The U.S. Forest Service says more than 1.2 million acres have burned this year in the Northwest due to wildfires. Estimated cost of fighting the fires exceeded $673 million. (Forest Service NW Photo via Twitter)
The skiing could get worse, too. But on the bright side, warm-weather grape varieties may produce better Northwest wine for drowning our sorrows.
Those are just some of the projections contained in the latest edition of the National Climate Assessment, an encyclopedic rundown of the expected region-by-region impacts of climate change on the United States.
An adult female polar bear and a cub stroll on Wrangel Island in the fall of 2017. Hundreds of Chukchi Sea polar bears spend the summer months on the island. (University of Washington Photo / Eric Regehr)
The first census of polar bears living around the Chukchi Sea, straddling Alaska and eastern Siberia, suggests that the population has been stable and healthy over the past decade.
That comes as a welcome contrast to the problems facing polar bears in other Arctic regions as their sea-ice habitat shrinks. The loss of sea ice is an issue for the Chukchi Sea as well, but the nearly 3,000 bears in that region don’t seem to be feeling the strain as much.
“Despite having about one month less time on preferred sea-ice habitats to hunt compared with 25 years ago, we found that the Chukchi Sea subpopulation was doing well from 2008 to 2016,” Eric Regehr, a biologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, said today in a news release.
Regehr is the principal author of a study about the census published in the open-access journal Scientific Reports. The census, conducted by researchers from UW and federal agencies, chronicles a decade’s worth of observations — and delves into why the Chukchi Sea bears seem to be faring better than their cousins elsewhere.
A field team from the Carnegie Institute for Science collects critical coral reef spectral data to calibrate Planet Dove satellites for the Allen Coral Atlas. (Carnegie Institute Photo / Chris Balzotti)
Even after death, the philanthropic initiatives from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen just keep on coming.
Today the Paul G. Allen Philanthropies and its consortium of partners unveiled the Allen Coral Atlas, a database of satellite imagery and environmental data aimed at mapping and monitoring the world’s coral reefs in unprecedented detail.
The foundation of the atlas is a global mosaic of satellite imagery, acquired starting last year by Planet’s constellation of Earth-imaging satellites. The images document coral reefs at a resolution of 4 meters (13 feet) per pixel.
Other partners — including the University of Queensland, the Carnegie Institute for Science, the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the National Geographic Society — are analyzing and validating the images to produce maps that show reef depth and water color, and discriminate between the reefs and algae, land, rock, sand and rubble.
Crews inspected the area around a tunnel at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that contains nuclear waste. (Department of Energy Photo)
Workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington state were told to take cover for several hours today when steam was seen escaping from a tunnel where radioactive waste is being stored.
The take-cover order was lifted at about 12:15 p.m. PT when inspectors confirmed that there was no radiological release from Tunnel 2 at Hanford’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction facility, or PUREX, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office reported in an update.
For the past few weeks, Hanford workers have been filling the 1,688-foot-long tunnel with thousands of cubic yards of grout to guard against the tunnel’s collapse. The tunnel, which dates back to 1964, houses a set of 28 rail cars that contain contaminated equipment. The last rail car was placed inside in 1996.
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt speaks at an “Apollo Plus 50” session during the ScienceWriters 2018 conference in Washington, D.C. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — I didn’t invite Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt to get his views on climate change, but that’s the topic that created the most fireworks here today at the ScienceWriters 2018 conference.
The title of the session was “Apollo Plus 50,” and the focus was the past and the future of America’s space program in light of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon missions.
Machine-learning technology can contribute to image recognition programs that could identify elephants in aerial imagery on their own. (Vulcan Photo)
Paul Allen has made a name for himself as a co-founder of Microsoft, a supporter of artificial intelligence research and a contributor to causes such as wildlife conservation — so it only makes sense that the Seattle-area billionaire wants to use machine learning to further his philanthropic goals.
His latest contribution comes through the Seattle-based Vulcan Machine Learning Center for Impact, or VMLCI. “Its mission will be to apply the tools of machine learning and AI for good,” Bill Hilf, CEO of Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., said today in a tweet.
