Global warming not so global? PSC postdoc Aaron Donohoe has co-authored a study recently published in Nature Geoscience showing how and why the Antarctic Ocean has not warmed in comparison to what has been observed in the Arctic.
News
What is traditional knowledge and how can it help us understand climate change? Online news source, Earther, talks to Kristin Laidre about her recently published research involving some of the Inuit communities of East Greenland. Inuit sustenance hunters were interviewed about their livelihood, the landscape of their homeland, and more to form a picture of how things have changed over time.
June 11, 2021 – “We may not have the luxury of waiting for slow changes on Pine Island; things could actually go much quicker than expected,” said lead author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “The processes we’d been studying in this region were leading to an irreversible collapse, but at a fairly measured pace. Things could be much more abrupt if we lose the rest of that ice shelf.”
Axel Schweiger, Jinlun Zhang, and Mike Steele are co-authors on an article that earned the Editor’s Highlight for AGU’s recent Geophysical Research Letters. Read on to learn why the article, Collapse of the 2017 Winter Beaufort High: A Response to Thinning Sea Ice?, drew such attention…
Matt Alkire leads the PSC team of authors that earned the Editor’s Highlight for AGU’s recent JGR: Oceans issue. Read on to learn why Matt’s article, A meteoric water budget for the Arctic Ocean, was singled out…
APL-UW has produced a video about Polar Science Weekend, an annual public outreach event centering around polar research. Watch APL-UW scientists, including veteran PSW participants PSC’s Ben Smith and Wendy Ermold, explain their research in ways that apply the principles of physics via hands-on activities to the community.
In July 2023, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) partnered with the 144th Airlift Squadron of the Alaska Air National Guard to deploy five different types of weather buoys across more than 1,000 nautical miles of the Arctic Ocean. Such deployments are critical for maintaining the Arctic Observing Network (AON), which provides observations for weather and ice forecasting and related research.
The 144th Airlift Squadron (the “Arctic Wolves”) and part of the 176th Wing (the “Arctic Guardians”) conducted the flights on a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft. In addition to personnel from the 176th Wing, participants included PSC’s Ignatius Rigor along with professors and scientists from the University of Maryland as well as ONR reservists.
The Washington Post reports on the changes in Arctic sea ice and its effect on the polar bear. The main source of the article is a recent study by PSC’s Harry Stern and Kristin Laidre, published in The Cryosphere.
Salon.com covers the use of animals, such as narwhals and elephant seals, outfitted with non-invasive devices to collect data on the effects of climate change on the environment of the Arctic and Antarctic. The article includes the work of PSC researchers, Michael Steele and Kristin Laidre.
April 30, 2020 – Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, a team of scientists led by the University of Washington has made precise measurements of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.
“If you watch a glacier or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you’re not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it,” said lead author Benjamin Smith, a glaciologist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we’re seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate.
UW News covers PSC’s Eric Regehr’s polar bear study of the Chukchi Sea subpopulation. This is the first formal study of this population and is published in the open-access journal Scientific Reports. Read on to learn more about the lead author’s decade-long project and the status of the Chukchi Sea polar bears.
Polar Science Center Chair Dr. Bonnie Light joined a group of international scientists in Bremerhaven, Germany in January 2023 to process and analyze sea ice core samples brought back from the 2019-2020 MOSAiC expedition. Photo Credit: Amy Lauren
The Quaternary Research Center (QRC) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, are seeking Postdoctoral Research Associates with interests in the polar regions.
Ignatius Rigor collaborated on a study of Antarctic sea ice change using satellite observations. Read the paper presenting the findings in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.
Satellite tags and video cameras are successfully tracking movement and recording images of humpback whales along the Antarctic Peninsula. National Geographic asks PSC’s Kristin Laidre about the arduous methods used to collect data on marine mammals in polar environments.
A proposal to cover Arctic sea ice with layers of tiny hollow glass spheres about the thickness of one human hair would actually accelerate sea-ice loss and warm the climate rather than creating thick ice and lowering the temperature as proponents claim, according to a new study.Sea ice, by reflecting the majority of the sun’s energy back to space, helps regulate ocean and air temperatures and influences ocean circulation. Its area and thickness are of critical importance to Earth’s climate. A 2018 study argued that repeated spreading of hollow glass microspheres on young Arctic sea ice would increase reflectivity, protect…
Seattle Girls’ School has named PSC PI Kristin Laidre recipient of their 2016 Grace Hopper Award for Outstanding Achievement. Kristin is being recognized for her successful endeavors to make her research efforts accessible to many age groups.
