The pressing concerns of climate change have placed the long-term health of the world鈥檚 coral reefs in jeopardy. However, new research inspires hope as some corals managed to survive a recent and globally unprecedented heatwave.
Environment
A model based solely on the past 40 years of weather events uses 7,000 times less computer power than today鈥檚 weather forecasting tools. An A.I.-powered model could someday provide more accurate forecasts for rain, snow and other weather events.
New research reveals significant changes to the circulation of the North Pacific and its impact on the initial migration of humans from Asia to North America. It provides a new picture of the circulation and climate of the North Pacific at the end of the last ice age, with implications for early human migration.
Antarctica鈥檚 next deep ice core, a 1.5-mile core reaching back to 130,000-year-old ice, will be carried out by a multi-institutional U.S. team led by UW’s Eric Steig. The site hundreds of miles from today鈥檚 coastline could provide clues to the most recent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
A new 乱伦社区 study provides the first look at how much noise pollution is impacting the Olympic Peninsula. The paper found that aircraft were audible across a large swath of the peninsula at least 20% of weekday hours, or for about one hour during a six-hour period. About 88% of all audible aircraft in the pre-pandemic study were military planes.
At the current rate of global warming, mass coral bleaching is expected to become more frequent and severe worldwide. An international consortium of scientists, including a coral researcher from the 乱伦社区, has created the first-ever common framework for increasing comparability of research findings on coral bleaching.
A research team led by the 乱伦社区 and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has shown that microbes taken from trees growing beside pristine mountain-fed streams in Western Washington could make phosphorus trapped in soils more accessible to agricultural crops. The findings were published in October in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
The global pandemic is hurting the seafood industry, and American fishmongers may flounder without more government aid, according to the largest study of COVID-19鈥檚 impacts on U.S. fisheries.
The American Geophysical Union announced that its members have elected Lisa Graumlich, dean of the UW College of the Environment, as the president-elect starting Jan. 1. After two years in this role Graumlich will begin a two-year term as president of the AGU board beginning in 2023.
Scientists from around the world, including the 乱伦社区, have established the Arctic Animal Movement Archive, an online repository for data documenting the movements of animals in the Arctic and Subarctic. With this archive, scientists can share their knowledge and collaborate to ask questions about how animals are responding to a changing climate.
A 乱伦社区 meteorologist joins a national board for atmospheric research, an English professor’s story is honored and a Jackson School faculty member helps with research for a PBS show.
The biggest study yet of West Coast wildfire plumes shows how a smoke plume鈥檚 chemistry changes over time. Results suggest current models may not accurately predict the air quality downwind of a wildfire.
The 乱伦社区 is among leading U.S. oceanographic institutions that have received National Science Foundation funding to build and deploy 500 robotic ocean-monitoring floats to monitor the chemistry and biology of the world鈥檚 oceans.
This fall, about three dozen people signed up to help count the salmon in their local streams and creeks. Recruited by 乱伦社区 Bothell聽teaching professor Jeff Jensen, these volunteers agree to observe a stream location for聽at least half聽an聽hour聽per聽week (while taking coronavirus precautions) to gather vital information about salmon聽in聽streams that flow into Lake Washington and the Sammamish River.
A new 乱伦社区 and NOAA Fisheries study found that sea lions have the largest negative effect on early-arriving endangered Chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River. The results of this study will publish Oct. 18 in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Climate science has focused on avoiding false alarms when linking extreme weather to climate change. But when meteorologists warn of hazardous weather, they include a second key measure of success — the probability of detection.
A new study combines ice cores, geologic records and computer models to understand the past, present and future of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The results show that emissions this century have a big influence on how much ice will be lost from Greenland.
A new 乱伦社区 study uses passive data from a fishing technology company to model the movement of anglers and predict where aquatic invasive species may be spreading.
The small subpopulation of polar bears in Kane Basin were doing better, on average, in recent years than in the 1990s. The bears are experiencing short-term benefits from thinning and shrinking multiyear sea ice that allows more sunlight to reach the ocean surface, which makes the system more ecologically productive.
A talk with the hosts of Washington Sea Grant’s “Coastal Caf茅” podcast, which is also a radio show. And EarthLab’s podcast “Voices Unbound” releases a new season of timely topics.
