Skip to main menu Skip to main content Skip to footer unit links

News

Filter:

| In the News

How salmon evolved to cope with the ice age

Most salmon migrate from the sea into fresh water to spawn. This became difficult during the last Ice Age, when populations of salmon were cut off from icebound spawning grounds. A study recently published in Quaternary Research, led by fisherman-scientist Patrick Martin, used genetic analyses of more than 32,000 chum salmon to suggest that some populations survived the last Ice Age isolated in freshwater glacial lakes. The researchers propose that salmon trapped in these lakes treated them like miniature oceans, migrating up glacial streams to spawn. This prolonged isolation could explain the unusually high genetic divergence and distinctive life-history traits observed in some populations in Alaska and the Salish Sea. UW researchers David Montgomery, Harvey Greenberg, and Ralph Haugerud are co-authors.

Read more on The Economist
| In the News

Antarctica’s brief rebound was caused by climate variability, not a ‘new normal’

Between 2021 and 2023, Antarctica appeared to be growing. Heavy snowfall fueled by wetter weather caused parts of the continent to gain mass, leading some to question whether climate change is really causing the ice to melt. However, a new study published on Aug. 19 in Nature, co-authored by ESS Professor Eric Steig, shows that the precipitation increase was an anomaly related to extra warm tropical ocean temperatures, not part of a long term trend.

Read more at UW News
| In the News

3 College of the Environment teams funded to pursue AI projects that support teaching and learning

Michelle Koutnik, ESS research associate professor, will lead a project, "Supporting interdisciplinary Arctic learning with AI chatbot tool," that will design, develop and test an AI chatbot tool to support interdisciplinary learning about the Arctic. Akshay Mehra, ESS assistant professor, is part of an interdisciplinary team for a project, "Designing responsible AI for learning: A pedagogical framework for undergraduate education," that will generate transferable resources, clarify expectations for appropriate AI use and provide scalable models for responsible AI-informed pedagogy across disciplines at UW.

Read more at the College of the Environment
| In the News

These frozen moons are not dead

Moons get no respect. People think of them as dead and cold, often overshadowed (literally) by the superstar planets they orbit around. But planetary scientist Baptiste Journaux would disagree. He’s fascinated by moons and the growing research that has shown that moons are far more active than we used to think. In fact, they contain heat and ice and essential components needed for life. Pocket Science host Gabriel Spitzer talks with Journaux about the latest discoveries of frozen planets and the upcoming NASA mission to explore Titan, the moon orbiting Saturn.

Watch the KUOW Pocket Science Episode
Glacial moraine surrounded by mountains.
| Student Spotlight

Highlights from the 2026 ESS Research Symposium and Gala

The UW Department of Earth & Space Sciences Research Symposium and Gala is an annual graduate student-organized event that brings together students, faculty, alumni and supporters to celebrate our students’ groundbreaking work. This year’s Gala, held during the first week of Spring Quarter, showcased over 30 student presentations, 17 posters, a department-wide photo contest and an awards reception.

Read more
Back to Top