Approximately 400,000 years ago, some areas of Greenland that are now covered by a thick layer of ice were exposed to fresh air and sunlight. Today, the covers most of the land mass, but the southwestern coastline is ice-free. Back then, the northwest was too.

come from sediment and ice samples collected in the 1960s. They were all but forgotten until 2019, when an international team of scientists embarked on a collaborative effort to understand modern climate change by tracking climate over longer periods of time.

The process is captured in “,” a documentary film that debuted on streaming services such as YouTube, Apple TV and Amazon Prime this fall. Director , a former evolutionary biologist, travelled to labs around the world — including at the 91̽�� — to interview and film scientists as they deciphered clues about the past from old ice and sediment samples.

These samples were collected during the Cold War at a U.S. military base in Greenland. — established in 1959, about 150 miles inland and just below the surface of the ice — was used by the U.S. to conduct military operations in secret, and do science on the side. Before Camp Century was abandoned in 1967, the team drilled more than 1,000 meters through the entire ice sheet and into the sediment below.

, a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences, is among those featured in Kasic’s film. Steig spoke with 91̽��News about the backstory.

How did the project begin? What was your role?

Eric Steig: I was working with a team of researchers led by at the University of Vermont to develop a plan for analyzing these old sediment and ice samples. We were gathering an international consortium of experts when I ran into Kathy at a scientific meeting and invited her to join us. I had seen her previous work about Antarctica and thought it was fantastic.. Because Kathy was involved early on, she was able to go to all these different labs and see the science unfold in real time.

What did your lab contribute to the research effort?

ES: My lab studies isotopes, which are the different versions of elements. We measure the concentration of heavy and light oxygen and hydrogen in little pockets of water preserved in the sediment. The ratios of those water-isotope concentrations tell us how temperatures have changed. We also analyzed isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, which reflect shifting ecological conditions in the ancient soil.

At the same time, our European colleagues were measuring the ice just above the soil, and we were working together to understand what happened at this transition point. We’re using this combination of ecology, chemistry, water and plants to disentangle what the climate was like in more detail. A lot of the work has been published, but some is still underway.

What has the project accomplished thus far?

ES: It gives us this beautiful window into history that we can use to learn about ice-free conditions. For example, we know there was an extended warm period around 400,000 years ago, from modeling, but now we can also see that reflected in the sediments. It might not have been that much warmer than it is today, but it was warm for a very long time.

There’s plenty of evidence now that the Greenland ice sheet is melting and at some point it will be gone. Our research advances our understanding of the ice sheet and it will help us refine the ice-sheet models used to predict sea level rise.

Why did the researchers collect these samples in 1960? Why can’t we get more?

ES: At the time, scientists understood the value of water isotopes and their relevance to climate. They observed this clear relationship between temperature and isotope composition that could capture climate though time, but they weren’t thinking about global warming.

Fast forward a few decades and these historic samples have immense value in climate science, especially with the advent of modern analytical tools. Those of us who study Greenland would love to put holes in a lot of places to map out exactly how the ice evolved, but drilling is expensive and time consuming. Ice cores are one thing, but sediment and bedrock present new challenges. There have only been a small handful of successful attempts to drill through the ice and sample what is beneath it.

What do you think this film helps to convey?

ES: As a scientific community, we spent decades studying what Earth was like with more ice. I grew up in this era where the questions were about the ice ages. That’s no longer the most pressing question. We need to be asking what the Earth was like when there was less ice, because that is where we are heading. The film captures this shift from studying cold periods to studying warm ones.

For more information, contact Steig at steig@uw.edu.

Most of the Earth’s fresh water is locked in the ice that covers Antarctica. As the ocean and atmosphere grow warmer, that ice is with sea levels and global currents changing in response. To understand the potential implications, researchers need to know just how fast the ice is disappearing, and what is driving it back.

The West Antarctic ice sheet, an unstable expanse bordering the Amundsen Sea, is one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate projections. Records indicate that it has been steadily shrinking since the 1940s, but key details are missing. Using environmental data gathered from ice samples, tree rings and corals, 91̽�� researchers tailored a climate model to Antarctica and ran simulations to understand how changing weather patterns dictate ice melt.

The results, , were surprising. For years, researchers have hypothesized that westerly winds were ferrying warm water toward the ice sheet, accelerating ice melt. The new study flips the existing narrative on its head, or rather on its side, pointing toward winds from the north instead.

“We know the Earth is warming up on average, but that alone doesn’t explain ice loss in Antarctica,” said , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. “To understand what’s going to happen in the future, we need to understand the details of what’s happening now, and critically, whether we are connected to it.”

