we also have got to make sure that all this water that's causing these floods is also water we can. need for drinking. So we've got a lot on our plate. But we can do it if we have administrations

that will put people in place in these agencies that move ahead with the research and not try to stop it or deny it. Hi, Ira Plato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with the chair of the House Science Committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson. You know, you come from Texas. You remember Lyndon Johnson and the space programs got it right there in Houston. Do we have, how can I put it in any way? Do we have the wheel and the way to create new big programs that are going to take a decade to finish without, you know, politically being chopped up along the way? Well, I hope so, but that's been one of our problems.

We move ahead and then we get push back. We were moving ahead under the last administration. We felt nothing but pushed back under this one, but we cannot cave into it. We are a major branch of government that have direct responsibilities of the citizens of this nation. We must move ahead. We cannot afford to sit here and let all this happen without addressing it, without looking for answers, without looking for ways to bring it about, without breaking the bank, but also without destroying our total economies.

If we just sit back and do nothing, we can see what all of this damage will do with these massive floods, all of these fires. We've got to address these issues. We cannot wait for them to just go away because they're not going to go away. They'll get worse unless we address it. We have a basic responsibility to the world and to our nation to do it, and I'm determined. that as the committee having much of the responsibility for these measures, we're going to get there. We're also working with other committees that are addressing some of the same issues. We're dealing with energy and commerce as well as natural resources and any other committees where we overlap.

We intend to be serious about the people's business of dealing with health, and all the risks that we take when we ignore what's going on globally. Do you have a priority set? What would you like to work on first? There's so much here to work on. How do you decide what comes first? It's difficult sometimes. We know this.

We know that one of the number one priorities is to challenge, look at where we are and challenge where we have to go. We've already had hearings on the status of science. We've had hearings on the status of global environment, and we've had hearings on education, and whether we're ready to go into the future. Are we building this talent for the next generation? And what we are finding is that under this administration, they've cut out much of the education component of NASA. NASA has been one of the most inspiring agencies for young minds since its beginning.

And you mentioned President Johnson. President Johnson was one of the major leaders in getting us the major research of where we are now. And also focusing on education. We have got to make sure that our young people are oriented to the STEM education from preschool, all the way through the rest of life, to make sure that we're getting the critical thinkers. We are making good of imaginations and giving opportunities. and giving opportunities for all the innovations that we have already done, but all those that we must do to remain competitive.

We're about to lose our competitive edge in the world. I'm determined that we should not do that. Well, I want to thank you very much for taking time to be with this. You're the first chair of the committee to come on in six years on our show. So it's been a long drought, Eddie Bernice Johnson, who's chair of the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology. Thank you. And you're welcome to come back any time you'd like.

So just let's know. Well, thank you very much. I'm sure I will. Thank you very much. You're welcome. We're going to take a break. And after the break, we're checking in on that spectacular super bloom out west. Have you seen it?

And I go to our website. You can see this incredible bloom of flowers that are going on. Lots of that rain turning into flowers. And we're going to also talk about the state of the Sierra Snowpack, which we do this every year. Well, we'll fly over the snowpack. and all the scientists talk about what he sees and talk about predictions for when it's all going to melt and what happens. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The hills and deserts of the southwest have been putting on quite a show this spring. A super bloom that's better than some areas have seen in generations. Our producer of Christopher and Taliatta headed down to Walker Canyon in Lake Elsinore, California, where a bloom so spectacular is going on that there have been traffic jams,

freeway closures, and swarms of frenzied flower seekers trampling through the orange poppy fields. A situation the city has called a poppy lips. Senior producer Christopher in Talata paints the word picture. When I first arrived, it looked like a music festival. Big traffic jam, lines of cars parked on the shoulder,

streams of people walking along the road towards the big event. Then, past the highway patrol barricades and porta-potties and ice cream trucks, I saw the main attraction. Remember Wizard of Oz going through the fields? It looks like that. Oranges and purples and yellows. It's like Dr. Seuss in real life. Powdered cheese everywhere. It's on fire, but in a really good way.

Our Mother Nature just vomited a thousand flowers. This year's bloom has lit up California in the southwest. laying down huge fields of flowers on deserts, plains, and hillsides. Here, for 50 years, and this is the best I've ever seen. Richard Minnick is an ecologist and meteorologist at UC Riverside. He wrote a book called California's Fading Wildflowers. It's what defines super, and I said it's in the eye of the beholder. And while super may be subjective, the fact is big blooms like these don't happen every year.

It's sort of like playing a slot machine. Three factors have to line up just right in order to hit the super bloom jackpot. The first, of course, is rain. Back in October, the remnants of two tropical storms soaked the southwestern deserts, making it the wettest October in Phoenix since record-keeping began in the 1890s. On top of that, Southern California's high coastal mountains usually pick off rain and snow from incoming storms. That means there's not much water left for the deserts to the east. But this winter, several storms came in the back door, from the south, and when that happens...

