Publications
PI Sarah Cooley led an international collaborative effort to compare multiple published datasets of satellite-derived global reservoir storage variability. This research was recently published in Environmental Research Letters. Overall, this work found generally good agreement between datasets, but worse agreement in highly variable reservoirs, new reservoirs, and in developing countries. Our results help constrain current uncertainty in our understanding of global surface water variability and provide helpful suggestions for how to improve remote sensing of surface water in the future as our capabilities for observing reservoir storage continue to expand. Check it out!

Other lab publications include two co-authored papers on meltwater on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The first is on the radiative effect of meltwater ponding and the second is on meltwater refreezing in bare ice.

Grants
Sarah and fellow Duke faculty member Johnny Ryan were recently awarded a new NASA grant to investigate surface water radiative feedbacks on the Greenland Ice Sheet through analysis of high resolution commercial satellite imagery. This two-year, $300k grant is funded by NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data program.

Fieldwork
PhD student Ana Stringer spent two weeks in Utqiagvik, Alaska in August conducting an initial scoping visit for her research on trail access and climate change, part of a large collaborative project led by the University of Leeds. Ana will be back to Alaska in the coming months to conduct more formal interviews with local land users about how climate impacts trail access.

Postdoc Elizabeth Webb traveled to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska in September to join a team from Woodwell Climate conducting permafrost and carbon emissions research in the area. Our group has been researching the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta using satellite imagery for a few years now, but this was the first time any team member has gotten to visit the YKD and we’re excited about opportunities for further research there in the future.

New Lab Member
Finally, we are very excited to welcome new PhD student Camryn Kluetmeier to the COOL Lab! Camryn has a BA in Geology from Middlebury and joins us from the University of North Carolina (just down the road) where for three years she worked as a research specialist and field technician focused on calibration and validation for NASA’s SWOT mission. We are so excited to have Camryn join us and bring her wealth of field experience and knowledge about SWOT to the team!