The Antarctic ice sheet covers an area larger than the U.S. and Mexico combined. If the Western-Hemisphere portion were to melt, global sea levels would rise by . The ice sheet is locked in place by ice shelves, fingers of ice that stretch into the sea. Free floating sea ice blankets the surface of the surrounding waters.

To study weather in Antarctica, where there are fewer weather stations than most of the world, scientists use computer simulations that draw from available data sources. Still, these models often lack data that is specific to the region, limiting the accuracy of their outputs.

In the past century, westerly winds blowing over high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere have grown stronger in response to human-induced climate change. Indirect evidence also suggested that this trend was driving West Antarctic ice loss. But when the researchers dug into that theory, something didn’t add up.

“We thought that we were going to support what the climate models showed, which was that the westerly winds were getting stronger near the coast of Antarctica,” said , lead author and a 91̽��postdoctoral researcher of oceanography. “But there was no evidence of westerly winds strengthening in this part of Antarctica.”

O’Connor’s doctoral research explored how proxy data — historical records from ice cores, trees and coral — can reveal past weather patterns, including wind. Her work showed that the force needed to explain accelerating melt rates was still missing from the equation.

In the new study, researchers conducted a suite of high-resolution ice-ocean simulations to identify what climate patterns were driving ice shelf melting in this critical region of Antarctica. They fed the model a wind pattern for five years at a time, measured how much mass the ice lost, and repeated the process 29 times. Each iteration represented a different wind pattern. Data from the 30 simulations showed that northerly winds consistently exacerbated ice loss. Westerlies did not have the same effect.

The northerly winds, which blow with force in Antarctica, were rearranging the sea ice surrounding Antarctica, capping off small but important gaps called polynyas.

“Sea ice is a really good insulator, it keeps the ocean relatively warm compared to the air,” said a 91̽��professor of oceanography and of atmospheric and climate science. “When northerly winds close the polynyas, it reduces ocean heat loss, which means warmer waters and more melting of ice shelves below the surface.”

Polynyas are like pores on the icy surface of the ocean. When they are blocked, excess heat can’t escape. As the ice shelf melts, fresh water mingles with salty ocean water. A density gradient forms between the fresher, lighter water and the open ocean. This gradient powers a current that pulls in more warm ocean water from miles away, advancing ice shelf melt.

Researchers believe greenhouse gas emissions could be fueling the northerly winds. Early studies suggest that human-induced climate change is decreasing air pressure over the Amundsen Sea. This area hosts an influential low-pressure center that drives many of the Antarctic weather patterns. As it gets even lower, wind speed from the north increases.

“This mechanism provides a connection between West Antarctic ice loss and human-induced climate change, albeit a different mechanism than we previously suspected,” O’Connor said. Which is important, the researchers added, because if emissions are contributing to ice loss, perhaps cutting them could curtail it.

“I think what Gemma has done is going to lead to a complete revolution in the understanding of what drives Antarctic ice loss,” Armour said. “We had all sorts of theories about the winds that blow from west to east, but the northerly winds weren’t even on our radar. We were off by 90 degrees.”

Other authors include , a 91̽��professor of oceanography; , a 91̽��research scientist of Earth and space sciences; , an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College; Shuntaro Hyogo, a graduate researcher of environmental science at Hokkaido University; and Taketo Shimada, a graduate researcher of environmental science at Hokkaido University

This research was funded by the Washington Research Foundation, the 91̽�� eScience Institute, the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Calvin professorship in oceanography, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Inoue Science Foundation, NASA Sea Level Change Team, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and JST SPRING.

For more information, contact Gemma O’Connor at goconnor@uw.edu.

Twelve faculty members at the 91̽�� have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences. They are among 36 scientists and educators from across the state July 17 as new members. Election recognizes the new member’s “outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement and willingness to assist the Academy in providing the best available scientific information and technical understanding to inform complex policy decisions in Washington.”��

The 91̽��faculty members were selected by current WSAS members or by their election to national science academies. Eleven were voted on by current WSAS members:��

, professor, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair, and director of the Paul G. ��Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering, for “contributions in data management for data science, big data systems, cloud computing and image/video analytics and leadership in data science education.”��

professor of civil & environmental engineering and of industrial & systems engineering, for “pioneering work in human mobility analysis and infrastructure resilience, which have transformed transportation systems in terms of both demand and supply, and shaped the future directions of transportation systems research on community-based solutions and disaster resilience.”��

Lloyd and Kay Chapman Endowed Chair for Oral Health and associate dean for research in the 91̽��School of Dentistry, and professor in the Department of Health Systems & Population Health, for “leadership in understanding and addressing children’s oral health inequities through community-based socio-behavioral interventions and evidence-based policies.”��

professor of biology, for “internationally recognized leadership in the biology of sleep, including groundbreaking research on molecular and genetic aspects of the brain, human behavioral studies on learning under varied sleep schedules, and contributions that have shaped policy on school schedules and standard time.”��

