Polar bears in Baffin Bay skinnier, having fewer cubs due to less sea ice
Kristin Laidre/University of Washington
Kristin Laidre with two polar bear cubs.
Polar bears are spending more time on land than they did in the 1990s, due to reduced sea ice, new University of Washington-led research has found. Bears in Baffin Bay are getting thinner and adult females are having fewer cubs than was recorded at times when sea ice was more available.
The new study published in Ecological Applications compares polar bear satellite tracking and visual monitoring data from the 1990s with more data collected in recent years.
“Climate-induced changes in the Arctic are clearly affecting polar bears,” said lead author Kristin Laidre, associate professor at UW Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “They are an icon of climate change, but they’re also an early indicator of climate change because they are so dependent on sea ice.”
The international research team focused on a subpopulation of polar bears around Baffin Bay, a large expanse of ocean situated between northeastern Canada and Greenland. The team tracked the moments of adult female polar bears, assessed litter size, and measured the general health of this subpopulation, starting with data from the 1990s and comparing it to data collected between 2009 and 2015.
Polar bear movements generally follow the annual growth and retreat of sea ice. In early fall, when sea ice is at its minimum, these bears end up on Baffin Island, on the west side of the bay. They wait on land until winter when they can venture out again onto the sea ice.
Two UW Environment scientists awarded Sloan Fellowships for early-career research
Two faculty members at the University of Washington have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 12, are Kyle Armour and Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño, both assistant professors in the College of the Environment.
Open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields — chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics — the fellowships honor those early-career researchers whose achievements mark them among the next generation of scientific leaders.
The 126 Sloan Fellows for 2020 were selected in coordination with the research community. Candidates are nominated by their peers, and fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars based on each candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in their field. Each fellow will receive $75,000 for their research endeavors.
University of Washington
Kyle Armour
Armour is an assistant professor in both the School of Oceanography and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He is studying the role of the ocean in climate change using a combination of oceanographic and atmospheric observations, numerical climate model simulations and theory. Among his research topics are the role of oceanic and atmospheric circulations in moving heat around the climate system and how ocean currents interact with atmospheric processes to set the rate and magnitude of global warming. Armour is a lead author on the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.
“My group works on a variety of topics in oceanography and atmospheric sciences, but as a collection, they focus on how the large-scale dynamics of the Earth system influence…climate variability and change, and how that spatial pattern, in turn, influences global warming,” Armour said. “A major focus is to provide an improved understanding of global and regional climate predictably on timescales of decades to centuries.”
Jacqueline Padua Gamino
Padilla-Gamiño is an assistant professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. She is an environmental physiologist with a background in photobiology, reproduction, molecular ecology and oceanography. She studies the ecophysiology and reproductive biology of algae and marine invertebrates in a changing environment. By combining field and laboratory techniques, she examines the importance of transgenerational effects in acclimatization and local adaptation, and she investigates the synergistic effects of multiple stressors on coastal ecosystems. Padilla-Gamiño is interested in science communication and community engagement and is the author of the bilingual children’s book “Kupe and the Corals,” which has been translated into five languages.
“My research has uncovered fundamental insights on global change biology, parental effects, symbiosis, coral reproduction and the effects of ocean acidification and microplastics in seafood,” she said.
New radar technology sheds light on never-before-seen Antarctic landscape
17,000 years ago, Seattle was covered by an ice sheet that stood over 3,000 feet tall (for reference, the current tallest building in Seattle, the Columbia Tower, is just under 937 feet). As the ice advanced and eventually receded, it carved massive valleys, mountains and lakes into the earth to create the glaciated land and seascape we recognize today. Read More
SAFS assistant professor and Burke Museum ichthyology curator Luke Tornabene.
In 2017, University of Washington ichthyologist Luke Tornabene was inside a small submersible called Idabell near the island of Roatan, Honduras. Sitting next to him were a masters’ student in his lab named Rachel Manning, and a pilot. They were collecting samples of marine life 550 feet deep when they spotted an unfamiliar bright blue and yellow fish.
“We knew it was something new before we even got it into the collection tube,” Tornabene says, excitement still clear in his voice. “You can hear us on the recording yelling, ‘Get it! Get it!’” They were right: it was a new species of reef fish, which they dubbed Lipogramma idabeli.
Collecting samples aboard one of only two research submersibles in the Caribbean is a special opportunity for any student of fish biology. But when your professor is also the ichthyology curator at one of the premiere natural history museums in the country, it’s just one of many perks. Tornabene’s dual role as an assistant professor in the College of the Environment’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and curator of the ichthyology collection at the Burke Museum of History and Culture gives his undergraduate and graduate students unique access to the largest collection of preserved fish specimens in North America—currently around 13.5 million—as well as the chance to put that experience to use in the field.
Founded in 1885 by an enthusiastic group of young naturalists, the Burke Museum was eventually designated the Washington State Museum. Today, it’s the oldest of its kind in the state, with a collection of over 16 million artifacts and specimens spanning geology, biology and anthropology.
Specimens at the fish library.
Of 12 Burke curators, Tornabene is the only one in the College of the Environment; 11 are faculty of the College of Arts & Sciences. His domain is housed in a separate building just south of the main museum: 13.5 million preserved fish specimens from around the world, from steel tanks filled with preserved sharks to one of the largest collections of fish eggs and larvae in the world. “We are definitely the largest in terms of the most specimens,” he says, “the ‘Bulk of the Burke.’” (The total number of objects in the Burke’s collection is 16 million.)
