91探花 oceanographer is one of 59 elected this year by the American Geophysical Union. The scientific organization recognizes only 1 in 1,000 of its members as global leaders and experts who have propelled our understanding of the geosciences.

MacCready, a professor in the 91探花School of Oceanography, was recognized for his work to advance fundamental understanding of ocean coasts and estuaries, or marine environments where freshwater and saltwater mix. MacCready earned his bachelor鈥檚 in architecture at Yale University, his master鈥檚 in engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in oceanography at the UW. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Miami before returning to the 91探花in 1993.

In his research, MacCready collaborates with biologists, chemists and computer scientists to understand the physics that drive natural phenomena such as ocean acidification, low-oxygen water and harmful algal blooms. With the UW鈥檚 Coastal Modeling Group he has created realistic computer simulations of coastal and nearby waters, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, and has developed an underwater forecast for the complex waterway.

MacCready and the other newly elected fellows will be honored in December at the American Geophysical Union鈥檚 annual meeting, to be held this year as a hybrid event based in New Orleans.

A new 91探花 computer model can predict conditions in Puget Sound and off the coast of Washington three days into the future. , completed this past summer, uses marine currents, river discharges and weather above the water to create the forecasts.

“It’s like a weather forecast of the ocean in our region,” said lead developer , a 91探花professor of oceanography. The project is the culmination of about 15 years of work. “It started off small, modeling parts of Puget Sound, and went to modeling the Columbia River and the coastal ocean nearby, to modeling the whole region. We’re making the model bigger and more realistic all the time.”

Unlike existing marine forecasts that tell boaters the wind and waves out on the water, this model drops below the water’s surface to predict water temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, pH, chlorophyll 鈥� a sign of biological productivity 鈥� and aragonite saturation, the most important factor in shell formation, from the surface down to the seafloor.

The simulations are updated daily on the UW’s Hyak supercomputer with a resolution of 500 meters (about a third of a mile) throughout Puget Sound, and slightly more for the outer coast, from southern Oregon to near the tip of Vancouver Island. The model incorporates 45 river flows, uses a 91探花weather forecast for wind, rain and sunlight, and compares its predictions against dozens of marine testing sites.

LiveOcean was originally developed to predict the impacts of more acidic seawater on the local shellfish industry, and has support from the state-funded as a tool for local shellfish growers. This will be the first spring that the tool is available for their use.

“If growers buy seed from a hatchery, when’s a good time to put those out in the water?” MacCready said. “Is there predicted to be a very corrosive ocean acidification event? If so, they should hold off until the water becomes less acidified.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also funds the project. It uses the forecast in combination with human analysis to produce the joint UW-NOAA bulletin on , or “red tides,” that it shares with coastal managers.

The Puget Sound forecasts have other applications. , a 91探花graduate student in oceanography, has used LiveOcean to predict where invasive larvae might travel next, enabling Washington Sea Grant to pinpoint its green crab eradication efforts. The model can predict the three-day drift path for any object 鈥� spilled oil, wastewater overflow, trash or even an old-fashioned message in a bottle 鈥� released from a given point in Puget Sound.

The LiveOcean forecasts are now available on the UW-based website. To access the forecasts, click “Layers” at the top left, find “Models” and then scroll down to “LiveOcean” to view maps for temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrogen, phytoplankton, pH as well as aragonite saturation. (Click the scale bar to make it bigger.)

LiveOcean is among a handful of seawater forecasts being developed for the Pacific Northwest. The app, from Oregon State University, covers Oregon and Washington coasts. The from the University of British Columbia focuses on the Salish Sea, and the from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory simulates the region’s water but does not issue forecasts.

MacCready compares the situation with global climate models, where models with different specialties give a better overall understanding of the system.

While the daily LiveOcean forecast is useful for making decisions today, the tool also has accumulated several years of historical simulations that allow people to analyze past events, like the unusually warm conditions off the Pacific Northwest coast that peaked in 2015.

