In the spring of 2023, the Pacific Ocean started heating up. After three years of cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures, a switch had flipped, and a cascade of warming began to unfold.
By April, the average surface temperature of the world’s oceans had broken all previous records — and still it continued to climb. Midsummer saw a plateau, followed by another surge in August and September that forced some climatologists to change the scale of their graphs entirely. The heat had quite literally gone off the charts.
The news soon spread to the general public, where headlines warned of a sudden, frightening change to the planet’s status quo. This was uncharted territory for our oceans, and nobody was quite sure how they would respond. (more…)
Atmospheric Science’s Mike Wallace awarded 2024 Japan Prize
Mike Wallace, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, is a 2024 recipient of the Japan Prize. The prestigious award honors scientists and researchers worldwide for having contributed significantly to the peace and prosperity of humankind through achievements that have substantially advanced science and technology. This year’s recipients were announced Jan. 23, and a formal ceremony will follow in April in Japan.
“Ever since my boyhood, I’ve been fascinated by weather and I’ve wondered what makes it so different from one year to the next,” said Wallace. “Being able to pursue this question during my long career at UW has been like a dream come true. The selection of meteorologists for this year’s Japan Prize was in recognition of the dramatic improvements in the skill of weather forecasts over the past 60 years. Choosing Brian Hoskins and me as co-recipients was a vote of confidence for the curiosity-driven research that played a role in making those advances possible. I hope the UW leadership will continue to value it in the years ahead.”
Wallace’s impact in the geosciences has focused on discovery using observations to understand weather and global climate and how they vary. This included studies on the Pacific decadal oscillation and how El Niño influences climate in North America. He co-authored what is considered a cornerstone introductory textbook to atmospheric sciences and remains one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. A long-time professor of the University of Washington, he joined the faculty in 1966 and served as chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, co-director of the Program on the Environment and director of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (now known as the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystems Studies).
“From his discoveries of global-scale climate patterns that explain variations in weather, to his seminal textbooks read by students around the world, I cannot think of an individual that has had as broad and deep of an influence on the fields of atmospheric and climate science as Mike Wallace,” said Joel Thornton, chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. “He has provided incredible scientific vision and leadership to many colleagues and students, here at UW and around the world, and always with a truly outsized amount of kindness and generosity. I’m sure that like me, all those who have worked with or learned from Mike are absolutely thrilled for him to receive the honor and recognition that the Japan Prize brings.”
The Japan Prize was established in 1983 and covers all fields of science and technology, of which two specific fields are selected each year to receive the award. In April, awardees take part in a high-profile ceremony in Tokyo, which includes heads of state and high-ranking officials in Japan, as well as eminent figures from various circles. Awardees come from a pool of nominees put forward by more than 15,500 prominent researchers and scientists from across the globe. Their academic achievements are evaluated, as well as their wider contributions to advancing science, technology, and the causes of world peace and prosperity.
You can read the Japan Prize Foundation’s press release naming Wallace and watch the announcement on YouTube.
Shallow soda lakes show promise as cradles of life on Earth
Charles Darwin proposed that life could have emerged in a “warm little pond” with the right cocktail of chemicals and energy. A study from the University of Washington, published this month in Communications Earth & Environment, reports that a shallow “soda lake” in western Canada shows promise for matching those requirements. The findings provide new support that life could have emerged from lakes on the early Earth, roughly 4 billion years ago.
Scientists have known that under the right conditions, the complex molecules of life can emerge spontaneously. As recently fictionalized in the blockbuster hit “Lessons in Chemistry,” biological molecules can be coaxed to form from inorganic molecules. In fact, long after the real-life 1950s-era discovery made amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, more recent work has made the building blocks of RNA. But this next step requires extremely high phosphate concentrations.
Phosphate forms the “backbone” of RNA and DNA and is also a key component of cell membranes. The concentrations of phosphate required to form these biomolecules in the lab are hundreds to 1 million times higher than the levels normally found in rivers, lakes or in the ocean. This has been called the “phosphate problem” for the emergence of life — a problem that soda lakes may have solved.
“I think these soda lakes provide an answer to the phosphate problem,” said senior author David Catling, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “Our answer is hopeful: This environment should occur on the early Earth, and probably on other planets, because it’s just a natural outcome of the way that planetary surfaces are made and how water chemistry works.”
UW research helps California forest managers assess smoke hazards from prescribed burns
Across the American West, managers of fire-prone landscapes are increasingly setting small fires to prevent larger, more destructive ones. Commonly called prescribed burns, these targeted, controlled fires keep forests healthy by reducing the buildup of grasses, leaves, branches and other debris that can fuel larger wildfires and smoke out nearby communities.
But smoke from prescribed burns also presents health risks. Today’s forest managers must ask themselves — how much prescribed burning is too much? When do the long-term benefits of fuel reduction no longer outweigh the short-term smoke costs? And how can nearby communities better prepare for a fire season?
An international team led by researchers at the University of Washington built a framework to help land managers assess the air quality implications of land management scenarios with different levels of prescribed burning. To apply the framework, researchers linked together a series of models that estimate the smoke effects of various levels of prescribed burning on ecosystems and nearby communities. Ernesto Alvarado, UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, is a co-author on the two papers that appear in Nature Sustainability and Environmental Research Letters.