Arctic sea ice in recent decades has declined even faster than predicted by most models of climate change. Many scientists have suspected that the trend now underway is a combination of global warming and natural climate variability. A new study finds that a substantial chunk of summer sea ice loss in recent decades was due […]
Volcanoes are an explosive and mysterious process by which molten rock from Earth’s interior escapes back into the atmosphere. Why the volcano erupts – and where it draws its lava from – could help trace the lifecycle of materials that make up our planet. New University of Washington research shows that a common type of […]
A glass of seawater is teeming with life, and a recent expedition revealed more about what ocean water contains. Microscopic creatures in the world’s oceans weigh more than all of the fish in the sea and produce about half of the Earth’s oxygen. Yet the ecology of marine microbes, which are crucial for everything from […]
For Arctic marine mammals, the future is especially uncertain. Loss of sea ice and warming temperatures are shifting already fragile Northern ecosystems. The precarious state of those mammals is underscored in a multinational study led by a University of Washington scientist, published this week in Conservation Biology, assessing the status of all circumpolar species and […]