“We know that our model is able to reproduce ‘,’ and that it shows up really nicely,” MacCready said. “This new version will allow a much better exploration of what that event looked like inside the Salish Sea.”

LiveOcean builds on decades of experience with Puget Sound’s complex geography and intricate coastlines. In addition to helping managers, it’s intended to act as a teaching tool. MacCready has created documents on in Puget Sound, the long-term in Puget Sound and has written an accompanying on where Puget Sound’s water comes from.

“The big thing I try to explain to people is that we have this dragging deep, saline water into the Salish Sea, where it mixes with the freshwater and then flows out,” MacCready said. “That flow is 20 times bigger than all our rivers combined, and it brings in 95 percent of our nutrients. It’s really the biggest river in Puget Sound, but it’s actually coming uphill, from the deep ocean.”

As spring arrives in Puget Sound, the rains will let up, snow will melt and the rivers will begin to rise. Winds along the coast will soon reverse direction, which draws more nutrient-rich flow from the deep ocean. And residents of the Sound will be getting out on the water for activities of all kinds.

“Now that this makes daily forecasts and performs pretty well, I think it could be used for a lot more applications,” MacCready said. “I’d be delighted to hear from people with ideas.”

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For more information, contact MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August a five-year, $1.3 million grant to start working on the forecasts. The new early warning system will transition to operation starting in 2017.

Once up and running, the forecasts will help coastal communities from Neah Bay, Washington, to Newport, Oregon, target their shellfish monitoring and fine-tune decisions about closing beaches to shellfish harvesting to have more advance warning and potentially avoid some beach closures.

鈥淭his will be a sort of weather forecast for Pacific Northwest harmful algal blooms,鈥� said , a 91探花professor of oceanography and member of the .

Forecasts will be produced by the UW’s model, which creates three-day forecasts for Washington and Oregon coastal waters. The model provides results for open-ocean beaches as well as complex protected waterways 鈥� including Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor 鈥� that are home to many of the region’s shellfish beds.

Up-to-date monitoring of offshore conditions will be provided by Vera Trainer, a biologist at NOAA鈥檚 , and members of the Makah Tribe. Starting this spring, they will collect samples by ship every two weeks in an eddy near the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which has been as a source of toxin-producing algae that can reach local beaches. The team will then analyze water samples within a day at the Makah Tribal lab in Neah Bay.

The new collaboration “will bring the most powerful technologies for cell and toxin detection to our partners who are directly impacted by these blooms,” Trainer said. “This will help the tribe and all coastal managers make rapid, informed decisions about seafood safety.”

At the UW, MacCready will work with oceanographers , at the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, and , in the School of Oceanography, to combine their LiveOcean model with those water sample results and other information, including beachside monitoring by the Washington program and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and real-time data from a NOAA offshore robot, the Environmental Sample Processor, by the 91探花and NOAA.

The team will use the LiveOcean model to produce a forecast mapping toxicity risk leading up to each scheduled razor clam dig, in the form of a bulletin for coastal resource managers.

鈥淭his really is the culmination of more than a decade of basic research on the physics and biology behind these toxic blooms,鈥� said project co-lead , a former 91探花scientist now based at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.

A previous version of the HAB Bulletin was produced by Hickey and Trainer from 2008 to 2011 with funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new project is funded by NOAA鈥檚 National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, through its research program.

鈥淲e are excited to help bring about reliable predictions of when and where these toxic blooms can be expected, as it will help us better provide our citizens safe access to some of the best seafood in the world,鈥� said Matt Hunter, a shellfish biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The forecasts will be available online starting next summer through the UW-based website.

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For more information, contact MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu and McCabe at聽206-685-0599 or rmccabe@ocean.washington.edu.

See on NOAA’s website.

91探花 oceanographers have created a tool to help predict when harmful algae might strike. A few days’ warning could prevent last-minute beach closures or shellfish harvest losses, and reduce the risk of eating a clam filled with a that can lead to permanent short-term memory loss, or even death.