Researchers at the 乱伦社区, Portland State University and the University of Oregon have shown that deep-seated landslides in the central Oregon Coast Range are triggered mostly by rainfall, not by large offshore earthquakes. The open-access paper was published Sept. 16 in Science Advances. 鈥淕eomorphologists have long understood the importance of rainfall in triggering landslides, and our study is simply driving home just how important it is,鈥� said first author Sean LaHusen, who did the work as part of…
New research shows that a wide variety of marine animals 鈥� from vertebrates to crustaceans to mollusks 鈥� already inhabit the maximum range of breathable ocean that their physiology will allow. The findings provide a warning about climate change: Since warmer waters will harbor less oxygen, some stretches of ocean that are breathable today for a given species may not be in the future.
With wildfire smoke blanketing most of the western U.S. this week, public health experts suggest staying inside as much as possible to protect yourself from smoky air. If you don’t have air conditioning or an air purifier in your home, it’s possible to make your own inexpensive purifier. Here’s how.
Alison Cullen, professor and interim dean of the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the 乱伦社区, will study “megafires” with a new $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Atmospheric nitrogen dioxide, which comes from transportation, was half of what would be expected over China in February 2020. Other emissions and cloud properties, however, showed no significant changes.
Social inequalities, specifically racism and classism, are impacting the biodiversity, evolutionary shifts and ecological health of plants and animals in our cities. That鈥檚 the main finding of a review paper published Aug. 13 in Science led by the 乱伦社区, with co-authors at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Michigan.
An international group of scientists has laid out an ambitious global conservation plan for parasites. A related paper led by the 乱伦社区 found that responses of parasites to environmental change are likely to be complex, and that a changing world probably will see both outbreaks of some parasites and a total loss of other parasite species.
Deep-sea anglerfishes employ an incredible reproductive strategy. Tiny dwarfed males become permanently attached to relatively gigantic females, fuse their tissues and then establish a common blood circulation. Now scientists have figured out why female anglerfishes so readily accept their male mates. Their findings are published July 30 in Science.
The 乱伦社区 has a long history of leading research into the impacts of wildfires from an ecological and health perspective. We worked with two experts to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, including the ways that the pandemic is increasing our community鈥檚 vulnerability to extreme wildfire events in the region.
A new study led by the 乱伦社区 and the University of Leeds uses satellite data over the Southern Hemisphere to understand the makeup of global clouds since the Industrial Revolution. This research tackles one of the largest uncertainties in today鈥檚 climate models 鈥� the long-term effect of tiny atmospheric particles on climate change.
Seven scientists and engineers at the 乱伦社区 have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, according to an announcement July 15 by the academy.
BJ Cummings,community engagement manager for the Superfund Research Program at the UW, discusses her book “The River that Made Seattle: A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish,” published in July by UW Press.
The 乱伦社区 and The Nippon Foundation today announced the launch of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center, an interdisciplinary research group at the UW that studies changes, responses and solutions to societal issues that emerge in relationship with the oceans. The Center will bring uncompromised, critical voices to policy and public conversations to enable research and studies equaling $32.5 million spread over 10 years.
Genetic clues show that eelgrass growing underwater along Puget Sound shorelines is associated with fewer of the single-celled algae that produce harmful toxins in shellfish. The evidence shows this effect extends 45 feet beyond the edge of the eelgrass bed.
It could take another generation before resident fish in the heavily polluted Lower Duwamish Waterway in Seattle will be safe to eat. Yet many fishers from a wide range of cultural backgrounds continue to fish the 5-mile stretch of river for fun, cultural connections and food even as cleanup of this designated Superfund site continues. The Duwamish was listed on the Environmental Protection Agency鈥檚 National Priority (or 鈥淪uperfund鈥�) List of sites that require cleanup in 2001. Since that time, federal,…
Using air quality data from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency monitors across the U.S., a UW-led team looked for changes in two common pollutants over the course of 2020.
Evidence from rocks billions of years old suggest that volcanoes played a key role in the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere of the early Earth.
A new study in Nature Microbiology shows that the most common organism in the world’s oceans — and possibly the whole planet — harbors a virus in its DNA. This virus may have helped it survive and outcompete other organisms. The study began as a UW School of Oceanography senior thesis.
A 5-year, up to $300 million grant from NOAA establishes the new Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, a UW-based institute with partners at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Oregon State University. The institute will lead collaborative, multidisciplinary research and education activities around oceans and climate.
Historical observations collected off California since the 1950s suggest that anchovies thrive where the water is breathable 鈥� a combination of the oxygen levels in the water and the species鈥� oxygen needs, which are affected by temperature. Future projections suggest that the waters off Mexico and Southern California could be uninhabitable by 2100.