Posts Tagged «News»

Reuters Environment reports on a polar bear study led by Eric Regehr and its findings which were presented by co-author Kristin Laidre at a panel discussion during the America Geophysical Union’s 2016 Fall Meeting. Satellite data documenting sea-ice loss also forecasts declines in polar bear population. Reuters briefly talks to Regehr about the specifics of the global assessment.

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.

February 14, 2020 – The impact of the climate crisis is becoming more and more obvious to humans and their animal neighbors. But among all species, polar bears might be some of the hardest hit.

UW News produced a video reporting on Kristin Laidre‘s recent study of carcasses of stranded whales as a food source for polar bears during past warm periods in the Arctic. The short clip accompanies the university news source’s article and interview of Kristin and co-authors. 

UW News covers Kristin Laidre‘s recent study of carcasses of stranded whales as a food source for polar bears during past warm periods in the Arctic. The university news source talks with Kristin and her co-authors and provides access to the research paper. 

February 12, 2020 – Polar bears are spending more time on land than they did in the 1990s due to reduced sea ice, new University of Washington-led research shows. Bears in Baffin Bay are getting thinner and adult females are having fewer cubs than when sea ice was more available.

February 4, 2020 – A polar bear’s life seems simple enough: eat seals, mate, and raise cubs. But a recent study shows some subpopulations of polar bears are struggling to complete these essential tasks because of declining concentrations of Arctic sea ice.

Audio clip from Scientific American’s 60-Second Science with Polar Science Center’s Kristin Laidre explaining why she and PSC alumna Twila Moon were so fascinated by their recent Science Magazine results.

PSC’s Ignatius Rigor brings his sea ice expertise to the podcast series Science Vs as they investigate the idea of the polar bear moving toward extinction. 

Polar bears are now a noticeable presence in the Arctic village of Kaktovik, Alaska. The New York Times provides in-depth coverage of their living situation and talks to Eric Regehr, among others, about the loss of habitat and sustenance and the hard adjustments to come for the species.

In search of the Northwest Passage, Captain James Cook was the first to actually probe and chart the ice edge north of Bering Strait. Polar Geography has published Harry Stern’s research of Cook’s exploration of the Arctic and how other expeditions fared in comparison, resulting in a history of sea-ice observations from Cook’s time to the present.

Three PSC investigators were recently awarded funds to support their participation in NASA’s IceBridge mission. They include Ron Lindsay, Ian Joughin and Ben Smith. IceBridge is conducting the most extensive set of airborne surveys of the polar ice caps and sea ice ever undertaken.

Polar Science Weekend returns to Seattle’s Pacific Science Center for the eleventh straight year March 4-6, 2016.

Experience hands-on activities, live demonstrations and exhibits presented by UW glaciologists, biologists and climate experts along with other community members devoted to polar environments.

UW Today spreads the word that Polar Science Weekend has arrived. Event is March 4-6, Friday 10am – 2pm. Saturday & Sunday 10am – 6pm.

Entrance is included with Pacific Science Center admission. Polar Science Weekend is a partnership between Pacific Science Center and the UW’s Polar Science Center and Applied Physics Laboratory, with support from PEMCO Insurance Company, the College of the Environment’s Future of Ice Initiative and the UW’s Quaternary Research Center.

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.

Kristin Laidre participated in a panel discussion held at AGU’s 2016 Fall Meeting in San Francisco. She presented population projections for polar bears across the Arctic during the discourse of how satellites observe habitat change and help scientists forecast how species will respond.

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.

Investigator Matthew Alkire was recently awarded a 2012-13 Fulbright U.S Scholar Grant for his proposal titled, “Using sea ice cores to investigate the influence of glacial meltwater in surface waters of Kongsfjorden.”

The Polar Science Center is inviting applications for research scientists with principal investigator responsibilities.  We seek candidates who have completed their post doctoral research with a record that demonstrates high potential to develop their own well-funded program.  Initial research support over a nominal 2-year period will come from start-up funds and existing project funds.

