The successful Future of Ice Speaker Series came to a close on March 11 with a visit from Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit leader who spoke about how our planet’s changing climate is deeply affecting the Inuit culture and way of life. Watt-Cloutier routinely travels the globe, drawing attention to the issue of climate change using a human lens to talk about impacts.
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The third installment in our Future of Ice speaker series featured Jody Deming, Walters Endowed Professor and a faculty member in Oceanography and Astrobiology at UW. Her talk explored how life exists in sea ice, the experience of studying sea ice in the Arctic in the dead of winter, and what studying sea ice can tell us about possibility for life on other planets.
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The Northwest has long been a hub for Alaska-bound fishing vessels and scientific study of the Arctic. The University of Washington’s new “Future of Ice” initiative seeks to build on that research in a region now undergoing rapid changes. The initiative includes several new hires, a new minor in Arctic studies and a winter lecture series. “This is partly recognizing how much is going on in polar research at the UW,” said initiative director Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences who studies ice cores.
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Many glaciers flowing from the land to the coast eventually float over the ocean and melt. The speed at which that melting occurs can depend on many factors, including the warmth of the water beneath it. In Antarctica the Pine Island Glacier drives large amounts of ice into the ocean, and for decades the glacier’s tip has been thinning. College of the Environment scientists and their partners have connected the dots behind the complex drivers that explain why we are seeing this phenomenon occur.
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