, the Virginia and Prentice Bloedel professor of physics and of electrical & computer engineering, for “foundational contributions to fundamental and applied research on the optical and spin properties of quantum point defects in crystals and for service and leadership in the quantum community.” ��

, professor and chair of human centered design and engineering, for “award-winning leadership in HCI computing, whose research has advanced health and education technology, influenced policy, and shaped the HCI field of through impactful scholarship, interdisciplinary collaboration and inclusive, real-world technology design.”��

, professor and associate dean for research in the 91̽��School of Social Work, for “contributions to understanding psychosocial and physiological factors that moderate the effectiveness of their interventions and ultimately improve the health of children with abdominal pain disorders.”��

, professor of medicine in the 91̽��School of Medicine and of pharmacy, “for leadership in health economics and cancer research, including work on financial toxicity, cost- effectiveness, and healthcare policy that has influenced national discussions, improved cancer care access, and shaped policies for equitable and sustainable healthcare.” Ramsey is also Director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program at Fred Hutch.��

, professor of bioengineering and Vice Dean of Research and Graduate Education in the 91̽��School of Medicine, for “national leadership in biomedical research, research policy, and graduate education, including pioneering novel drug delivery approaches for regenerative medicine applications in the nervous system and other tissues such as bone, cartilage, tendon and skin.”��

, Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Earth and space sciences, for “revolutionizing our understanding of climate change in Antarctica through pioneering ice core extractions under hazardous Antarctic conditions and their subsequent analyses over two decades, and for applying that expertise to advance climate research in Washington State.”��

, professor of pharmaceutics, for “pioneering contributions to pharmaceutical and translational sciences, including groundbreaking research on drug transporters, PBPK modeling and maternal-fetal pharmacology that have helped shaped drug safety policies.”��

The Academy also welcomed new members who were selected by virtue of their election to the National Academies of Science, Engineering or Medicine. Among them is , the Arthur B. McDonald professor of physics and director of the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics. Hertzog was elected to the National Academy of Sciences last year. ��

The American Geophysical Union Sept. 13 that five 91̽�� faculty members have been elected as new fellows, representing the departments of astronomy, Earth and space sciences, oceanography, global health, and environmental and occupational health sciences.

The Fellows program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space sciences through a breakthrough, discovery or innovation in their field. The five 91̽��honorees are among 54 people from around the world in the 2023 Class of Fellows. AGU, the world’s largest Earth and space sciences association, annually recognizes a select number of individuals nominated by their peers for its highest honors. Since 1962, the AGU Union Fellows Committee has selected less than 0.1% of members as new fellows.

Also honored by AGU this year are three 91̽��faculty members, from the departments of Earth and space sciences and atmospheric sciences, who have received other awards.

Here are the UW’s five new AGU Fellows:

, professor of Earth and space sciences, studies which characteristics of Earth help this planet support life, and whether life might be found on other planets. His work spans astronomy, biology and geology, on planetary environments including Earth, Mars, Venus and icy moons, as well as planets outside this solar system. He is the author of “Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction” for the layperson and “Atmospheric Evolution on Inhabited and Lifeless Worlds” for researchers.

, who holds the Karl M. Banse Endowed Professorship in oceanography, explores the limits and ecological contributions of microbial life in deep ocean and polar regions, focusing in recent years on how microbes adapt to the extreme conditions of Arctic sea ice. In addition to a research and teaching career, Deming founded what is now the 91̽��Center for Environmental Genomics and helped establish the nation’s first graduate training program in astrobiology.

, professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences, has been conducting research on the health risks of climate variability and change for nearly 30 years. She focuses on estimating current and future health risks of climate change, designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce risks in multi-stressor environments, and estimating the health co-benefits of mitigation policies. Ebi is also founding director of the 91̽��, or CHanGE.

, professor of astronomy, is an astrobiologist and planetary astronomer whose research focuses on��predicting, acquiring and analyzing observations of planetary atmospheres and surfaces. In addition to studying planets within our solar system, she is interested in exoplanets — those outside the solar system — and��how they might reveal the presence of life. With the UW’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory, she uses models of planets and planet-star interactions to generate plausible planetary environments and spectra for extrasolar terrestrial planets and the early Earth.

, professor and chair of Earth and space sciences, is a geochemist and glaciologist whose research focuses on polar climate and ice sheets in the Arctic and in Antarctica. He is best known for his analyses of Antarctic ice cores using measurements of oxygen and hydrogen in the ice to better understand how climate has varied in the past, over hundreds to thousands of years.