She will be honored at the SGS 14th Annual Luncheon on May 5, 2016. Congratulations, Kristin!
Matt Alkire, John Guthrie and Jamie Morison were part of an international team of researchers that studied the effects of the Atlantic Ocean on sea ice cover in the eastern Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean. Read the findings published in Science Magazine.
The Washington Post asks Ian Joughin about a recent study, in the journal Science Advances, using a GPS network which measures ice sheet mass loss in Greenland and re-evaluates previous studies.
Hakai Magazine covered a recent paper led by PSC’s Kristin Laidre and asked about the collaborative project in which Kristin, the research team, and interpreters interviewed Inuit hunters and gathered traditional knowledge on polar bear ecology in East Greenland. Read the article to find out how the subsistence and cultural relationships have changed for the arctic animals & Indigenous communities.
The dramatic melt expected over the next week signals that global warming is having a major impact on the polar region
August 2019 – NASA’s Center for Climate Simulation reported on the recent Cryospheric Science Hackweek held at UW. The article includes an interview with PSC’s Anthony Arendt and workshop coverage from other planners, facilitators, and participants.
The Washington Post reports that although “Arctic Sea Ice Blog: Interesting News and Data” will be going on hiatus, the Arctic Sea Ice Forum will remain open and monthly PIOMAS updates will continue. Axel Schweiger comments on how the blog and the PSC dataset has helped create a thoughtful and detailed real-time public discourse.
The Verge, a news website for the mainstream, interviewed PSC’s Ignatius Rigor and other researchers to find out how vanishing sea ice in the Arctic impacts the general public.
UW Today reports on the results of a study recently published in The Cryosphere, involving PSC’s Ben Smith, Alex Huth, and Ian Joughin who teamed up with the University of Edinburgh and, using satellite data, identified a considerable drainage of interconnected lakes below West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier.
An international team of researchers, including Kristin Laidre, conducted a study involving genetic variability in polar bears. Read about the study in Animal Conservation.
Scavenging on stranded large whale carcasses may have aided polar bear survival through past interglacial periods, during which sea‐ice was limited and access to seals was reduced. Will whales play a similar role in the future as Arctic conditions change? To learn more, read the recent study led by PSC’s Kristin Laidre in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
The Seattle Times covered Harry Stern’s research study which tracked changes along the Arctic ice edge combining modern technology and historical records such as maps and logs from Captain James Cook’s 18th-century voyage.
Because of the yearlong COVID-19 pandemic, the hundreds of scientists and engineers behind the Perseverance rover mission have had to work almost exclusively from home. On the big day, only a minimal crew of ground controllers will be on duty at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. APL-UW Physicist Tim Elam, too, will be watching from home on February 18th.
The UW Today reports on the open-access study recently published in the Journal of Applied Ecology by PSC’s Eric Regehr and a collaborative team, including Harry Stern. The team combined data collected on polar bear subpopulations with that of sea ice extent and identified ways to carry on subsistence harvesting with the least amount of negative impact already caused by habitat loss.
The Washington Post covered new research findings on narwhal physiology and asked PSC’s Kristin Laidre what it will mean for the species in a changing Arctic.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently released their Conservation Management Plan (CMP) for the polar bear. Required under the Endangered Species Act, the CMP outlines what must be done for a species to recover and avoid extinction. Kristin Laidre comments for the New York Times.
Ecosystems can draw down carbon and buffer us from the worst effects of climate change — but only if we protect them.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to scientists Melinda Webster with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, about implications for the rest of the globe. She’s on an icebreaker ship to examine ice melt.
Recent research by Kristin Laidre and Harry Stern on the impacts of climate change on Arctic narwhals is published in Polar Biology. See the article in Conservation Magazine.
June 18, 2019 – This week is ICESat-2 Hackweek 2019, held at the University of Washington. Participants are learning about technologies used to access and process ICESat-2 data with a focus on the cryosphere.
The Applied Physics Laboratory-UW interviews PSC’s Jamie Morison and Ben Smith about ICESat-2, their roles in the NASA project and how it will improve research efforts and data. Watch the video here or on APL’s YouTube channel.
