Posts Tagged «2017»

PSC members join their colleagues and peers at the AGU 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Alkire, M.B., J. Morison, A. Schweiger, J. Zhang, M. Steele, C. Peralta-Ferriz, and S. Dickinson, A meteoric water budget for the Arctic Ocean, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 122, doi:10.1002/2017JC012807, 2017.

Science Daily reports on a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters where satellite measurements assessed glacier flow in the Antarctic Peninsula. PSC’s Ian Joughin was part of an international team of researchers, led by the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, and is one of the co-authors.

Eurasia Review reports on the results of the lengthy study of beluga whale migration led by PSC and published in the journal Global Change Biology. The news post includes previous comments by some of the authors, Donna Hauser and Kate Stafford.

The University of Washington news produced a video with the Polar Science Center highlighting a six-year study of Beluga whale populations. Donna HauserKristin Laidre, and Harry Stern participated from PSC.

The news source International Business Times, out of the UK, reports on findings recently published in Global Change Biology of a decades-long research study involving Beluga whales. Donna HauserKristin Laidre, Harry Stern and colleagues examined changes in autumn migration timing of Beluga whale populations since the 1990s.

Bhatt, U. S., D. A. Walker, M. K. Raynolds, P. A. Bieniek, H. E. Epstein, J. C. Comiso, J. E. Pinzon, C. J. Tucker, M. Steele, W. Ermold, and J. Zhang, Changing seasonality of panarctic tundra vegetation in relationship to climatic variables, Environ. Res. Lett., 12(5), doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa6b0b, 2017.

Congratulations to Cecilia, who was chosen to participate in the U.S. Fulbright Scholar program. She will spend 9 months in Norway (from mid-August 2017 to mid-May 2018) doing oceanographic research at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) in Tromsø, and at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) in Longyearbyen. 

News station KING 5 interviews PSC’s Jamie Morison, as environmental policies change under the new administration resulting in strong, public response. Watch the clip of the PSC oceanographer discussing his own research observations, Arctic data available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), and the need to continue polar research. 

The publication Conservation Biology announced its awards for 2016 and PSC’s Kristin Laidre is the lead author of the paper that earned the second highest altmetric score, Arctic Marine Mammal Population Status, Sea Ice Habitat Loss, and Conservation Recommendations for the 21st Century.
Laidre led the collaborative effort which involved PSC colleagues Harry Stern and Eric Regehr (at present), along with other researchers from Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and other US institutions. Congratulations to Kristin and the team!

Cottier, F., Steele, M., and Nilsen, F., Sea ice and Arctic Ocean oceanography, in Sea Ice, Third Edition, D. N. Thomas (Ed.), doi:10.1002/9781118778371.ch7, 2017.

The Arctic Data Center, supported by NSF, has highlighted Karen Junge’s work investigating rotten ice. Data has been collected on both the physical and biological properties of rotten ice and is available from the center.  

Dewey, S., Morison, J., Zhang, J., 2017. An Edge-Referenced Surface Fresh Layer in the Beaufort Sea Seasonal Ice Zone. Journal of Physical Oceanography. doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0158.1

Ding, Q., A. Schweiger, M. L’Heureux, D. S. Battisti, S. Po-Chedley, N. C. Johnson, E. Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, K. Harnos, Q. Zhang, R. Eastman and E. J. Steig (2017), Influence of high-latitude atmospheric circulation changes on summertime Arctic sea ice, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate3241

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.

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. 

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.

Hauser, D.D W., Laidre K. L., Stern H.L., Moore S.E., Suydam, R. S., and Richard, P.R.: Habitat selection by two beluga whale populations in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, PLoS ONE 12(2), doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0172755, 2017.

Heide‐Jørgensen, M. P., Hansen, R. G., Fossette, S. , Nielsen, N. H., Borchers, D. L., Stern, H. and Witting, L. (2017), Rebuilding beluga stocks in West Greenland. Anim Conserv, 20: 282-293. https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12315

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.

Hogg, A.E., A. Shepherd, S.L. Cornford, K.H. Briggs, N. Gourmelen, J. Graham, I. Joughin, J. Mouginot, T. Nagler, A.J. Payne, E. Rignot, J. Wuite. (2017), Increased ice flow in Western Palmer Land linked to ocean melting, Geophys. Res. Lett., 44, doi: 10.1002/2016GL072110

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.

Karen Junge. 2017. Extreme summer melt: Assessing the habitability and physical structure of rotting first-year Arctic sea ice. Chukchi Sea, Alaska. 2015-2018. Arctic Data Center. doi:10.18739/A28C9R366.

Kwok R., S. S. Pang, S. Kacimi (2017) Sea ice drift in the Southern Ocean: Regional patterns, variability, and trends. Elem Sci Anth., 5:32. doi:10.1525/elementa.226.

Kwok, R., Kurtz, N. T., Brucker, L., Ivanoff, A., Newman, T., Farrell, S. L., King, J., Howell, S., Webster, M., Paden, J., Leuschen, C., MacGregor, J.A., Richter-Menge, J., Harbeck, J., & M. Tschudi (2017). Intercomparison of snow depth retrievals over Arctic sea ice from radar data acquired by Operation IceBridge. The Cryosphere, 11(6), 2571–2593. doi:10.5194/tc-11-2571-2017.

