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  • The 19th Century Antarctic air molecules that could change climate models | Discover Magazine
    Thursday, November 8, 2018
    Friends and loved ones bid adieu to members of the latest research team to begin the long trek to Antarctica this weekend. Peter Neff, a postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More
  • Digitizing earthquake alerts to save precious time in a disaster | KING 5
    Tuesday, November 6, 2018
    Scientists at the UW and the U.S. Geological Survey are working to add hundreds more digital earthquake detectors in Washington and Oregon in the coming years. Paul Bodin, network manager at the UW-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, is quoted. Read More
  • Timing a Tsunami | BBC
    Monday, November 5, 2018
    How fast do Tsunamis travel, what makes them so devastating and can we predict when they're going to hit? Jody Bourgeois, professor emeritus of Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More
  • Q&A: Provost Mark Richards' welcome lecture asks: 'What really killed the dinosaurs?'
    Monday, October 29, 2018

    The University of Washington this summer welcomed a new provost and executive vice president, Mark Richards, who also has an appointment as a professor in the UW Department of Earth & Space Sciences. As a lead-up to his welcome lecture, Richards sat down with UW News to answer a few questions about his work to solve one of Earth’s most intriguing scientific mysteries.

    The lecture is Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 3:30 p.m. in the HUB Lyceum. It will also be livestreamed and archived at uwtv.org.

    How did you get into studying dinosaurs? How does it relate to your expertise in Earth sciences?

    Mark Richards in front of brick building

    Mark Richards, UW provost and executive vice president for academic affairs

    The answer is, honestly, that I really don’t study dinosaurs. I’m not a paleontologist; I’m a geophysicist. I study the events that led to their extinction.

    My expertise is in flood volcanism, caused by plumes of hot rock coming from deep in the interior up to the surface in what are called flood basalts. Mantle plumes also create features like Iceland or the Hawaiian Islands chain or the Galapagos Islands.

    The last four mass extinctions on Earth are all closely associated in time with huge flood-basalt volcanic events. The largest mass extinction event was 251 million years ago, when about 90 percent of all species were wiped out. That event is very closely associated with a huge set of volcanic eruptions in Russia -- the Siberian Traps eruptions.

    2018 Provost Welcome Lecture: “What really killed the dinosaurs?”

    Tuesday, Oct. 30, 3:30 p.m.

    HUB Lyceum

    Only the most recent mass extinction -- the K-T mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs -- is associated with a meteorite impact, the Chicxulub impact. The meteorite impact coincides almost exactly in time with the extinction event. But there was also flood volcanism at that time in India, creating the Deccan Traps. Why does the dinosaur extinction coincide with a big meteorite, and is it related to the volcanism? This has been a real conundrum in the science.

    The Deccan volcanism had started before the impact, so the meteorite didn’t cause the volcanism. But what I and my group have proposed, and found increasing evidence for, is that the rate of volcanism increased by a factor of two or three at the moment of impact. In this case, it looks like there was an ongoing flood-basalt event whose activity was accelerated by the meteor impact. And we propose that the acceleration of the eruptions may have contributed to the K-T extinction 66 million years ago, when 70 percent of everything in the fossil record was wiped out.

    So let’s jump to the question that everyone’s inner 8-year-old wants to know, and that is the title of your talk: What killed the dinosaurs?

    Not to give away the answer, but the truth is that we don’t quite know. We know that it’s one of two things -- meteor impact or volcanism -- and the two events may have been related. It leaves us, right now, not knowing which of those two events was the leading cause of the extinction. My own prejudice is that it probably was the impact, but we just don’t know that yet.

    Have these been the only explanations for how the dinosaurs died out?

    People today seem to think that we always knew there were mass extinctions. But that's not true. Very few people realize that prior to 1980, the majority of paleontologists did not believe in mass extinctions. They had all sorts of other explanations for how species had disappeared. Dinosaurs were fairly large and rare as animals go, so it’s not entirely obvious from the fossil record that they died off suddenly. There are some people even today who maintain that the dinosaurs died off gradually.

    But in 1980, Walter Alvarez and his group at the University of California, Berkeley, published this amazing paper with evidence of an asteroid impact at the time of the K-T extinctions. That paper and the huge controversy surrounding it gave a lot of paleontologists the idea that there could be at least one major event that could trigger extinctions across the globe. When later in 1991 scientists discovered the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucat?n, Mexico, people became very convinced that mass extinction events were possible.