The APL family lost a dear friend and a key figure in our success in polar oceanography when Andy Heiberg passed away at home with his family on February 17, 2021 after short struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Andy was an internationally known expert in  operations and logistics for scientific fieldwork on sea ice. His career at the APL Polar Science Center began before PSC was part of APL and even before PSC was created…..

PSC Glaciologist Ian Joughin was elected to be an AGU fellow as part of the class of 2015. Congratulations to Ian for this well-deserved honor recognizing his many contributions towards understanding ice sheets dynamics.

PSC graduate student Cecilia Peralta Ferriz was awarded the Best Student Poster prize at the Gordon Research Conference for Polar Marine Science on March 24, 2011.

The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear

Harry Stern sits down with UW Today to discuss his research which involved accounts from early explorers to study the Arctic Ocean.

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.

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. 

Harry Stern served as a respondent at the International Policy Institute (IPI) Arctic Fellows Research Symposium which took place on Friday, December 9 at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies on campus. The theme of the symposium was Arctic Indigenous Economies in Inuit Nunangat (Canada) and the Circumpolar World.

June 15, 2019 – PSC’s Dale Winebrenner and his team conducted fieldwork on Mount Baker’s Easton Glacier with the help of a local snowmobile club. The team is involved in developing equipment to better study lakes beneath not only the Antarctic ice but hopefully under the ice on other planets. 

Mashable, the online news source, covered a study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, of a 20-mile-long rift in Pine Ice Glacier that eventually broke through the surface and cleaved off a 225-square-mile iceberg in July 2015. Mashable contacted PSC Glaciologist  Ian Joughin to comment on the findings.

Nature has reported on the Global Land Ice Velocity Extraction project (GoLIVE), recently announced at the AGU Fall Meeting 2016. This NASA-funded project uses perpetual data from the Landsat 8 satellite to monitor glaciers and ice sheets. The news source asked PSC Glaciologist Ian Joughin for comment.

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 Hauser, Kristin Laidre, Harry Stern and Kate Stafford, among others.

As sea ice disappears in the Arctic Ocean, the U.S. Coast Guard is teaming with scientists to explore this new frontier by deploying scientific equipment through cracks in the ice from airplanes hundreds of feet in the air.

The Washington Post spreads the word about PSC’s Anthony Arendt’s current collaborative project, Community Snow Observations (CSO), a citizen snow-measuring program. Read more to learn how the public can participate and why measuring snow is part of the science.

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.

Seattle’s Most Influential People of 2014 includes Ian Joughin from the Polar Science Center. Read the section called Ice Breaker for more.

August 13, 2019 – The Economist covers research by Axel Schweiger and Jinlun Zhang in collaboration with Kevin Wood at JISAO. Reconstruction of sea ice thickness and volume since 1901 uses logs from old US revenue cutters traveling in the Arctic in the early 20th century.

Coast Guard C-130 take SIZRS crew to the North Pole

September 23, 2020 – New research shows that Kane Basin polar bears are doing better, on average, in recent years than they were in the 1990s. The study, published Sept. 23 in Global Change Biology, finds the bears are healthier as conditions are warming because thinning and shrinking multiyear sea ice is allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean surface, which makes the system more ecologically productive.

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

A new modeling study conducted by Dr. Jinlun Zhang to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate.

The AP News talks to PSC’s Eric Regehr, the lead author of a polar bear study published in Scientific Reports. Regehr was involved in the first formal count of polar bears in waters between the United States and Russia. Despite being listed as a threatened species because of diminished sea ice due to climate change, Regehr and his colleagues estimate a healthy and abundant population in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast.

Our recent paper talking about the uncertainty in Arctic Sea Ice Volume is covered in Science News. Click to read full story

NOAA released its annual “Arctic Report Card” and Gizmodo presented research findings by Kristin Laidre, among others, to help readers interpret the “grade”.

The Arctic Ocean has lost 95 percent of its oldest ice — a startling sign of what’s to comeIf the thinning trend continues, scientists fear an added boost to global warming.Chris Mooney of the Washington Post talked with Axel Schweiger and other scientists about sea ice loss in the Arctic

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.

The Guardian cites PIOMAS sea ice volume in the context of a new sea ice minimum reached according to data from the University of Bremen. Click here for full story.