Tornabene’s multi-part role keeps him busy supporting the ichthyology collection’s mission to promote both teaching and research. On one hand he supervises the management of the world-class collection as curator, making sure his staff of half a dozen or so undergrads “keeps the lights on and the museum running.” He also oversees the addition of 5,000 or so specimens every year, including a few thousand he and students collect personally.
As a professor, Tornabene is tasked with ensuring students are able to take full advantage of the museum’s resources. He teaches a fish biology class, for example, where students tour the collection and use specimens in their labs. Tornabene supervises graduate research and study abroad courses that draw on the experience of other Burke curators. One study abroad course he runs with Holly Barker, Curator for Oceanic and Asian Culture, has students using the ichthyology collection to examine links between human culture and marine biology before heading to Tonga and American Samoa.
Other fish biology students work with the Burke’s educational and public outreach events, including hosting school groups and other visitors (over 100,000 people visit the Burke every year). Early this year, a new exhibit at the museum will give visitors a peek at four curators’ research projects. One of these will feature two models of the Idabell and a few preserved specimens it helped collect—including a very special blue and yellow fish.
What does a hot day in Bali have to do with a dry day in Seattle?
Consider this: the U.S. West Coast has seen a decrease in rainfall between 1981-2018. UW scientists think a phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) might be to blame. A stormy disturbance that occurs several times a year in the tropics, the MJO is similar to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which is notorious for generating extreme winter weather in the Pacific Northwest. Both are closely tied to changes in sea surface temperatures. But while El Nino always remains off the West Coast of South America, the MJO actually moves from the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific.
Daehyun Kim, an atmospheric scientist focused on tropical weather patterns, contributed to recent research which suggests that trends in decreased rainfall here in the Pacific Northwest may be linked to warming in the Western Pacific Ocean, near Indonesia. The warming ocean affects weather patterns, increasing rainfall in the Amazon, southwest Africa and northern Australia, and reducing it in parts of Asia and Western North America.
As it travels over the tropics, the MJO affects local weather but it also impacts weather patterns thousands of miles away by changing the atmospheric currents moving around the earth. “The change in the West Coast precipitation is consistent with what we’d expect from the changes in the MJO life cycle,” said Kim. Washington, Oregon and California have less rainfall because the ocean on the other side of the globe is warming.
Researchers have drawn a link between changes in the MJO life cycle and weather events around the planet. The 2013-2014 California droughts, the 2011 east Africa drought, and major southeast Asia flooding in 2011 all occurred in years when this phenomenon spent more days than usual over Indonesia and the West Pacific. “As the climate warms, the temperature of the seawater [in the West Pacific] increases and that affects the life cycle of the MJO” said Kim. The disturbance spends less time over the Indian Ocean and more time over Indonesia and the West Pacific. This, in turn, corresponds to the decrease in rainfall that we’ve experienced over the past several decades in the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle’s Pike Place Market (pictured here) is almost as famous as Seattle’s rainy weather.
Kim continues to research how the MJO forms and the conditions that change its formation. “There is some relationship between larger-scale circulation and the MJO. I am trying to understand which aspects of the average climate modulate the speed, size and formation of the MJO.”
How will continued warming in the West Pacific Ocean impact drought-prone areas of the U.S. West Coast? What could this mean for areas susceptible to wildfires? While we may not fully understand the details of these interactions, we do know that we can expect ongoing change to tropical disturbances, according to Kim. “We know for sure that the climate is warming and as the climate warms, the nature of the oscillation changes.”
UW’s new broadcast meteorology course is first on West Coast
The University of Washington has long boasted one of the country’s top programs in atmospheric sciences. Now, the UW is also teaching undergraduates how to share that knowledge online and on TV as a broadcast meteorologist.
The Media & Meteorology class, launched in winter quarter, is open to students from across the university who are taking or have passed a prerequisite introductory courses in atmospheric sciences.
“We’ve been talking about this idea for a few years now, and it’s exciting to launch this course,” said primary instructor Shannon O’Donnell, the lead forecaster at KOMO-TV. O’Donnell graduated from the UW with a degree in atmospheric sciences.
“Communication of weather information is important for societal decision-making,” said co-instructor Cliff Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. “The range of communication options for weather information — television, online and social media, smartphones and more — has greatly changed over the past two decades, and students must learn to master their various tools.”
In the new class, students will learn to communicate weather information in a number of ways, including the use of a “green screen” — a bright-green screen that forecasters stand in front of while talking and gesturing, with maps and graphics added digitally.
“It’s surprisingly hard to work in front of the weather wall,” O’Donnell said. “It’s kind of like a funhouse mirror where things feel awkward and backward. You see the green behind you, and then you have TV monitors to the side. You have to look at the monitor to see the graphics.”
While some stations have gone to large digital screens, many newsrooms prefer the green screen because it offers better-resolution graphics.
“The reason why we still go to all that trouble is it still looks so much more crisp on TV,” O’Donnell said.
The course also covers the history of broadcast journalism and provides practice presenting on TV, radio and online. Follow the students’ forecasts on Twitter at @TheUWDawgcast.
