快猫短视频

BING CROSBY dreamed of a white Christmas. This December, I鈥檓 dreaming of categorising snowflakes. All in the name of science, of course.

White Christmas or not, you too can get up close and personal with snowflakes and contribute to climate research by taking part in the . It invites volunteers to flick through high-resolution snowflake photos taken around the world 鈥� from Alaska to the Swiss Alps to Antarctica 鈥� and help classify them by characteristics, such as their size and shape. You can access the project via the .

Snowflakes come in many forms. This makes them useful to climate scientists. The precise shape of a snowflake can provide information about the atmospheric conditions in which it formed and, in turn, about how Earth鈥檚 climate is changing.

鈥淐haracteristics such as size, shape and density are important for accurate forecasting of severe weather and global climate change,鈥� says Annie McElvein, the project coordinator for Snowflake ID, which is run by the University of Utah.

At the same time, global warming is contributing to changes in snowfall patterns. 鈥淎rctic snowfall has diminished in recent years due to global warming, the temperatures are simply too high for snow to form,鈥� says McElvein. 鈥淐onversely, as the Arctic warms, some regions are cooling off.鈥� Indeed, there is evidence that global warming is contributing to changes in atmospheric wind currents that may lead to cooling and more intense snowfall in some areas.

The project鈥檚 , from three different angles. These generate millions of images 鈥� far more than the Snowflake ID team can analyse themselves. Happily, more than 2000 volunteers have participated in the project so far, and their classifications are helping to train a machine learning algorithm to recognise and categorise different snowflake types automatically.

As a volunteer, you will be asked to spot key features of the flakes, such as little bumps on the snowflake surface called rime. These bumps form when a liquid cloud droplet is below freezing temperature and instantly freezes onto a snowflake that collides with it. The more rime there is, the more the particle resembles a fluffy snowball as opposed to a hexagonal star.

Learn more about snowflake structure and find instructions on . This and the rest of the project make for great holiday activities for snowflake enthusiasts young and old. As McElvein puts it: 鈥淭his project is fun for anyone aged 8 to 80.鈥�

For other projects visit聽newscientist.com/maker.