    Since then, paleontology has gotten better and better, and it’s now clear that there are at least five, and possibly six, mass extinction events in the past 600 million years of Earth’s history. The four that have happened since 260 million years ago are very clear in the fossil record.

    How do you carry out your research?

    What I’ve been studying is the causal mechanism of the K-T mass extinction. I’m mainly concerned about the volcanic processes, and how they change the conditions for life on Earth. That involves understanding the nature and timing of the Deccan eruptions.

     

    Mark Richards, former dean at UC Berkeley, named provost at the UW” -UW News

    UW’s new provost plumbs one of Earth’s most fascinating mysteries” -Seattle Times

    If you think you understand the death of the dinosaurs, you're wrong” -KQED

     

    For the last four years, our team has been going to India to the Deccan Traps lavas to obtain samples. Prior to the work that we’ve done, the dating had only been precise to about half a million years. But by using the latest methods for argon-argon isotopic dating, we can now date samples to a precision of about 30,000 years. This new technique has allowed us to say with increasing precision exactly when each lava sequence was laid down in layered rock formations that are about 3.5 kilometers (more than 2 miles) in total thickness.

    We can also say rather precisely when the Chicxulub impact occurred. And we see profound changes in the nature of the volcanism in India just at that time. The Chicxulub impact caused a magnitude-11 earthquake, which we think triggered accelerated volcanism almost halfway around the world.

    We had a very precise hypothesis that we were testing, and it’s turned out to be spectacularly confirmed. That doesn’t happen very often in science.

    What should people expect from your talk?

    The talk is designed for a general audience. I’m going to minimize the technical slides, and emphasize the places traveled, the adventure of it all, the people I’ve worked with, and highlight the most important scientific aspects on the way.

    It’s unusual to introduce a provost with a research talk. Was that a deliberate choice?

    Yes. I very much want the faculty and students here to feel that I’m part of the academic mission of the university, and not just someone who lords over their budgets. (Yes, you can actually keep that line.)

    The role of provost is mysterious to many people. How do you like to describe it?

    Officially, the provost is the chief academic and budget officer for the campus. It’s a huge amount of responsibility, especially for a place this large and complex. So, one way to think about it is that the president and the provost are both chief administrators, with the president as the boss and the provost beneath.

    The president is a much more outward-looking person, who is the face of the university and is more publicly and politically visible. The provost is the person who’s more inwardly focused and looking at the running of the enterprise. President Ana Mari Cauce and I talk every day, and we don’t make major decisions without consulting each other. It’s really a partnership.

    How do you balance your research with being provost, and why do you think it’s important to do both?

    I’ve had a lot of practice. I was dean for 12 years at Berkeley, and managed to keep my research going during that time. It’s mainly an issue of time management.

    I think it’s important, if you’re in a position like dean or provost, for faculty to see you as a colleague. The main way to be seen as a colleague is to be a teacher or a researcher. Keeping a research program, which you can schedule during “off-hours,” is much more possible than maintaining a regular teaching schedule.

    On the provost front, any areas that people should look for as initial priorities?

    Some things that I think need renewed attention at the UW -- in no particular order -- are support for graduate students and restoration of infrastructure and facilities. Affordability for undergraduate students and the overall undergraduate experience, and diversity across all aspects of the university community, especially among the faculty are also significant priorities.

    Anything else you would like to say to the university community?

    It’s an exciting university that is innovative and flexible, and I’m really happy to be here.

    ###

     

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  • 4 volcanoes near Vancouver 'very high threat,' but experts say no need to duck and cover | Globe News
    Friday, October 26, 2018
    Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have ranked the volcanoes across the country at their current risk to erupt. And the results are troubling for a number of volcanoes located in Washington State. Stephen Malone, professor emeritus of Earth and space sciences at the UW, is quoted. Read More
  • Earthquake research in Japan may help warn us when the 'Big One' is coming | KING 5
    Thursday, October 18, 2018
    The network of seismic stations keeping track of earthquakes as they happen in the northwest has a new leader. Harold Tobin, the new director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington, is quoted. Read More
  • Oldest fossils or just rocks? Scientists at odds over 3.7 billion-year-old structures | The Washington Post
    Thursday, October 18, 2018
    It was an extraordinary claim: Scientists studying a rock formation in Greenland said they had discovered Earth's oldest fossils, a series of small, cone-shaped structures left by microbial mats some 3.7 billion years ago. Roger Buick, a University of Washington geologist, is quoted. Read More
  • Q&A with Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network
    Thursday, October 4, 2018

    Earthquake expert Harold Tobin joined the UW this fall as professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. While he comes from a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin, he’s no stranger to the risks posed by offshore faults like the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the source of our “big one.”