In addition to the newly elected fellows, 91̽��faculty members are also recognized in several subject-specific awards and lectures:

, professor of atmospheric sciences, will deliver the in December at the AGU’s fall meeting. Alexander studies the relationship between climate change and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. She looks at the pathways by which atmospheric pollutants form, how those chemical pathways can vary, and what that means both for present-day air quality and for the future of climate change.

, research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences, has received the for his research modeling natural disasters using geodesy, or the shape of the Earth’s surface, and seismology. Crowell pioneered ways to use GPS and related data in earthquake and tsunami early warning systems. He is currently using this data to better understand natural disasters as they unfold and develop a risk-mitigation framework for coastal hazards such as tsunamis.

, research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences, has received the . Journaux uses modeling and experiments to explore the conditions in extreme environments on other planets, and how that might affect their ability to harbor life. He is a member of the science team for NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission, which will characterize the chemistry and habitability of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

, a researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with an affiliate 91̽��faculty position in oceanography, has received the .

All honorees will be recognized in December at the AGU’s fall meeting in San Francisco.

An international team of researchers has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 11 feet, or 3.3 meters — is responding to climate change.

The researchers, from the 91̽��, the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, found that the pace and extent of ice destabilization along West Antarctica’s coast varies according to differences in regional climate.

The , published Jan. 16 in Nature Communications, shows that while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet continues to retreat, the pace of retreat slowed in a key region between 2003 and 2015. This slowdown was driven by ocean temperatures, which were in turn caused by variations in offshore winds.

The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet, home to the vast and unstable Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, sits on an underwater landmass peaking�� 1.5 miles, or 2.5 kilometers, below the ocean’s surface. Since the early 1990s, scientists have observed an abrupt acceleration in ice melt, retreat and speed in this area, which is attributed in part to human-induced climate change over the past century.

Previous studies, including from the UW, indicated that the observed changes could be the onset of an irreversible, ice-sheet-wide collapse, which would continue independently of any further climate-driven influence.

“The idea that once a marine-based ice sheet passes a certain tipping point it will cause a runaway response has been widely reported,” said lead author Frazer Christie at Cambridge University. “Despite this, questions remain about the extent to which ongoing changes in climate still regulate ice losses along the entire West Antarctic coastline.”

Using observations collected by an array of satellites, the new study found pronounced regional variations in how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has changed since 2003 due to climate change, with the pace of retreat in the Amundsen Sea Sector, an area of West Antarctica facing the Pacific Ocean, having slowed significantly. That’s in contrast to the neighboring Bellingshausen Sea Sector, closer to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where glacier retreat accelerated during that time.

By analyzing climate and ocean records, the researchers linked these regional differences to changes in the strength and direction of offshore surface winds. When the prevailing westerly winds are stronger, more of the deeper, warmer ocean water reaches the surface and increases the rate of ice melt.

Winds near the Amundsen Sector slackened between 2003 and 2015, researchers found, because of a deepening of the pressure system. This system is the key atmospheric circulation pattern in the region, and its center — near which changes in offshore wind strength are greatest — typically sits offshore of its namesake coast for most of the year.

Researchers found that the accelerated response of the glaciers flowing from the Bellingshausen Sea Sector can be explained by more constant winds there, causing more persistent ocean-driven melt.

Ultimately, the study illustrates the complexity of the competing ice, ocean and atmosphere interactions driving shorter-term changes across West Antarctica, and raises important questions about how quickly the icy continent will evolve in a warming world.

“Ocean and atmospheric forcing mechanisms still really, really matter in West Antarctica,” said co-author , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. “That means that ice-sheet collapse is not inevitable. It depends on how climate changes over the next few decades, which we could influence in a positive way by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

And while the strength of the low-pressure cell in the Amundsen Sea is not necessarily tied to levels of greenhouse gases — itself an active area of study — the system’s influence shows that even the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is sensitive to weather and climate shifts.

Results show that changes in ocean, driven by changes in the winds, can slow down and even reverse the loss of ice, Steig says. But he points out that the effect is local and unlikely to last for more than a few decades.

“Only the most aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can plausibly turn the situation around in the long term,” Steig said.

Other co-authors are Noel Gourmelen and Simon Tett at the University of Edinburgh. The study was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland; the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society; the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation; the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council; the U.S. National Science Foundation; the joint U.K./U.S. International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration project; and the European Space Agency.

Adapted from a University of Cambridge . For more information, contact Steig at steig@uw.edu

91̽�� glaciologists are co-authors on two papers that analyzed Antarctic ice cores to understand the continent’s air temperatures during the most recent glacial period. The results help understand how the region behaves during a major climate transition.

