Clouds come in myriad shapes, sizes and types, which control their effects on climate. New research led by the University of Washington shows that splintering of frozen liquid droplets to form ice shards inside Southern Ocean clouds dramatically affects the clouds’ ability to reflect sunlight back to space.
The paper, published March 4 in the open-access journal AGU Advances, shows that including this ice-splintering process improves the ability of high-resolution global models to simulate clouds over the Southern Ocean – and thus the models’ ability to simulate Earth’s climate.
Tucked into a corner of the UW Farm at the Center for Urban Horticulture, within the moist compost and woven through the tendrils of beans, a community flourishes. The wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ Native Garden is a unique space where crops and people grow in harmony. Informed by traditional farming practices, the Native Garden serves as a space for Indigenous students to connect with their culture and share it with the broader community.
UW Botanic Gardens, the Arboretum Foundation, and Seattle Parks & Recreation have been selected to participate in the Central Park Conservancy’s 2022 Partnerships Lab program! The Partnerships Lab provides resources and mentorship to support urban parks through fundamental challenges and strengthen public spaces to expand environmental and community benefits. The eight-month program to teach best practices, engage in peer-to-peer mentorship and host workshops with Central Park Conservancy subject-matter experts.
On the shores of the Chukchi Sea in far northwest Alaska, climate change is already impacting the traditional way of life of the Iñupiaq people. The inhabitants of this region have lived off the land for thousands of years, hunting caribou and bearded seals, fishing for salmon and sheefish, and foraging wild berries and plants. But as the planet warms and Arctic sea ice thins, accessing and harvesting these traditional foods has become more difficult.
New research on the Pacific Northwest portion of the Dungeness crab fishery, which spans the West Coast of the U.S. and Canada, projects how this crustacean will fare under climate change.
Results show that by the end of this century, lower-oxygen water will pose the biggest threat. And while these crabs start as tiny, free-floating larvae, it’s the sharp-clawed adults that will be most vulnerable, specifically to lower-oxygen coastal waters in summer.
If someone’s interest is piqued about your research, what’s the first thing they do? They turn to the internet, of course! Most people want to know what you’re studying and why it matters: what is the impact you’re trying to have, the problem you’re trying to solve, the mystery about our world you’re trying to unlock? Your online presence can help answer the “so what?”
“Our community acknowledges that we must work to address the culture of white supremacy in our department and in the geosciences as a whole. We must ensure that racial and gender microaggressions, exclusion, bullying, and discriminatory remarks are addressed as pervasive, systemic issues.”
The School of Oceanography’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement of Acknowledgement recognizes the lack of racial diversity in the geosciences, citing a study that found little to no progress on that front over the past four decades.
Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL) recently established the Friday Harbor Laboratories Ocean Observatory (FHLOO), vastly expanding their capabilities to collect and share real-time data about the surrounding marine environment. Connected to the larger Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS), FHLOO takes continuous seawater measurements such as salinity, temperature, CO2, oxygen and chlorophyll, in addition to monitoring microplankton. While the system has been taking measurements since the summer of 2020, the ability to live-stream its data is new, providing a window into the Salish Sea accessible to researchers, students and the public.
In a rapidly changing Arctic, one area might serve as a refuge — a place that could continue to harbor ice-dependent species when conditions in nearby areas become inhospitable. This region north of Greenland and the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago has been termed the Last Ice Area. But research led by the University of Washington suggests that parts of this area are already showing a decline in summer sea ice.
Back in the summers of 2018 and 2019, the shellfish industry in Washington state was rocked by mass mortalities of its crops.
“It was oysters, clams, cockles — all bivalve species in some bays were impacted,” said Teri King, aquaculture and marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant based at the University of Washington. “They were dying, and nobody knew why.”
For decades, the ice shelf helping to hold back one of the fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica has gradually thinned. Analysis of satellite images reveals a more dramatic process in recent years: From 2017 to 2020, large icebergs at the ice shelf’s edge broke off, and the glacier sped up.
Since floating ice shelves help to hold back the larger grounded mass of the glacier, the recent speedup due to the weakening edge could shorten the timeline for Pine Island Glacier’s eventual collapse into the sea.
These days, very little science occurs without someone typing at least a few lines of code into a computer. Researchers employ a variety of programming languages — such as R, Python and Bash — and software to organize their data, perform analyses, build models, and visualize results. College of the Environment scientists are no different, and that has implications for science, communication and how students will gain new computational skills in the future.
The air in the United States and Western Europe is much cleaner than even a decade ago. Low-sulfur oil standards and regulations on power plants have successfully cut sulfate concentrations in the air, reducing the fine particulate matter that harms human health and cleaning up the environmental hazard of acid rain.
Despite these successes, sulfate levels in the atmosphere have declined more slowly than sulfur dioxide emissions, especially in wintertime.
It could happen any time, any day.
Multiple seismometers — scientific instruments that measure ground motion — detect a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Washington, Oregon or California.
Seismic waves move fast, but seismometers move faster: The data zips from seismometer to processing center at the speed of light (670,616,629 mph), where algorithms calculate the area and intensity of shaking and sound an emergency warning to phones moments before shaking arrives: Drop.
How do environmental scientists unearth new discoveries about our planet? Many of us might imagine scientists observing the world around them, wading through tide pools or digging up soil. But what about questions surrounding the origins of life on Earth, or questions about microbes deep, deep within the ocean? Big questions like these require big investments, and the Simons Foundation is supporting University of Washington (UW) researchers to find some of the answers.