    UW News sat down with Tobin to learn a bit more about his research, experience and plans for the UW-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, a coalition among the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Oregon and the UW that monitors seismic activity from earthquakes and volcanoes in this region.

    What drew you to the UW?

    HT: To be honest, it was an easy decision. I know the area well. I lived in Oregon for two years when I was in my early 20s, but I’ve been here tons since. I went to graduate school in Santa Cruz, and before then, as an undergraduate at Yale, I did fieldwork for two summers high up in the Olympic Mountains. And before that I had spent a summer volunteering at Mount St. Helens. That got me interested in this region and in plate tectonics. I’ve just moved to this region after being a professor in New Mexico and Wisconsin, but coming to the Pacific Northwest I’m just tremendously excited to be here and I feel like I’m coming back to my research home.

    mug shot

    Harold Tobin

    The challenge of directing the PNSN and taking it to the next level is really exciting. The PNSN already is this fantastic organization that’s top notch in terms of being part of the nation’s data collection system and frontline information system for major natural hazards. The group of people here at PNSN is so talented and dedicated. The scope of expertise required to run 300-plus instruments, of all different flavors, vintages and types, running around the clock with all the data streaming in real time, is enormous. The communications networking system has to be a 24/7, fail-safe operation, and it is. It’s a privilege to be able to come into an organization that’s already functioning at a really high level.

    The PNSN has also already established itself as this fantastic link between the scientific measurements and the community at large. The PNSN has to be more than the seismic network; it’s got to be the go-to place for geologic hazards, and understanding how living on top of a subduction zone matters to people in the Puget Sound region, the state of Washington and the whole Pacific Northwest. I’d love to see the PNSN’s reach continue to expand on the public outreach side, and build the research program at the university, too.

    What are some current or upcoming projects at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network?

    HT: This is a really exciting time for the PNSN. First of all, the stuff that’s already going on: The advent of the ShakeAlert system and earthquake early warning is happening; some parts are already operational, and much more is coming soon. When our sensors detect an earthquake's “P-wave,” the first, fast-moving but relatively undamaging wave, it gives you some tens of seconds of warning before the slower moving “S-waves” that really do the damage. Developing a system with the U.S. Geological Survey and university partners that’s capable of detecting earthquakes as they start and alerting civil authorities and the public is ambitious but achievable, and I want to make sure that goal is fully realized.

    In terms of new initiatives, the scientific community realizes that if we want to fully understand how the earthquake processes work in the Pacific Northwest, from offshore right up to the mountains and even to the east side, we need even more types of measurements and instrumentation.

    We think of the seismic information, which is how the Earth shakes. But the Earth is actually in motion over a much wider range of timescales. Geodesy is the study of how the Earth moves slowly, and seismology is how the Earth moves fast. Really it’s just one big spectrum. We will push to comprehensively measure all these types of motion and unrest.

    The next big thing is figuring out how to make more measurements offshore. The shoreline is no boundary, from the Earth’s point of view, for plate tectonics or for the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is our biggest hazard. Most of the stress buildup leading to the inevitable earthquake is happening offshore, beneath the bed of the Pacific Ocean. We need to be able to monitor that much better than we do now. It’s also a huge challenge because any detector on the seafloor is 10 to 100 times more expensive than on land. But there are new technologies that are emerging to monitor seafloor motion better. Incorporating those into the network is a major long-term goal.

    When might ShakeAlert go public - as in, when will our phones warn us that an earthquake is imminent?

    HT: ShakeAlert is here now, really. We have the capability in place now to alert the operators of critical infrastructure like utilities when an earthquake large enough to cause damage has occurred and to expect imminent shaking. That will allow them to take specific actions to protect the public during those critical seconds. In 2018 ShakeAlert has transitioned from research and development to actually using the system to take risk-reduction actions, and pilot programs are expanding. For example, we’re working with the superintendent of public instruction and have identified a number of school districts in areas where the sensor networks are already up to the task that have indicated they would like to develop pilot projects for schools.

