Jan 15, 2015

Could brighter clouds offset warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions?

Brighter clouds can increase reflectivity

Atmospheric Sciences’ Tom Ackerman and Rob Wood recently contributed to a proposal that would test the effectiveness of spraying sea-salt particles into marine clouds in order to make them brighter. According to The Economist, cloud physicist John Latham hypothesized that brighter clouds could cool the Earth enough to compensate for increased warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. Several decades later and with the help of the two UW scientists, field tests on the subject could come to fruition.

Albatrosses in the Bering Sea, regime shifts and fisheries management, resource subsidies for predators, and more: This week's published research

Each week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past week, twenty-three new articles co-authored by members of the College of the Environment were added to the Web of Science database, including studies of cloud properties in the Southern Ocean, embracing thresholds and regime shifts, fall spawning of cutthroat trout in the Elwha, and more. Read up!

Tropical crops, oil spill response, salmon fishery performance and more: This week's published research

Each week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the holidays, twenty-eight new articles co-authored by members of the College of the Environment were added to the Web of Science database, including studies of retention forestry for biodiversity conservation, steelhead migration, ice floes and more. Check them out!

Global warming not just a blanket—in the long run, it's more like tanning oil

While we’ve heard the analogy that carbon dioxide is like a blanket—wrapping the Earth’s atmosphere and trapping heat—in the long run the “how” of global warming changes, according to new research by scientists here at UW and at MIT. As the planet’s ice melts, and its warmer air carries more water, it will absorb more solar radiation than would have otherwise bounced off of clouds, ice, or snow.

David Battisti, Qiang Fu elected fellows of American Geophysical Union

The College of the Environment congratulates two professors — David Battisti and Qiang Fu — on their election as fellows to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The organization’s mission is to “promote discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.” They join the ranks of several other faculty in the College that have been honored as AGU fellows as well.