The researchers developed a computer model to track when harmful algae will get carried to Washington and Oregon beaches. A study published in April in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows the model, when fed the right data, could predict most of the toxic algae events recorded in between 2004 and 2007.

The is part of a larger to model and predict toxic algal blooms in the Pacific Northwest, involving years of research into how the blooms form offshore and travel to coastal waters.

Saltwater and freshwater algal blooms are different from each other, of course, and different regions of the country have unique situations.

“In Florida they have one species, not 12, and it’s extremely predictable, it happens every year. And you can see those blooms from a satellite,” said co-author , a 91探花professor of oceanography who has spent four decades studying Northwest coastal ocean currents. “Here you have to have an electron microscope to see these things.”

In Washington, harmful algal blooms are a largely naturally occurring phenomenon that produce neurotoxins that can accumulate in razor clams, creating an economic and public-health concern.

Better predictions for when toxic algae might hit would prevent last-minute beach closures, and also could also give shellfish growers time to prepare and harvest clams before they become contaminated.

Hickey and co-author at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle previously used their combined knowledge and expertise to publish a weekly bulletin for predicting toxic events.

The computer model instead uses sensors that track the ocean conditions, then combines those with weather forecasts to generate an ocean prediction for the next few days. It harnesses recent advances in computing, as well as increasing knowledge of coastal currents and the conditions that lead to toxic algal blooms in this region.

91探花 in 2005 had established a swirling mass of water off the coast between Washington and British Columbia, known as the Juan de Fuca eddy, as the major source for harmful algae that affect the Washington coast in summer and fall.

“For some reason when the cells get in there they can stay longer than in other places, and a lot of times they become toxic,” Hickey said.

A 2013 by Hickey established a second source of harmful algal blooms, primarily in the spring, at Heceta Bank, a fishing area west of Eugene, Oregon.

“In the springtime the main currents are actually running in the other direction than in summer, and if you have a big storm, Heceta Bank also is a place where you can get the toxic algae coming from that area, and then moving up the coast, joining the Columbia River plume, and they end up impacting our fisheries in the springtime offshore of Willapa Bay and the Grays Harbor area,” Hickey said.

Earlier by Hickey had studied the freshwater plume emerging from the Columbia River at the Washington-Oregon border. The new model incorporates those observations to generate its predictions.

“We found that it’s all important,” Hickey said. “You have to get what’s happening in Puget Sound and the Columbia River right to make the coastal ocean right.”

The conditions must first be just right for toxic organisms to grow 鈥� a process that’s still somewhat mysterious 鈥� and then reach local shores.

“It turns out there has to be quite a miraculous set of circumstances,” Hickey said, for toxins to reach the beach. Foul weather must keep the eddy circulating long enough for the toxins to develop, then good weather lets them escape and float down the coast. A few days later, bad weather must develop to reverse the currents and push the algae toward the beach.

Tests of the model in the new confirmed that algae from the northern source reach the Washington coast in the late summer and early fall, and the southern source tends to reach the shore in the late winter and early spring. The wind direction determines the algae’s path.

So far, this year has had few toxic blooms on Northwest coasts, another benefit of this summer’s nice weather.

“If you have really good weather all the way until the October storms hit, you probably won’t see any harmful algal blooms because they just get blown south to Oregon and blown off the coast,” Hickey said. “If you have crummy summer weather, where the weather changes and the winds and the currents keep changing direction, then it’s more likely to be hazardous for harmful algal blooms.”

The first author of the paper introducing the model is , a former 91探花postdoctoral researcher and now a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego. Two upcoming companion papers will use the same model to focus on the biology (which organisms grow under what conditions) and the water chemistry (oxygen level, acidity and other variables).

Co-author , a 91探花professor of oceanography, leads the 91探花 that’s putting the short-term forecasts online. The tool, which will initially focus on ocean acidity and oxygen levels, is expected to be operational later this year.

