Jul 8, 2015

UW oceanographers wire up an undersea volcano to study Earth’s most extreme environment

Several hundred miles off the coast of Oregon and Washington, there’s an undersea volcano known as Axial Seamount. Thanks to a set of high-tech instruments installed last summer by a team of scientists, many from the College of the Environment, the deep sea is online and oceanographers were able to observe an eruption of the Axial Volcano in April 2015. PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan recently spoke with the School of Oceanography‘s John Delaney and Debbie Kelley about their team’s deep sea observatory, including a network of sensors, moorings, and cameras that collect troves of new information about this underwater world.

Scientists weigh in on carbon emissions' effect on future ocean conditions

Ahead of major climate talks at COP21 this year in Paris, scientists are offering insights to the far-reaching effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on the ocean. Spearheaded by the Oceans 2015 Initiative, which brought together 22 scientists and policy experts from nine different countries, the results were published this week in the journal Science and focus on how warming waters, rising seas, and ocean acidification drive changes to the global ocean.

Researcher at UW’s Olympic Natural Resources Center helps pinpoint massive harmful algal bloom

The algal bloom that shut down several shellfish fisheries along the West Coast earlier this year has developed into the largest and most severe in a decade or more—stretching from at least central California to as far north as Alaska. UW research analyst Anthony Odell is part of a NOAA-led team of harmful algae experts who are surveying the extent of the patch and searching for the swirling eddies that can become toxic to marine mammals and humans.

What does it take to catalogue every glacier in a mountain range?

After days of waiting around in Port Angeles, Washington, Earth and Space Sciences’ T.J. Fudge finally got some good news: a helicopter would be able to drop him and another researcher into the wilderness of Olympic National Park. Fudge didn’t know it yet, but nasty weather would prevent the helicopter from returning to pick them up, leaving the scientists no choice but to hike out.

Warmer, lower-oxygen oceans will shift marine habitats

Great white sharks require plenty of oxygen as metabolic fuel, and even more in warmer waters. They are among marine animals whose distributions will likely shift to meet their oxygen needs under climate change.

A research team that includes scientists from the College of the Environment’s School of Oceanography found that warmer ocean temperatures and decreasing levels of dissolved oxygen as a result of climate change will increase metabolic stress on marine animals. These new findings suggest that warmer water will speed up animals’ metabolic need for oxygen, but will simultaneously hold less of the oxygen needed to fuel their bodies.