The National Science Foundation announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a five-year, $220 million contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The coalition, led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with direction from the NSF and guidance from the OOI Facilities Board, will include the University of Washington, Oregon State University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
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NASA launched a new satellite this month that will measure elevation changes on Earth with unprecedented detail. In the air, it will track shifts in the height of polar ice, mountain glaciers and even forest cover around the planet. Two University of Washington polar scientists — Jamie Morison, a polar oceanographer at UW’s School of Oceanography, and Benjamin Smith, a glaciologist at the Applied Physics Lab — advised the ICESat-2 mission that launched Sept.
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The Gulf of St. Lawrence has warmed and lost oxygen faster than almost anywhere else in the global oceans. The broad, biologically rich waterway in Eastern Canada drains North America’s Great Lakes and is popular with fishing boats, whales and tourists. A new study led by the University of Washington looks at the causes of this rapid deoxygenation and links it to two of the ocean’s most powerful currents: the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current.
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A region of West Antarctica is behaving differently from most of the continent’s ice: A large patch of ice there is thickening, unlike other parts of West Antarctica that are losing ice. Whether this thickening trend will continue affects the overall amount that melting or collapsing glaciers could raise the level of the world’s oceans. A study led by the University of Washington has discovered a new clue to this region’s behavior: A volcano under the ice sheet has left an almost 6,000-year record of the glacier’s motion.
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In recent years, faculty, staff, and students from across the College of the Environment have played a vital role in discussing, shaping, and ultimately creating a new Marine Biology major. This exciting new offering from UW Environment will launch during the autumn quarter of 2018. “I’m impressed that the framers of this major could simultaneously create something that is stand-alone, and something that can — and will — be used as a pathway to discover over majors, including Oceanography, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and perhaps event Biology and Psychology,” Lisa Graumlich, dean of the College of the Environment, said.
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