Kwok, R., Kurtz, N. T., Brucker, L., Ivanoff, A., Newman, T., Farrell, S. L., King, J., Howell, S., Webster, M., Paden, J., Leuschen, C., MacGregor, J.A., Richter-Menge, J., Harbeck, J., & M. Tschudi (2017). Intercomparison of snow depth retrievals over Arctic sea ice from radar data acquired by Operation IceBridge. The Cryosphere, 11(6), 2571–2593. doi:10.5194/tc-11-2571-2017.

Laidre, K.L., and E.V. Regehr. 2017. Arctic marine mammals and sea ice. Pages 516-533 in D. Thomas (Ed.), Sea Ice 3rd Edition. West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.  ISBN: 978-1-118-77838-8

Lee, C. M., J. Thomson, and the Marginal Ice Zone and Arctic Sea State Teams (incl. M. Steele), An autonomous approach to observing the seasonal ice zone in the western Arctic, Oceanography 30(2):56–68, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2017.222, 2017.

Liu, Z., Schweiger, A. (2017), Synoptic conditions, clouds, and sea ice melt-onset in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seasonal Ice Zone, J. Climate, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0887.1 .

Ma, B., M. Steele, and C. M. Lee, Ekman circulation in the Arctic Ocean: Beyond the Beaufort Gyre, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 122, 3358–3374, doi:10.1002/2016JC012624, 2017.

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…

Narwhals are intentionally a part of NASA’S project, Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG). PSC’s Kristin Laidre explains why the whales play a vital role in studying the ice in a recent story from The Washington Post/Bloomberg News and presented by their various news outlets

National Geographic asks PSC’s Kristin Laidre about a new unaffiliated study of the escape response of East Greenland narwhals.

PSC’s Ignatius Rigor took part in buoy deployments near the North Pole, in early September, as part of the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP) – a partnership of global participants maintaining a network of drifting buoys in the Arctic Ocean. Read the Navy News Service post to learn more about IABP and the joint mission…

Geographical reports on the findings of an extensive study of polar bear populations published in Biology Letters.  Read the online article with remarks from one of PSC’s contributors to the study, Kristin Laidre.

Polar Science Weekend at Pacific Science Center, returns for the twelfth straight year March 3-5, 2017. The annual interactive exhibit offers the public a view into the many facets of polar research.

Pomerleau, C., Heide-Jørgensen, M.P., Ferguson, S.H. et al. (2017) Reconstructing variability in West Greenland ocean biogeochemistry and bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) food web structure using amino acid isotope ratios. Polar Biol 40: 2225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-017-2136-x

PSC researchers Eric Regehr and  Harry Stern contribute to a new polar bear study on the balance between conservation and subsistence needs. The British Ecological Society reports on the published findings.

UW Today talks with Qinghua Ding and Axel Schweiger about a new study published in Nature Climate Change of how natural variability affects sea ice loss in the Arctic. Ding, now a PSC affiliate, along with Schweiger and other colleagues from UW and NOAA used decades of data to examine the contribution of the atmospheric circulation to Arctic sea-ice variability.

Regehr, E., R. Wilson, K. Rode, M. Runge, and H. Stern. 2017. Harvesting wildlife affected by climate change: a modeling and management framework for polar bears. Journal of Applied Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12864

BioScience talks to PSC’s Kristin Laidre for their coverage of combining remote sensing with animal tracking. Laidre and a field team of researchers tagged polar bears with telemetry devices, such as GPS collars, to collect data. Read the article to learn how Kristin and PSC’s Harry Stern used the remote-sensing data to study polar bear and sea ice trends. 

Science Daily, the popular science news website, posts coverage of the recently published study of the annual migration of some beluga whales altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic. The study and findings were published in Global Change Biology, authored by Donna HauserKristin Laidre, Harry Stern and Kate Stafford, among others.

Are climate scientists able to talk about their research without politics today? The Seattle Times talks with PSC researchers Axel Schwieger, Mike Steele, and Harry Stern who try to inform the public of the science behind climate change.

Shean, D. E., Christianson, K., Larson, K., Ligtenberg, S., Joughin, I.R., Smith, B. E., Stevens, C.M., In-situ GPS records of surface mass balance and ocean-induced basal melt for Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, The Cryosphere Discuss, 2016-288, doi:10.5194/tc-2016-288, 2017.

NPR interviews PSC’s Kristin Laidre on the recent discovery of the narhwals’ unique reaction to stress and why its effects should be quantified.

Rolling Stone reports on the changing state of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica and how it could affect sea levels worldwide. The mainstream article quotes research previously published by PSC’s Ian Joughin, along with Ben Smith and alumnus Brooke Medley.

48° North covers the changing state of the Northwest Passage from a sailor’s point of view. The magazine also includes their brief conversation with PSC’s Harry Stern who provides some of the science behind the fluctuating Arctic sea ice.

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