Dee Boersma talks penguins at the Future of Ice Speaker Series

Penguin swimming under water

The fifth event in the Future of Ice Speaker Series featured Dee Boersma, a UW scientist who has spent her career studying the ecology of our world’s penguins. Much of her time is spent in Punto Tombo, Argentina, focused on a large population of Magellanic penguins. She and her team have collected an impressive time-series of data on these birds–over 30 years–which has proved instrumental in understanding penguin ecology and the pressures that affect them. 

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Do Washington State students have what it takes to tackle ocean acidification?

2014 champions ORCA team 'A' after the awards ceremony at the Seattle Aquarium.

On March 1, Washington Sea Grant and other programs and schools from the University of Washington College of the Environment hosted the 2014 Orca Bowl on the UW campus. More than 100 students from 13 Washington state high schools competed at the event, focused this year on ocean acidification. This year, Everett’s ORCA high school team took top honors, and newcomer Redmond High placed second. 

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Secretary of the Interior visits the College of the Environment

College of the Environment Dean Lisa Graumlich and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell

The College of the Environment hosted Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell as she toured through Washington State to discuss climate change. On the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union address, where he spoke of the need to address a changing climate, the Secretary and Dean Lisa Graumlich teamed up to convene a roundtable of scientists, policy makers, natural resource managers and communicators engaged in climate issues. 

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UW seismologists expand stadium monitoring for NFC championship game

CenturyLink Field

The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network installed a third seismograph at CenturyLink Field this week in the wake of the Seattle Seahawks win over the New Orleans Saints last weekend that provided a trial by fire of the network’s website and new monitoring tools. Before last weekend’s game, network scientists set up two near real-time seismic monitors at CenturyLink to augment data from a third seismograph about a block away. 

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Seattle scientist distills 2,200-page report into haiku

Climate Change Science Haiku

The findings of the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment are critically important, but reading through the long, technical document is not something the vast majority of people will do. Issued late last year, the 2000-plus page report provides a synthesis of the scientific basis for climate change through graphs, figures and text. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer and affiliate professor of oceanography Greg Johnson – a lead author for one of the IPCC chapters – took an artistic approach to sharing the report’s findings, using the medium of watercolor and haiku. 

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