The Morphorne into the deserts. But rain alone doesn't... doesn't add up to a super bloom. The second factor is seeds. They can be pretty finicky about when to put down roots, says Carol Baskin of the University of Kentucky. She says if you water a seed at the wrong time, I'm not interested. Many seeds need to bake in the summer heat to prime the seeds for germination in the next rainy season. And the purple Lupin's carpeting the slopes of Southern Joshua tree right now actually have waterproof seeds. That means water can only enter when a very small spot of tightly packed cells, called the lens, opens up.

So under the proper conditions, the seal spread apart just slightly. So unless it stays wet for a fairly long time, there's not enough water for the seed to germinate. It's almost like a rain gauge. The poppies and verbena and primroses have a different kind of seed that's permeable to water. But they're picky about the temperature. Some species germinate when it's warm and wet, others when it's cool and wet. And aside from stubborn seeds and variable weather, there's a third factor at play, invasive grasses. In the mountains above Palm Springs, I saw dense pastures of a tall, green, tufted grass.

Richard Minnick, the professor at UC Riverside, says it's an invasive grass from South Africa, just one of many that out-compete the state's wildflowers. But there's one thing that can take them down. Last winter, Southern California got only a third of its usual precipitation, which Minnick says thinned out the grasses and freed up real estate for this year's wildflowers. So all those things had to line up, a dry winter last year, a prolonged wet winter this year, and the cooperation of temperamental seeds, all to let these wildflowers rise up against the odds to survive and hopefully to reproduce. But not all onlookers are giving the wildflowers the respect they deserve.

At Walker Canyon, I saw dozens of trails trampled through the wildflowers. I saw people picking poppies to tuck behind their ears and into their hats. Lots of the hikers I talked to, like Sue, who lives just up the road, were concerned about people disrespecting the place. Just remember you're in our backyard, and we do live here, and if you're going to be able to enjoy this and it's free, and it's here for everybody, you have to cooperate and stay out of the areas that they've asked you to stay out of.

But if you think these poppy fields are just a casualty of the Instagram era, you should know that we've been loving wildflowers to death for a lot longer than that. In his book, Minnick has a clipping from the Riverside Press and Horticulturalist dated March 1905, which describes crowds of schoolchildren and tourists gathering poppies

by the armload. Spare the poppies, the paper writes, and it continues, if the crowds of people and children who have been engaged in pulling up these beautiful flowers do not show more discretion, the poppies will not be there next year. In Los Angeles, I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

There's still time to see the Super Bowl bloom, and it's happening all over. You can check our website at Science Friday.com slash Superbloom for photos and more information on where to see wildflowers this season. As we heard in that

piece, this El Niño year has been dumping rain and snow on the west that's adding up to a bumper year for the white stuff, enough that people will be able to ski down California's mammoth mountain until at least the 4th of July.

All that snowpack is a good thing for California and the western U.S. But water managers don't just eyeball how much snow they think is up there, tucked away in the mountains. Snow inventories these days are high-tech involving airplanes and lasers. Joining me now on this World Water Day to explain is Tom Painter, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech. He joins us from Mammoth Lakes, California. Welcome. Nice to have you back. Thanks, Ira. It's good to be on.

Nice to have you. Tom, Tom, you've been up there flying over the mountains? What are you seeing? Is it good news or bad news about the snowpack this year? Well, the team has been flying and it's definitely good news. And we, as was mentioned earlier, last year wasn't really a great year. It was about 65% of normal. This year, we're more than double that.

And I've been trying to catch up with the big snowpocalypse that we had two years ago when I was last on. And one of the great things that we're seeing this year, though, is that in the lower elevations of these mountain basins, there's still a lot of snow. We've had a relatively cold year compared to the last 10 years. And so we're keeping that accumulation of snow. The nice thing about that, not only in that there's more elevation bands with snow,

but there's more surface area at those lower elevations. And so that means that much more water accumulating this year. So it's a good message that we're seeing out there right now. Give us a quick snapshot of how your system works. You fly overshooting lasers at the snow, right? That's right. That's right. So there are two lasers that are one looking out slightly forward and one slightly backwards. We fly on a plane at about.

20,000 feet and measure how far away the snowpack is. Well, we do that also when there's no snow on the ground and the difference between those two is the snow depth. And it's a bit more complicated than just subtraction. We also have to deal with passing through the trees and then we have to bring in information about the snow density. How dense is it? Is it really dense or is it really light snow and that controls then how much a certain amount of depth turns into a layer of water. Can you give me an idea of the range of the snowpack, how tall in some places, how deep? Yeah, so in 2017, it was a huge year and there were places in this year where we were finding snow that had fallen and then been redistributed through either wind or avalancheing,

to depths greater than 100 feet. This year, we're looking at about 60 to 70 feet as our deepest depths so far. But again, compared to 2017, which was a huge year for accumulation, the lower elevations down to around 5,000, 6,000 feet are seeing quite a bit of snow depth that had in 2017, there was no snow down there. So we've got a we've got kind of a more level snowpack across the Sierra right now. And from a water management standpoint, that is, that's really important and really helpful because it's a far more predictable snowpack going forward and a snow melt release coming out of the mountains.

