Nominations for 2019 College of the Environment Awards open through Feb. 22

Dean Lisa J. Graumlich (center) with 2018 College of the Environment Award winners.

Update: Due to the inclement weather, the nomination deadline has been extended to Friday, February 22, 2019. Do you know a student, faculty or staff member who deserves recognition for their work at the College of the Environment? Nominations for the 2019 College of the Environment Awards are open through Friday, February 22, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. Submit your nominations in any or all of these categories: Distinguished Staff Member Exceptional Mentoring of Undergraduates Graduate Dean’s Medalist Outstanding Community Impact: Staff, Faculty, or Student Outstanding Diversity Commitment Outstanding Teaching Faculty Undergraduate Dean’s Medalist Full details, including criteria and eligibility and past winners, are available online.  

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For 35 years, the Pacific Ocean has largely spared West’s mountain snow from effects of global warming

Washington state’s Mount Shuksan in February 2014.

A new study has found that a pattern of ocean temperatures and atmospheric circulation has offset most of the impact of global warming on mountain snowpack in the western U.S. since the 1980s. The study from Oregon State University, the University of Washington and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was published Jan. 11 in Geophysical Research Letters. “The western U.S. has received a big assist from natural variability over the past 35 years,” said lead author Nick Siler at Oregon State University, who began thinking about the project as a doctoral student in atmospheric sciences at the UW. 

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UW, partners reach milestone in program using robots to monitor world’s oceans

Steve Riser (center, in black), students and technicians in July 2017 inside the UW School of Oceanography’s floats lab.

Around the planet’s oceans, nearly 4,000 floats — many of them built at the University of Washington — are plunging up and down, collecting and transmitting observations of the world’s oceans. This fall, one of these diving robots made the program’s 2 millionth measurement, reporting temperature and salinity recorded to a depth of about a mile. The Argo Program is a 20-year-old project to gather 3D data on the oceans. 

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Nature for Health: 3 steps to boost your child’s outdoor time — and health

A family enjoys the great outdoors at Alki Beach Park in West Seattle in November. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)

Kyle Yasuda, 2018 president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics and co-founder of BestStart Washington, and Pooja Tandon, pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital, assistant professor at the University of Washington, and active member of UW EarthLab’s Nature for Health initiative, share their thoughts in The Seattle Times on how we can help our kids increase outdoor time, and the associated health benefits. 

Read more in The Seattle Times »