Elephant tusks from an ivory seizure in 2015 are laid out in Singapore after they have been sorted into pairs. (Center for Conservation Biology / University of Washington)
DNA evidence and lots of detective work have revealed the networks behind illegal trade in African elephant ivory, centering on three smuggling cartels in Kenya, Uganda and Togo.
The case is laid out in a paper written by a team led by Samuel Wasser, head of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology, and published today in the open-access journal Science Advances.
Wasser said the findings could figure in a complex case centering on Feisal Mohamed Ali, a reputed ivory kingpin based in Mombasa, Kenya. Feisal was convicted on trafficking charges in 2016 but was set free last month on appeal, due to problems with the evidence that was at hand for the trial.
“Our hope is that the data presented in this paper, and discovered by others, can help strengthen the case against this cartel, and tie Feisal and his co-conspirators to multiple large ivory seizures,” he said.
In addition to the Mombasa cartel, the DNA evidence points to Entebbe in Uganda and Lome in Togo as centers of the illegal African ivory trade.
The orca known as J50 was seen with her family on Sept. 3, but is no longer part of the group. (Center for Whale Research Photo / Dave Ellifrit)
The emaciated and ailing killer whale known as J50 or Scarlet has disappeared from her family group, and experts presume that she’s dead. Nevertheless, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its partners are continuing the effort to find her, dead or alive.
“We have alerted the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network, which is a tremendous resource in such situations,” NOAA said in its Sept. 13 update. “Airlines flying in and out of the San Juan Islands are also on the lookout.”
NOAA said the hotline for stranding reports is 1-866-767-6114.
The last confirmed sighting of J50 was reported on Sept. 7 by NOAA, the SeaDoc Society and other observers. J50’s presumed loss comes after weeks of efforts to get her medicine and extra food. Experts were never able to diagnose exactly what was ailing the whale.
The 3-year-old orca’s plight captured worldwide attention over the past couple of months. So did the case of J35, also called Tahlequah, another orca from the same pod who was seen carrying her dead calf for 17 days this summer.
OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible prepares to dive in the waters off San Juan Island as a Washington state ferry passes by in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. — This week’s Salish Sea Expedition is unfolding amid the heavily trafficked waters off the San Juan Islands, but there’s still plenty of room here for scientific discoveries.
For example, researchers riding a deep-water submersible called Cyclops 1 announced that they discovered a new low for the feeding grounds of a prickly marine species known as the red sea urchin.
“We extended the range of red urchins to 284 meters,” Alex Lowe, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, proudly declared at UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, which is serving as the base of operations for this week’s expedition.
The expedition aims to assess the health of the habitats and species in the Salish Sea, a body of water that takes in the coastal waterways around the U.S.-Canadian border, from the Strait of Georgia to Puget Sound. The Salish Sea offers a rich ecosystem as well as a tourist destination and an increasingly busy shipping lane, but its murky waters make it challenging to study in depth — and at depth.
To remedy that, the expedition’s organizers are making use of Cyclops 1, a five-person craft that can descend far deeper than scuba divers go.
The survey expedition is a joint undertaking that involves scientists from the UW and other research institutions, with support from the non-profit SeaDoc Society and the OceanGate Foundation. Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate, which built Cyclops 1, is playing the lead role in getting the researchers to their underwater destinations.
OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 will take on a Salish Sea expedition in September. (OceanGate Photo)
OceanGate had to put off its plan to send a new breed of submersible to the wreck of the Titanic this summer, but now it’s gearing up for an undersea adventure closer to home.
The Everett, Wash.-based venture and its associated not-for-profit outreach organization, the OceanGate Foundation, are teaming up with the SeaDoc Societyfor an expedition in September.
During a weeklong series of dives in OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible, researchers will study the ecosystem of the Salish Sea, the network of U.S.-Canadian coastal waterways that include Washington state’s Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the San Juan Islands as well as British Columbia’s Gulf Islands and the Strait of Georgia.
“Just like the space shuttle provided a unique perspective for scientists to understand space, Cyclops 1 provides our only opportunity for direct human observation of these deep-sea environments,” SeaDoc science director Joe Gaydos said in a news release.
