Pristine air over Southern Ocean suggests early industrial era’s clouds not so different from today’s

Isabel McCoy directing cloud sampling while serving as a flight scientist during the 2018 SOCRATES campaign.

A new study uses satellite data over the Southern Hemisphere to understand the makeup of global clouds since the Industrial Revolution. This research tackles one of the largest uncertainties in today’s climate models — the long-term effect of tiny atmospheric particles on climate change. Research led by the University of Washington and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom uses remote, pristine parts of the Southern Hemisphere as a window into the early-industrial atmosphere.

Conservation planning for a wild and thriving Cascadia

With ever-shrinking pristine habitats across the region and globe, wildlife is often hard-pressed to find a place to call home. Even if they find a suitable home today, the question remains if it will still be suitable tomorrow. With climate change already underway and increasing human presence in wild landscapes, land managers and conservation organizations continually wrestle with this issue here in the Pacific Northwest and across the world.

Keeping our beaches clean and healthy with Washington Sea Grant

You might not know it, but danger for saltwater plants and animals lurks on every single beach — from the white sand beaches of the Caribbean to the rockier beaches found along the Washington coastline, and every beach in between. Plastic debris and other trash left behind by beachgoers ends up in the sand and water, eventually making their way into the stomachs or around the necks of our favorite marine animals.

David Montgomery elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences in 2020

David Montgomery, professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, has been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, according to an announcement July 15 by the academy. The new members are lauded for “their outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement and their willingness to work on behalf of the academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”

Jerry Franklin and Brian Harvey: Plotting the next generation of forest research

Students from Prof Brian Harvey’s Lab conduct research of the Norse Fire from 2017 in the Snoqualmie National Forest.

A group of students, accompanied by School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) Professor Brian Harvey, look at the centuries-old trees towering around them in an old growth experimental forest plot. This plot was established many years ago and handed down through generations of forest ecologists, through the shift from when forests were studied only as potential sources of lumber to modern forest research that examines forests as complete ecosystems.