In one , an international team of researchers, including three at the UW, analyzed seven ice cores from across West and East Antarctica. The results published June 3 in Science show warmer ice age temperatures in the eastern part of the continent.

The team included authors from the U.S., Japan, the U.K., France, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, South Korea and Russia.

“The international collaboration was critical to answering this question because it involved so many different measurements and methods from ice cores all across Antarctica,” said second author , a 91̽��assistant research professor of Earth and space sciences.

Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth today, was even colder during the last ice age. For decades, the leading science suggested ice age temperatures in Antarctica were on average as much as 9 degrees Celsius cooler than the modern era. By comparison, temperatures globally at that time averaged 5 to 6 degrees cooler than today.

Previous work showed that West Antarctica was as cold as 11 degrees C below current temperatures. The new paper in Science shows that temperatures at some locations in East Antarctica were only 4 to 5 degrees cooler, about half previous estimates.

“This is the first conclusive and consistent answer we have for all of Antarctica,” said lead author , an assistant professor at Oregon State University. “The surprising finding is that the amount of cooling is very different depending on where you are in Antarctica. This pattern of cooling is likely due to changes in the ice sheet elevation that happened between the ice age and today.”

The findings are important because they better match results of global climate models, supporting the models’ ability to reproduce major shifts in the Earth’s climate.

Another , accepted in June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres and led by the UW, focuses on data from the recently completed South Pole ice core, which finished drilling in 2016. The Science paper also incorporates these results.

“With its distinct high and dry climate, East Antarctica was certainty colder than West Antarctica, but the key question was: How much did the temperature change in each region as the climate warmed?” said lead author , who recently completed a 91̽��doctorate in Earth and space sciences.

That paper, focusing on the South Pole ice core, found that ice age temperatures at the southern pole, near the Antarctic continental divide, were about 6.7 degree Celsius colder than today. The Science paper finds that across East Antarctica, ice age temperatures were on average 6.1 degrees Celsius colder than today, showing that the South Pole is representative of the region.

“Both studies show much warmer temperatures for East Antarctica during the last ice age than previous work — the most recent ‘textbook’ number was 9 degrees Celsius colder than present,” said , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences who is a co-author on both papers. “This is important because climate models tend to get warmer temperatures, so the data and models are now in better agreement.”

“The findings agree well with climate model results for that time period, and thus strengthen our confidence in the ability of models to simulate Earth’s climate,” Kahle said.

Previous studies used water molecules contained in the layers of ice, which essentially act like a thermometer, to reconstruct past temperatures.�� But this method needs independent calibration against other techniques.

The new papers employ two techniques that provide the necessary calibration. The first method, , takes temperatures at various depths inside the hole left by the ice drill, measuring changes through the thickness of the ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet is so thick that it keeps a memory of earlier, colder ice age temperatures that can be measured and reconstructed, Fudge said.

The second method examines the properties of the snowpack as it builds up and slowly transforms into ice. In East Antarctica, the snowpack can range from 50 to 120 meters (165 to 400 feet) thick, including snow from thousands of years which gradually compacts in a process that is very sensitive to the temperature.

“As we drill more Antarctic ice cores and do more research, the picture of past environmental change comes into sharper focus, which helps us better understand the whole of Earth’s climate system,” Fudge said.

Fudge, Steig and Kahle are among 40 authors on the Science paper. Other co-authors on the JGR: Atmospheres paper are Michelle Koutnik, Andrew Schauer, C. Max Stevens, Howard Conway and Edwin Waddington at the UW; Tyler Jones, Valerie Morris, Bruce Vaughn and James White at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Buizert and Jenna Epifanio at Oregon State University.

Both papers were supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Both papers made use of the , a project that in 2016 completed a 1.75 kilometer (1.09 mile) deep ice core at the South Pole.��That project was funded by the NSF and co-led by Steig and Fudge with colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of New Hampshire.

For more information, contact Fudge at tjfudge@uw.edu, Kahle at eckahle@uw.edu and Steig at steig@uw.edu.

Part of this article were adapted from an OSU .

Antarctica’s next deep ice core, drilling down to ice from 130,000 years ago, will be carried out by a multi-institutional U.S. team at Hercules Dome, a location hundreds of miles from today’s coastline and a promising site to provide key evidence about the possible last collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The National Science Foundation has funded the roughly five-year, $3 million involving the 91̽��, the University of New Hampshire, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Minnesota. Work has been delayed by the novel coronavirus, but drilling the 1.5-mile ice core likely will begin in 2024.

“The ice at this site goes back to a time when sea level was about 6 meters (20 feet) higher than it is now,” said project leader , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. “One of the most likely reasons that sea level was higher is that a large area of Antarctic, known as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, was gone.”