    There is a big push across all the West Coast states for congressional funding, mostly flowing through the U.S. Geological Survey, for the buildout of the ShakeAlert network. That funding will ensure that there’s the appropriate density of instruments on the ground so that when an earthquake happens, anywhere in Washington, Oregon and California, it’s detected appropriately, can be assessed within seconds for how big of an event it is, and then the alert can go out as the event is unfolding, in real time, to surrounding communities.

    But I understand a lot of people are wondering: When will I get something like an AMBER Alert or a weather alert, where my phone will buzz and tell me the earthquake shaking is on its way? There are still some technological challenges to overcome in order to make that work. The reason is that an earthquake alert has to be real-time down to a couple of seconds. I just moved here from the Midwest, where you might get a severe weather alert, say for a tornado. If it got to your phone 30 seconds after it was issued, that’s no big deal because you typically have maybe 10 minutes of warning. ShakeAlert has a technological need to be issued and reach everyone's cell phone within just a few seconds in order to be useful, and that is still very much a challenge, for technical reasons surrounding how the phone networks actually work.

    The City of Los Angeles is going to be pushing notifications to 35,000 city and county employees first, starting with City Hall, and the mayor would like to push it out to 4 million Angelenos next year. AT&T and other companies are developing apps that will try to do this massive push of data to thousands and then millions of phones.

    We’ll let them pilot that in L.A. where there are more frequent, smaller earthquakes, and that will test the system. And then we’ll use what we learn from that and adapt it for our situation here in the Northwest.

    How is it that Mexico City and Japan already have earthquake early warning systems? Why is it taking longer to implement in the U.S.?

    HT: Mexico City has a fairly uncomplicated geologic situation for earthquake alerts. Part of the reason is that Mexico City is concerned specifically with earthquakes on the subduction fault that are relatively deep, and where the fault line is relatively far away from Mexico City, but still generates strong shaking in Mexico City. That gives them up to a minute or more of warning time in Mexico City before the shaking is strong there. So the alert system worked pretty well for their 2017 earthquakes.

    The Japanese system is more like the system that we would aspire to, ultimately, with ShakeAlert. Of course Japan has really high earthquake hazards and very frequent events. They've invested enormously in their system, and the country is just blanketed with instruments. In Japan, that system has been fully operational for a number of years now.

    Three years ago, I was in Japan in the middle of giving a talk at a scientific conference, and suddenly I felt my cell phone start buzzing in my pocket, and then I realized it was not just my phone, it was every phone in the room, plus the PA system. I didn’t understand, but then the room started shaking. What my phone, and all the phones, were doing was giving a message in Japanese: “Earthquake detected, moderate shaking expected in 5, 4, 3, 2...”

    There are some technological differences between the cellular communications networks in Japan and those in the U.S. that we still have to solve here. So they are ahead of us on earthquake warning, but they’re also showing the way in how to do this well.

    Japan is also instrumenting their offshore much better than we are. Their main homeland-security issue as they see it is earthquakes and tsunamis, so billions of dollars are being spent on studying the offshore region. We’re not quite there yet to anything like that level, but we’re really pushing for this in Cascadia, and also in Alaska.

    How did you become interested in seismology?

    HT: As an undergrad I became a geology major, and I became interested in the young stuff, geologically speaking, the active plate tectonic systems and especially subduction zones, like Cascadia. Most of my Ph.D. project was on the offshore Cascadia region. My first project as a doctoral student was diving in the Alvin submarine off the coast of Oregon down to the deep sea trench and literally mapping active faults on the seabed by looking out the window of the submarine. Relating that view to our seismic-wave images of the subsurface geology allowed me to discover new things about how the subduction fault works. I was hooked.

    What changes have you seen in earthquake science?

