Our knowledge of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean comes mostly through satellites, which since 1979 have imaged the dwindling extent of sea ice from above. The University of Washington’s Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean and Modeling System, or PIOMAS, is a leading tool for gauging the thickness of that ice. Until now that system has gone back only as far as 1979.
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At the helm of EarthLab’s Washington Ocean Acidification Center are two experienced ocean scientists, but what they are trying to do is something entirely new. Terrie Klinger and Jan Newton are Salish Sea experts — one an ecologist, one an oceanographer — and they are addressing one of the biggest emerging threats to our environment today, ocean acidification. “When we first were funded by the legislature to stand up the Washington Ocean Acidification Center, there was no precedent.
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From searching for extraterrestrial life to tracking rainfall, non-experts are increasingly helping to gather information to answer scientific questions. One of the most established hands-on, outdoor citizen science projects is the University of Washington-based Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, COASST, which trains beachgoers along the West Coast, from California to Alaska, to monitor their local beach for dead birds. With about 4,500 participants in its 21-year history and roughly 800 active participants today, COASST’s long-term success is now the subject of scientific study in its own right.
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Coral reefs are retreating from equatorial waters and establishing new reefs in more temperate regions, according to new research published July 4 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. The researchers found that the number of young corals on tropical reefs has declined by 85% – and doubled on subtropical reefs – during the last four decades. As climate change warms the ocean, subtropical environments are becoming more favorable for corals than the equatorial waters where they traditionally thrived.
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In recent years, the idea of life on other planets has become less far-fetched. NASA announced June 27 that it will send a vehicle to Saturn’s icy moon Titan, a celestial body known to harbor surface lakes of methane and an ice-covered ocean of water, boosting its chance for supporting life. On Earth, scientists are studying the most extreme environments to learn how life might exist under completely different settings, like on other planets.
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