Scientists hope to understand the most recent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in order to better gauge its . Deeper ice layers at this site reach back to times — the most recent period that, like now, was between ice ages. The Eemian was even warmer than today’s climate and oceans were higher.

“This location, which is now hundreds of miles from the ocean, may have been waterfront property 125,000 years ago,” Steig said. “We should be able to determine this from the chemistry of the ice — for example, the salt concentration may be higher if there was open water nearby, instead of more than a thousand miles away. Understanding that event will help guide our understanding of how quickly sea level may rise in the future due to ongoing anthropogenic climate change.”

The Hercules Dome site, remote even by Antarctic standards, lies near a mountain range that divides East and West Antarctica. 91̽��researchers to survey potential locations for drilling. They used ice-penetrating radar to find places where the layers of ice are uninterrupted back more than 125,000 years, when oceans rose dramatically.

Ice and air bubbles trapped in the ice layers can provide researchers with various information about past conditions The most recent deep ice core in Antarctica was completed in 2016 at the South Pole by many of the same team members.

“The Hercules Dome ice core will be the first U.S. ice core with the potential to yield a detailed climate record during the last interglacial period,” said principal investigator at the University of California, Irvine.

The project will begin with online workshops over the next year to seek new collaborators and work to broaden participation in polar science. The initial investment by the National Science Foundation covers the costs of the drilling project, but over the next few years, many more scientists can seek additional funding to analyze the core. The delays caused by the pandemic offer more time to try to bring new people into the discipline.

“Earth sciences is known for being particularly white and male, and polar Earth sciences is even more that way,” Steig said. “It’s well established that having a more diverse community leads to better outcomes — that is, we’ll do better science with more kinds of people involved. But also it’s the right thing to do. Anyone who is interested in being involved in this science should have the opportunity to do it.”

The University of New Hampshire will provide logistics and science support planning for the field project. Researchers will live in tents on the ice sheet hundreds of miles from any inhabited areas for the months-long field seasons.

“Our planning will detail, for example, how we will get ourselves and all of the required science cargo and camp materials to Hercules Dome, likely through a combination of overland traverse and aircraft support; specifics on the field camp, such as camp population, camp structures and layout, power and fuel requirements, camp equipment; and the fieldwork schedule,” said , research project manager at the University of New Hampshire.

The project has plans to coordinate with artists, computer scientists, media outlets, educational organizations and museums to share the effort and the science of climate change.

, a climate scientist at the University of Minnesota, will lead the engagement programming and will work to connect the science through this project to different audiences including those who are actively planning and preparing for the impacts sea level rise — from coastal planners and water utility engineers to homeowners and elected officials.

“This is the first U.S. deep ice core drilling project with a lead researcher dedicated to the integration of community engagement and communication across the full lifespan of the project,” Roop said. “With this investment by NSF, we are confident we can more effectively connect this science to action.”

For more information, contact Steig at steig@uw.edu, Aydin at maydin@uci.edu, Souney at joe.souney@unh.edu and Roop at hroop@umn.edu. More information about the project is at .

If human societies don’t sharply curb emissions of greenhouse gases, Greenland’s rate of ice loss this century is likely to greatly outpace that of any century over the past 12,000 years, a new study concludes.

91̽�� scientists are among the authors of the published Sept. 30 in the journal Nature. The research, led by the University at Buffalo, employed ice sheet modeling to understand the past, present and future of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Scientists used new, detailed reconstructions of ancient climate to drive the model, and validated the model against real-world measurements of the ice sheet’s contemporary and ancient size.

The findings place the ice sheet’s modern decline in historical context, highlighting just how extreme and unusual projected losses for the 21st century could be.

“Basically, we’ve altered our planet so much that the rates of ice sheet melt this century are on pace to be greater than anything we’ve seen under natural variability of the ice sheet over the past 12,000 years. We’ll blow that out of the water if we don’t make severe reductions to greenhouse gas emissions,” said lead author Jason Briner at the University at Buffalo.

The multidisciplinary team, largely funded by the National Science Foundation, used a state-of-the-art ice sheet model to simulate changes to the southwestern sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet, starting from the beginning of the Holocene epoch some 12,000 years ago and extending 80 years into the future, to 2100.

Scientists tested the model’s accuracy by comparing results of the model’s simulations to historical evidence. The modeled results matched up well with data tied to actual measurements of the ice sheet made by satellites and aerial surveys in recent decades, and with fieldwork identifying the ice sheet’s ancient boundaries.

“This study shows that even with uncertainties accounted for, current ice loss from Greenland is about as high as it has ever been in thousands of years, and the ice loss is increasing,” said co-author , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. “We will enter a unique time within this century, if we have not already done so, for Greenland ice loss at any time in the past 12,000 years.”

