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Evidence of climate change spurs interest

UW study sheds light on healthy ecosystems

Science, economics center names Miles to board

‘Frontiers of biological physics’ convenes at UW this weekend

Program to explore labor, activist alliances

Evidence of climate change spurs interest

Evidence of abrupt climate change in Earth’s history - swings from moderate to very extreme worldwide conditions over time intervals as short as 20 or 30 years - has been playing to standing-room-only crowds in the Ocean Teaching Building during the weekly series this quarter on “Rapid Climate Change.”

One of the sponsoring groups, comprised of chemists from eight departments across campus, is interested in rapid climate change because we need to understand past climate change events if we are to understand how future climate change may affect our world.

The same group has launched a new graduate certificate program for students interested in the chemical dimensions of this and other environmental problems.

“The Global and Environmental Chemistry program will focus on environmental chemistry and environmental change issues,” according to James Murray, professor of oceanography and chair of the committee proposing the new program. “Practical problems under this definition include acid rain, ground-water contamination, the acidic water draining from mines, rivers and lakes starved of oxygen when algal blooms are fueled by such things as runoff from agricultural lands, the ozone hole and UV radiation, and the fate of fossil fuel carbon dioxide.

The program has already been approved by the UW Graduate Council, goes to the regents next month and, if approved, will be offered starting fall quarter.

The program will draw on the strengths of UW chemistry programs in the departments of chemistry, geological sciences, atmospheric sciences, microbiology, civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering, as well as from the School of Oceanography and College of Forest Resources. These units use related principles and tools from chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer sciences and, often, biology.

“Increasingly, their research problems overlap and can’t be studied within one discipline alone,” Murray says. For example:

Both natural weathering and mining of ore deposits can introduce dissolved and particulate metals into the environment, according to Laurie Balistrieri, with the U.S. Geological Survey based at the UW, and Mark Benjamin, professor of civil and environmental engineering. Researchers interested in the fate of these metals examine such things as the chemical release of metals from ore deposits, physical transport of metals through river systems, interactions between surface and ground water, and the impact of metals on the health of humans and endangered species. Understanding how these metals move through the environment and become available to humans and wildlife spans the disciplines of engineering, geology, chemistry and biology.

Scientists are discovering new information about natural climate cycles such as El Nino/La Nina and the 20- to 30-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Described for the first time just three years ago in papers published by UW researchers, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has warm/dry and cool/wet phases that can greatly affect such things as the winter snowpack in the Cascades, the amount of water available from the Columbia River and the abundance of salmon, according to David Battisti, associate professor of atmospheric sciences. How global warming caused by human activities might trigger more severe effects during these natural cycles is crucial information needed by water managers, policy makers and others. Investigating this question requires cooperation among modelers and scientists who track such things as the fate of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and who tally the carbon absorbed and released by the world’s oceans and forests, Battisti says.

Besides his faculty appointment, Battisti is director of the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a coalition of scientists from the UW and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service. JISAO reflects the changing nature of research where major advances are made by teams instead of individual investigators. The new graduate certificate program aims to prepare students to enter that kind of job market, the proposal says. ¶

Sandra Hines, News & Information

University Week
The faculty and staff publication of the University of Washington
uweek@u.washington.edu
January 24, 2000