Other co-authors of the first paper are , and graduate student at the UW; , a former 91探花graduate student now at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; , a former 91探花postdoctoral researcher now at the University of California, Irvine; and at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The research was funded by NOAA and the National Science Foundation.

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聽For more information, contact Hickey at bhickey@uw.edu or MacCready at 206-685-9588 or pmacc@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: NOAA: NA09NOS4780180 and NSF: OCE0942675

91探花 oceanographers made the first detailed measurements at the headwater’s source, a submarine canyon offshore from the strait that separates the U.S. and Canada. Observations show water surging up through the canyon and mixing at surprisingly high rates, according to a published in March in .

“This is the headwaters of Puget Sound,” said co-author , a 91探花professor of oceanography. “That’s why it’s so salty in Puget Sound, that’s why the water is pretty clean and that’s why there’s high productivity in Puget Sound, because you’re constantly pulling in this deep water.”

It has been known for decades that 20 to 30 times more deep water flows into Puget Sound than from all the rivers combined. Surface tides, while dramatic, play a minor role.

“The tidal currents that slosh the water back and forth, that’s what’s really obvious,” MacCready said. “But there’s also a slow, persistent circulation that is constantly bringing deep water in, mixing it up and sending the surface water out.”

New measurements show this canyon potentially supplies most of the water coming into Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Canada’s Georgia Strait.

The intense flow and mixing measured inside the canyon could help explain the mysterious productivity of Northwest shores. Coastal winds usually bring nutrients up on the west coast, but the numbers don’t add up for this region.

“Washington is several times more productive 鈥� has more phytoplankton 鈥� than Oregon or California, and yet the winds here are several times weaker. That’s been kind of a puzzle, for years,” said co-author , an oceanographer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

The secret to the Northwest’s outsize productivity could be marine canyons, an idea first suggested by 91探花oceanographer . The northern section of the west coast has many more canyons than Oregon or California, with 11 along the Washington coast.

The new paper provides the latest evidence for these canyons’ importance. Measurements by another 91探花oceanographer in the 1970s first showed water flowing through Juan de Fuca Canyon with a direction that depends on the coastal winds. More recently, calculations by Hickey and a colleague in 2008 submarine canyons could play an important role in supplying nutrients to the Northwest coastal waters.

Alford and MacCready measured inside the Juan de Fuca Canyon in April 2013 using an , built at the 91探花Applied Physics Laboratory with funding from Washington Sea Grant, that takes water measurements near the seafloor. During a day and a half of round-the-clock observations they got lucky with the wind direction and recorded strong flow up through the canyon.

Water flowed as fast as 1.3 feet per second at 500 feet below the surface, and showed mixing up to 1,000 times the normal rate for the deep ocean. The data also showed that the flow is hydraulically-controlled, meaning it flows smoothly over a shallow ridge just off the cape and then forms a turbulent breaking wave on the other side, mixing with the waters far above.

The deep water forced up through the canyon is rich in nutrients that support the growth of marine plants which then feed other marine life. Those waters also are more acidic and lower in oxygen, all of which contribute to water conditions in the Sound.

“The location of this sill would be an outstanding place to fish,” Alford said. “People fish in Juan de Fuca Canyon pretty actively, and that’s probably no coincidence.”

Pinpointing the source of Puget Sound waters will help make better computer models of circulation through the region, and eventually could help forecast ocean acidity, harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen events.

“Canyons might be important not just for coastal productivity, but that mixed water also gets exported into the interior of the ocean,” Alford said. “I look at this as a first step in getting canyons right in coastal models and in global climate models, because I think it could potentially be a very important source of mixing.”

The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ship time aboard the Thomas G. Thompson was provided by the UW.

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For more information, contact Alford at malford@apl.washington.edu or 206-221-3257 and MacCready at pmacc@uw.edu or 206-685-9588.