Though the project focused on southwestern Greenland, research shows that changes in the rates of ice loss there tend to correspond tightly with changes across the entire ice sheet.

“We relied on the same ice sheet model to simulate the past, the present and the future,” says co-author , a 91̽��doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. “Thus, our comparisons of the ice sheet mass change through these time periods are internally consistent, which makes for a robust comparison between past and projected ice sheet changes.”

Steig, Badgeley and co-author , a 91̽��professor of atmospheric sciences, combined models and records from Greenland ice cores to determine how snow accumulation and temperature have changed in the region from 12,000 years ago to the year 1850.

Those data were used to drive the ice sheet modeling, led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Previously published climate data was used to drive the more recent simulations.

Working with scientists from the University at Buffalo and Columbia University, Badgeley helped collect lake sediment and rock samples from three locations between Nuuk, the capital of Greenland on the southwestern coast, up to the current edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

“We built an extremely detailed geologic history of how the margin of the southwestern Greenland Ice Sheet moved through time by measuring beryllium-10 in boulders that sit on moraines,” says co-author Nicolás Young, associate research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Moraines are large piles of debris that you can find on the landscape that mark the former edge of an ice sheet or glacier. A beryllium-10 measurement tells you how long that boulder and moraine have been sitting there, and therefore tells you when the ice sheet was at that exact spot and deposited that boulder.

“I think this is the first time that the current health of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been robustly placed into a long-term context,” Young said.

Despite the alarming results, one vital takeaway from the model’s future projections is that it’s still possible for people and countries around the world to make an important difference by cutting emissions, Briner said. Models of various scenarios yield very different results, with high-emission scenarios producing massive declines in the ice sheet’s health, and significant sea level rise.

“This study shows that future ice loss is likely to be larger than anything that the ice sheet experienced in the Holocene — unless we follow a low-carbon emission scenario in the future,” Badgeley said.

Other co-authors are Alia Lesnek, Elizabeth Thomas, Allison Cluett, Beata Csatho and Sophie Nowicki from the University at Buffalo; Joshua Cuzzone, who has joint appointments at the University of California, Irvine and NASA; Joerg Schaefer from LDEO; Mathieu Morlighem from the University of California, Irvine; Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel and Eric Larour from NASA; Jesse Johnson and Jacob Downs from the University of Montana; Estelle Allan and Anne de Vernal from the Université du Québec à Montréal; and Ole Bennike from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

In addition to the NSF, the research received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Québec and NASA.

For more information, contact Badgeley at badgeley@uw.edu or Steig at steig@uw.edu.

Adapted from a University at Buffalo .

The six 91̽��faculty members who have been named as fellows are:

, professor emeritus in the School of Oceanography, is honored for his continuing work on the ecology of the plankton, the very small algae and animals that float with the currents. His career has focused on how plankton interact with light, temperature, oxygen, bound nitrogen, iron and other nutrients. At sea, Banse worked in the Baltic, the North Sea and Puget Sound, but especially the Arabian Sea. In other work, using an early color global satellite, he investigated the offshore seasonality of phytoplankton chlorophyll. With former students he also studied bottom-living polychaetous annelid worms and published identification keys for the nearly 500 species of these worms found between Oregon and southeast Alaska, between the shore and about 200 meters depth. Banse joined the 91̽��faculty in 1960. The 90-year-old researcher became emeritus in 1995 and remains scientifically active.

, a professor of health metrics sciences and director of the at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, was selected for his research resolving infectious diseases in space and time in order to expose inequalities in health metrics and improve intervention strategies. He currently leads an international collaboration of researchers from a wide variety of academic disciplines to create even better maps of infectious disease. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles and other contributions, including two major, in-depth research papers published independently. His published works are cited more than 18,000 times each year, leading to more than 82,000 lifetime citations. With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hay has embarked on a project to expand this research to a much wider range of diseases to ultimately harmonize this mapping with the Global Burden of Disease Study, IHME’s signature project.

, a professor of microbiology, studies Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpesvirus, a virus that alters the cells lining blood and lymphatic vessels. Those changes can cause Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a form of cancer that commonly affects AIDS patients worldwide and people in parts of central Africa. Lagunoff’s lab has studied how the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpesvirus interferes with endothelial cell signaling, gene expression and metabolism to promote the formation of tumors containing numerous blood vessels. His lab used RNA-sequencing, metabolomics, proteomics and other techniques to determine global changes in host-cell gene expression and signaling. This information has helped to identify key cellular pathways induced by the virus. His team is studying how the virus alters the host cell metabolism to mimic cancer cell metabolism, and is searching for novel therapeutic targets for Kaposi’s Sarcoma.