That's what I was going to ask you next. Will this help recharge the aquifers out there from that long drought that California's had? Absolutely. Having these kinds of big years is great for refilling the reservoirs and likewise refilling the aquifers that were depleted greatly during the intense drought. And that works in different layers either through the natural process of the recharge coming off of the mountains from the mountain block itself. or many of the water management entities now are working on processes to recharge, taking some of the extra water that would otherwise head out into the ocean and putting it out onto fields for recharge. So not only are we seeing these improvements in the technology of measuring the snowpack,

but we're also starting to see these improvements in our ability to recharge our aquifers. You know, we've seen, I'm sure you have also this massive flooding out in the middle. Midwest this week. And some of some, it's just unprecedented. The climate change is just causing crazy things. Some of that is due to rapid snowfall and rapid snow melt. What's your take on that and how that might affect, how snow melt affects flooding? Yeah, so that out on that landscape of the upper Midwest, there was quite a bit of snow distributed out across the Dakotas and Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, and then the sudden rains that came on top of that, if you think about the way this works, the snow is precipitation falling out of the sky, except that it sits there and doesn't run off immediately. So it's kind of like you have a reservoir as well sitting there out on the landscape.

and when you get heavy rains, high temperatures, lots of water vapor interacting with that snow, it then liberates that water. And so that reservoir is suddenly opened up and it's almost like a dam breaking. And that's why you see such intense flooding out across the landscape. And that's one of the big... I'm sorry, I didn't.

I can jump in with a break. Okay, that's one of the big what? That's one of the big reasons we're so worried. about climate change is these rain onto snow events going forward. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Tom Painter, principal scientist at NASA's JPL at Caltech. Of course, some of the reasons that some of the problems with the Midwest that you don't have, or maybe you do, certainly not out in the plains, the valley of California,

is you have this water on top of frozen ground. It's been frozen all winter, right? It's got no place to go except rush away. Well, that's right. And although the soils up here do, they do tend to dry out in the fall. And so you can get percolation of that water into the groundwater. Really, one of the big concerns for us when we have big snow packs like this is a rain-on-snow event, just like what happened in the Midwest.

and that convergence of all that water down, the steep canyons coming off the Sierra and out into the Central Valley of California and many of the cities that are not as well protected as they could be. And so having that understanding of snowpack and the processes going forward is really critical to protect our infrastructure, protect our water resources, and in general to stay safe. So is that something you'd be looking out for?

Is the threat of a big rainstorm coming through and melting a lot of the snowpack? Yeah, either rainstorms falling out onto this large snowpack or intense melt period. So the skies clearing and temperatures being higher. And so all of these energy inputs going into the snowpack to melt it very rapidly. Now, fortunately, this has been a colder than average year. And so when the snow falls out of the sky, it falls at a lower temperature. And so it takes that much more energy to warm that snowpack up to where it's in a place of melting. But even then, if we get rain on snow, even at the top surface, that can create a substantial snowmell pulse and flooding potential.

Is climate change making it more difficult to predict? what happens to the snow and whether it can feed the summertime, the water that you need? Well, it absolutely is. So the way that the way that the water management and stream flow forecasting has been carried out over the decades is with averages across, across say 20 years and relationships built around that. But as the climate has been changing, so temperatures have been increasing, and there have been more extremes in dry to wet, those relationships that those predictions of stream flow

have been built around have become less reliable. And that's why these new technologies that we've implemented have become that much more relevant and important to being able to understand that snowpack. So instead of averaging a good forecast across a decade, we want every year to have an excellent forecast. We don't want to just have to be able to average to, well, across 10 years, we do pretty well in the average year. We want to do well in every year. Tom Painter, principal and scientist at NASA's JPL and Caltech. Thank you for joining me today.

Thanks, Ira. You're welcome. And we have great photos and videos of these snow surveys high above the Sierra Nevada up at ScienceFriday.com slash snowpack. And one last note for all your New York area listeners. We're bringing Science Friday to Bam in Brooklyn for a live show with topics tailor-made for you New Yorkers, like the secret lives of city pigeons, and how you can help artificial intelligence decode the sounds of New York City. plus a live band, all kinds of surprises. That's Saturday night, April 27th.

Saturday night, April 27th. Tickets and info at ScienceFriday.com slash Brooklyn. Hope to see you Saturday night, April 27th. Charles Berkowitz is our director, our senior producer, Christopher Taliatta. Our producers are Alex L.M., Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. Special thanks to our digital producer,

Johanna Meyer, for helping us put together our packages this week on the snowpack and the super bloom. You can see both at Science Friday. of course technical and engineering help every week from rich kim's hairfishman and kevin wolf you can email us if you'd like to sci fry at science friday.com all kinds of good stuff up on our website ira flato in new york