John E. Vidale, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences, is among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates elected this week as members of the National Academy of Sciences. Academy members are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, according to a news release from the academy.
Vidale studies Earth’s interior, including earthquakes and volcanoes. 

The mountain pine beetle has destroyed more than 40 million acres of forest in the western United States — an area roughly the size of Washington state.
The beetles introduce a fungus that prevents water and critical nutrients from traveling within a tree. They also lay eggs under the conifers’ bark, and their feeding larvae help kill trees — sometimes just weeks after the initial attack. 

The U.S. Geological Survey and university, public and private partners held an event April 10 at the University of Washington to introduce the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning program as a unified, West Coast-wide system. The event also introduced the first pilot uses of the earthquake early warning in Washington and Oregon.
The first Pacific Northwest pilot users of the system are Bothell, Wash.-based RH2 Engineering, which will use the alerts to secure municipal water and sewer systems so these structures remain usable after a major quake. 

A researcher at the College’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences is utilizing a Wall Street technique used to monitor stocks to detect slow slip earthquakes.

Black swan events are rare and surprising occurrences that happen without notice and often wreak havoc on society. The metaphor has been used to describe banking collapses, devastating earthquakes and other major surprises in financial, social and natural systems.
A new analysis by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University is the first to document that black swan events also occur in animal populations and usually manifest as massive, unexpected die-offs. 

Polar bears depend on sea ice for essential tasks like hunting and breeding. As Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate change, bears across the species’ 19 subpopulations are feeling the strain.
But even as scientists try to quantify just how much melting sea ice is affecting polar bears, another group that depends on the iconic mammal for subsistence also is at risk of losing an important nutritional and economic resource. 

An unusually warm patch of seawater off the West Coast in late 2014 and 2015, nicknamed “the blob,” had cascading effects up and down the coast. Its sphere of influence was centered on the marine environment but extended to weather on land.
A University of Washington Bothell study now shows that this strong offshore pattern also influenced air quality. The climate pattern increased ozone levels above Washington, Oregon, western Utah and northern California, according to a study published Feb. 

Federal science agencies announced Wednesday that 2016 was the warmest year on record, beating the previous global temperature record set in 2015, which itself had beat the previous record set in 2014. Now atmospheric scientists at the University of Washington have set the new temperature record to an electronic dance beat.

This is their second project to convert scientific data to an audio track, a process known as sonification. 

A new study analyzing 37 glaciers around the world shows that because of their decades-long response times, glaciers are among the purest signals of human-driven climate change.

The College of the Environment’s LuAnne Thompson, a faculty member in the School of Oceanography and the director of the Program on Climate Change, has dedicated her career to researching the ocean’s role in climate variability. Having recently returned from France, where she delved into the specifics of measuring an interpreting sea levels from radar altimetry with her academic peers, Thompson reflects on her feelings about the state of climate science and her hopes for the future of climate science outreach and education.