Erica Escajeda and Kristin Laidre were part of an international team of researchers that studied polar bear maternity dens and compared current data with previously published data through the 1990s. Read the findings published in Polar Biology.
Expeditionary artist Maria Coryell-Martin has traveled to Niaqornat, Greenland with Kristin Laidre to document the work being done to monitor narwhals. Maria will be posting field updates with photos and artwork through mid-April.
Gary A. Maykut passed peacefully at his home on March 10, 2023. Gary held the position of Research Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington from the early 1970s until his retirement in 2004. Gary pioneered the numerical simulation of the Arctic surface energy budget, specifically quantifying the 1-D accounting of heat by the ice cover. Gary’s graduate work (1971) produced the highly-cited paper “Some results from a time-dependent thermodynamic model of sea ice.” This work laid the foundation for how modern global (and regional) climate models do the “accounting” of heat by the Arctic sea…
Norbert Untersteiner, founder and former director of the Polar Science Center, passed away on March 14, 2012 at the age of 86. Norbert was the director of the Polar Science Center from 1981-1988 when he became chairman of Atmospheric Sciences at UW. A Memorial Celebration of Norbert’s life will be held on the UW campus at the University Club (the former Faculty Club) on Friday, April 13 from 6-8pm. All are welcome. For further information, contact Mike Wallace at (206) 543-7390 or the Polar Science Center at (206) 543-6613. In lieu of flowers or gifts, donations may be made to the Kaplan Research Fund, c/o Swedish Medical Center Foundation, 747 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122.
Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a widely used tool for measuring ice sheet velocity in the Polar Regions. However, the ionosphere is a prevalent source of noise in these data. Ian Joughin is a co-author of a study, published in the May 2018 issue of Remote Sensing Environment, where a split-spectrum technique was utilized, and its performance analyzed, for correcting ionospheric effects in InSAR-based ice velocity measurements in Greenland and Antarctica. Read on to learn if the technique effectively reduced noise level…
Airborne and satellite observations of West Antarctic topography and glacier flow speeds are combined with a computer model simulating ocean-driven glacier melting to show that the ice sheet’s collapse is already underway.
The Pacific Science Center will be showing Arctic: Our Frozen Planet, an IMAX nature documentary by the BBC which PSC’s very own Eric Regehr helped film, and also appears in! Dr. Regehr will be doing a Q&A about polar bears after the showing on May 27. Regehr will answer questions from the audience after the morning and afternoon showings on Saturday, May 27. The Thursday, May 25, evening showing will feature a Q&A with UW glaciologist Ian Joughin. Admission is $5, or free for PacSci members.Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, Arctic: Our Frozen Planet is an epic adventure across the magical realm of snow and ice at the top…
November 12, 2019 – Former UW Arctic Fulbright Chair, Kent Moore with PSC researchers Axel Schweiger, Jinlun Zhang and Mike Steele on how the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing twice as fast as ice in the rest of the Arctic Ocean.
June 6, 2019 – The latest paper authored by Zheng Liu and Axel Schweiger has been published in JGR Atmospheres. Read how dropsonde observations made from Seasonal Ice Zone Reconnaissance Survey flights were used to examine low‐level and surface “ice edge jets” in the Beaufort Sea.
A rotating crew of international scientists embarked on a research cruise in the Arctic and investigated the causes and effects of ice loss by monitoring the ice across its entire seasonal life cycle. UW polar scientist Kristin Laidre remarks, to Andy Isaacson of National Geographic, how further loss of sea ice could affect the Arctic marine ecosystem, from algae to polar bears.
The Seattle Times reports on the Arctic-wide analysis of changes in sea ice that have the greatest impact on polar bears, conducted by the PSC’s Harry Stern and Kristin Laidre.
Polar Science Center investigator Kristin Laidre was recently featured in an online article on the Pacific Science Center’s website. This article about her work with narwhals was based on her recent “Science Cafe” presentation in Kirkland. The whole presentation entitled “Uncovering the Mysteries of the Narwhal” is on-line here.
NASA’s Sea Level News provides more details on the agency teaming up with PSC’s Kristin Laidre to further the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project in progress. Data gathered by tagged narwhals will expand our understanding of both narwhal behavior and melting glaciers. Click below to learn more about the research endeavor and how the partnership came about…