    HT: I started graduate school at UC Santa Cruz in 1989, and at that time there hadn’t been a magnitude-9 earthquake anywhere on the planet since 1964, since before I was born. And there wasn’t one until 2004, until well after I’d finished my Ph.D. The whole time I was doing my studies we were focused on active subduction zones, and of course there were big earthquakes around the world, but we didn’t have this stuff in the public eye and in the media because there was no direct experience of a major, Pacific-wide tsunami event. People were just getting the inkling in the 1980s that Cascadia wasn’t a quiet zone but was building up the stress for a future, giant earthquake, probably a magnitude-9. Brian Atwater and Kenji Satake were still figuring out the history of the magnitude-9 -- all of that was still to come.

    But since the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and the devastation in the Indian Ocean, that was 250,000 lives lost, and then not many years later, first in Chile in 2010 and then in Japan in 2011, with the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, we’ve just seen a massive change. These are the first subduction zone earthquakes that have happened in the modern, digital-instrumentation, satellite-observation era.

    person in front of screens

    Harold Tobin aboard the research vessel Marcus G. Langseth, conducting a marine seismic reflection survey of the Cascadia Subduction Zone off Washington’s coast.Jackie Caplan-Auerbach

    This field of science has been massively transformed in the past 15 years or so, and it’s a tremendously exciting place to be, scientifically. It’s transformed my scientific career. Early on, I was mostly focused on trying to figure out the general geologic processes, thinking about things on the hundred-thousand-year to few-million-year time scale. Now I’m focused on how does the Earth's geology and the nature of the fault zones directly impact the hazard from the earthquakes. One example is: If a big earthquake happens on the Cascadia subduction fault, it will slip that fault offshore, mostly. We think about the shaking in Seattle, but for the coast the biggest hazard is probably the tsunami. And how the tsunami is generated and how big it is and what areas it affects all depend on whether the fault slips all the way up to the seabed, or whether all the slip is down deeper in the Earth and kind of peters out as you get up to the surface. It changes the pattern of the warping of the seafloor, and that’s what pushes up the water and makes the wave.

    We worry a lot about the shape of the faults, and how much of them are locked up or “stuck” so they can generate a big earthquake, whether that locking on the fault is patchy, and how that will affect the pattern of causing a tsunami. So the geological research on these offshore faults is a component of the hazard analysis, which is not the way we used to think about it.

    You are currently leading a major research project in Japan, which has seismic risks similar to our region. Can you describe your work there?

    HT: The project I’ve been working on for nearly 15 years is an integrated project to study a part of Japan’s subduction zone, south of where the 2011 earthquake happened, called the Nankai Trough, off the coast not far from Kyoto and Osaka. A more than 1,000-year historical record exists for earthquakes in that region, and about every 90 to 120 years there’s a magnitude-8 earthquake with an associated tsunami. We went there long before the 2011 earthquake. The integrated project is imaging the seafloor and the faults below it and then drilling holes using an amazing piece of seagoing technology, a scientific drilling ship that looks like an offshore oil drilling ship. But we’re not drilling for oil -- we’re drilling for data.

    By drilling down into and around the fault zones we can do a couple of things. One is sample the material in the faults. There are all kinds of geological clues as to what the conditions have been like during the earthquake slips. Literally, during the seconds the earthquake takes, it leaves a geologic record in the rocks. We can then use the boreholes themselves as observatories, and put instruments in them: special kinds of seismometers that go into the fault zone, temperature sensors, pressure sensors. Those let us see the deformation or strain in the rock, how it’s bending and creeping and building up toward a future earthquake.

    It’s a huge open question whether fault zones show you anything before the earthquake occurs. From surface measurements, we’ve pretty much established that there is no detectable long-term precursor to earthquakes in general. There’s no good earthquake prediction mechanism today based in science. But there’s a hint that for these especially giant events, some new kinds of data recorded offshore and even down in these holes are showing us that maybe the faults start to pop and creak and strain before the earthquake starts, over the span of hours to weeks, maybe even months to years. That’s a major goal of research now: not predicting earthquakes, but understanding whether there’s even a physical basis for predicting earthquakes -- or not.

    We first proposed the project, mostly led by U.S. and Japanese scientists, as a coalition effort to comprehensively study this part of the world as a kind of a case study that applies to all subduction zones. Nankai and Cascadia are sister subduction zones, because they’re similar in many ways.