, a professor of pathology and genome sciences and an investigator at the , studies DNA damage and repair mechanisms, genome instability, and its role in cancer and other conditions. He is noted for his work on Werner, Bloom and Rothman-Thomson syndromes. These inherited disorders cause distinctive physical characteristics, such as premature aging in Werner’s, and predispose to cancer. Monnat’s team explores how the loss of key proteins important to DNA metabolism may underlie these rare syndromes. Aberrant expression of those proteins may be common in some adult cancers and affect response to chemotherapy. Monnat and his group use certain genome engineering techniques to try to correct disease-causing mutations in patient-derived stem cells. His lab has also identified “safe-harbor sites” in the human genome where new genetic elements might be inserted without disrupting the expression of nearby genes.

, professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and the Department of Biology, is elected for her work in marine ecology. Her research focuses on seabird ecology, marine conservation and public science. A committed advocate of citizen science, she founded and directs the , which for two decades has enlisted coastal residents from California to Alaska to monitor West Coast beaches for dead birds and marine debris. Parrish spoke at the White House in 2013 about public engagement in science and scientific literacy. She holds the Lowell A. and Frankie L. Wakefield endowed professorship, and is associate dean for academic affairs in the 91̽��College of the Environment.

, a professor of Earth and space sciences, is honored for his work in glaciology and climate science. Steig uses ice cores and other records to study climate variability over thousands of years. He works on the climate history and dynamics of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers, and develops new tools to extract the chemical clues in samples of ice and other material. Steig was among the leaders of a project to drill the first deep ice core at South Pole, and was on the team that drilled a 2-mile-deep ice core in West Antarctica. His recent research has focused on the links between large-scale climate conditions and changes in West Antarctica, where glaciers are rapidly retreating. In addition to his research and teaching, he is committed to fostering greater public understanding of climate change, and is a founding contributor to RealClimate.org.

In addition, , an investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an affiliate professor of genome sciences at the UW, was selected for his research on genetic conflict.

A new study reveals the first evidence of a direct link between human-induced global warming and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A research team led by the British Antarctic Survey that included the 91̽�� found that curbing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce this region’s future contribution to global sea level rise.

Ongoing ice loss in West Antarctica has increased over the past few decades. Scientists previously found that ice loss in this region is caused by ocean-driven melt, and that varying winds in the region cause transitions between relatively warm and cool ocean conditions around key glaciers. But until now it was unclear how these naturally occurring variations in the winds could cause ongoing ice loss.

The by U.S. and U.K. scientists published Aug. 12 in Nature Geoscience finds that in addition to the natural variations, which last about a decade, there has been a longer-term change in the winds that can be linked with human activities. Continued ice loss in this region could cause global oceans to rise tens of inches by the year 2100.

“These results solve a long-standing puzzle,” said co-author , a 91̽��professor of Earth and space sciences. “We have known for some time that varying winds near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have contributed to the ice loss, but it has not been clear why the ice sheet is changing now.”

“Our work with ice cores drilled in the Antarctic Ice Sheet have shown, for example, that wind conditions have been similar in the past,” Steig said. “But the ice core data also suggest a subtle long-term trend in the winds. This new work corroborates that evidence and, furthermore, explains why that trend has occurred.”

The researchers combined satellite observations and climate model simulations to understand how winds over the ocean near West Antarctica have changed since the 1920s in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations. They found that human-induced climate change has caused a long-term change in the winds, and that as a result, warm ocean conditions have gradually become more prevalent.

“The impact of human induced climate change on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is not simple,” said lead author at the British Antarctic Survey. “This is the first evidence for a direct link between human activities and the loss of ice from West Antarctica. Our results imply that a combination of human activity and natural climate variations have caused ice loss in this region, accounting for around 4.5 centimeters [1.8 inches] of sea level rise per century.”

Previous research from Steig and co-author , a research assistant professor at Columbia University and former 91̽��research scientist, had established the connection between the ocean currents, winds and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

“We knew this region was affected by natural climate cycles lasting about a decade, but these didn’t necessarily explain the ice loss,” Dutrieux said. “Now we have evidence that a century-long change underlies these cycles, and that it is caused by human activities.”

The team also looked at model simulations of future winds, and found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the winds will continue to shift in a way that increases the rate of ice loss. But if greenhouse gas emissions are controlled, the winds remain in their current state and prevent greater warming to the underside of the ice sheet.

Other co-authors are Thomas Bracegirdle and Adrian Jenkins at the British Antarctic Survey. The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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For more information, contact Steig at steig@uw.edu.

Adapted from a British Antarctic Survey .