Our knowledge of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean comes mostly through satellites, which since 1979 have imaged the dwindling extent of sea ice from above. The University of Washington’s Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean and Modeling System, or PIOMAS, is a leading tool for gauging the thickness of that ice. Until now that system has gone back only as far as 1979.
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The Southwest has always faced periods of drought. Most recently, from late 2011 to 2017, California experienced years of lower-than-normal rainfall. El Niño is known to influence rain in the Southwest, but it’s not a perfect match. New research from the University of Washington and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution explores what conditions in the ocean and in the atmosphere prolong droughts in the Southwestern U.S.
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At the helm of EarthLab’s Washington Ocean Acidification Center are two experienced ocean scientists, but what they are trying to do is something entirely new. Terrie Klinger and Jan Newton are Salish Sea experts — one an ecologist, one an oceanographer — and they are addressing one of the biggest emerging threats to our environment today, ocean acidification. “When we first were funded by the legislature to stand up the Washington Ocean Acidification Center, there was no precedent.
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Congratulations to Cecilia Bitz and Abigail Swann for receiving awards from the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest earth and space society. This year, the AGU recognized 82 scientists for their “sustained and unique contributions to advancing our understanding of Earth, its atmosphere and oceans, and planets and astral bodies beyond our own”. Cecilia Bitz is a professor and chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences who studies the role that sea ice plays in shaping the climate in high latitudes.
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