    See the welcome announcement from the College of the Environment

    Read a recent profile of Tobin in EARTH Magazine

    Watch a video about the Japan drilling project

    The drilling ship is heading back out to our main site off Japan very soon in October. At the site, beneath 2 kilometers (more than a mile) of seawater at the bottom of the ocean, lies the top of a hole we have already drilled 3 kilometers down from the seabed. It's lined with steel pipe, just like an oil well is "cased." It’s all in place down to 3 kilometers, but our fault zone lies at 5 kilometers depth, so we need to extend this borehole from 3 kilometers to 5 kilometers to reach it.

    Our goal from October to March is to finish drilling that hole, the culmination of the whole project. We started our drilling in 2007, and it has proceeded in many stages as we’ve been working our way to build a deep observatory borehole. I’ll be going to sea from just before Christmas to early February with a huge team of almost 200 people, trying to make sure that our borehole gets drilled safely and makes it to our target zone.

    Once all the instruments are connected we’ll be studying the fault during the period between earthquakes to understand the forces and stresses that accumulate in the fault to create an earthquake. Of course, if an earthquake occurs during the experiment, and these instruments will be in place for decades so that’s possible, these instruments will record right up to the earthquake, and it will be a unique and valuable study of how a fault works. But even without an earthquake, it would be the first time in the world that we have that level of instrumentation on a major fault like this.

    What about clustering of earthquakes? Should we be worried that the Pacific Rim has been pretty active, or when we hear about local swarms of earthquakes?

    HT: One thing we can say is when little earthquakes occur, and even swarms of earthquakes, there’s no obvious direct link that means that we’re about to get a big earthquake. When it’s in a volcano, people pay a lot of attention to those earthquake swarms, because it can mean that magma is moving inside the volcano and there’s potential for eruption. Volcanic eruption is a bit of a different story than the crustal faults. There is always activity somewhere around the Pacific Rim, so when a few faraway earthquakes make the news in a short period of time, sometimes people wonder if that means the Big One is more imminent here. At long distances there's just no evidence that major earthquakes are any more or less likely after other ones. That's been studied exhaustively, so I don't think people should worry about that.

    Broadly speaking, small events nearby shouldn’t make people start freaking out, either. We just don’t see patterns like that in big subduction zones. Of course, if we start to see something really unusual happening, then the PNSN folks will be very focused on it, and we can imagine a scenario where we might start talking to the public, but that’s a long way out.

    So should people be worried? For the Cascadia Subduction Zone we absolutely expect a very large earthquake to happen someday. But right now, that day could be later this afternoon, or it could be 150 years from now, and there’s not much difference in the likelihood of either of those.

    And the Cascadia Subduction Zone is far from the only hazard in this region. There are a number of faults below our feet that could have effects that are different from the so-called ‘Big One.’ Some of those present significant earthquake hazards because, while they might happen relatively infrequently, they could have dangerous effects. We could have a magnitude-7 slip on the Seattle fault, which is closer to major cities and relatively shallow, rather than something bigger that’s much farther away, and that could create really strong shaking in this region. It would be more like the Kobe earthquake in Japan, or the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand. That's a very serious concern but fortunately there's also evidence those earthquakes are quite rare, with perhaps thousands of years between them.

    My attitude is: Don’t be afraid that it’s imminent, but just recognize that the hazard is there and be prepared. You should know what your game plan is for your family and your home, and take the steps that are recommended for making sure you’re as safe as possible.

    Here's one perspective: I think about earthquake hazard all the time, and yet I just moved here. I have no hesitation about living in this region despite knowing the risks, because it’s something to be prepared for rather than be freaked out by. That’s my vote of confidence that it’s not too scary.

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    For more information, contact Tobin at 206-543-6790 or htobin@uw.edu.

     

    For general questions and tours of the PNSN facility, contact communications manager Bill Steele at 206-685-5880 or wsteele@uw.edu.

    Read More
  • Chlorate-rich soil may help us find liquid water on Mars | Astrobiology Magazine
    Monday, October 1, 2018
    If liquid water exists on the surface of Mars, it is most likely in the form of a briny mixture with magnesium chlorate salts. Research by Jonathan Toner and David Catling, both of the UW Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is referenced. Read More
  • Studying the atmosphere through ice | Peter Neff | King5
    Monday, October 1, 2018
    Scientists are using ice samples from Greenland and Antarctica to study how Earth's atmosphere has changed throughout history. Peter Neff, a postdoctoral researcher in Earth and Space Sciences at the UW, is interviewed. Read More