It’s a dizzyingly busy time for scientists searching for life on distant planets. To date, astronomers have and are searching the atmospheres of the most promising worlds for chemicals that might be byproducts of life. are particularly interested in atmospheres like Earth’s that trap enough heat to support liquid water on the planet’s surface, which scientists consider the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life as we know it. 

But scientists also want to distinguish between habitable and inhabited worlds. To do that, they need to know what sorts of atmospheric conditions on a planet can be explained without life, so that they can identify planets with atmospheres that can only be explained by life’s influence.

To provide that planetary baseline, Ģ����Ƶ researchers built a complex virtual Earth with one crucial tweak: no life.

in The Planetary Science Journal, the researchers simulated the Earth’s geochemical systems for 5 billion years — from its formation 4.5 billion years ago through roughly 500 million years in the future. The simulation modeled the exchange of chemicals between the core, mantle, crust, surface and atmosphere over time. It accurately predicted 19 planetary properties like heat flow through the mantle, but left out the influence of life on those systems. The simulation can be generalized to predict how an atmosphere might evolve on any rocky planet, and can help pinpoint evidence of life in atmospheres that don’t fit the model.

“This model can help us see how habitable but non-living planets might mimic living planets,” said lead author , who completed this research as a Ģ����Ƶ doctoral student of astronomy and is now a postdoctoral fellow at UC Riverside. “When we interpret observations of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, this tool will help us determine the probability that what we observe indicates life on the surface.”

Gilbert-Janizek’s work builds on a model developed in the lab of senior author , a Ģ����Ƶ associate professor of astronomy. Earlier versions of the model simulated the core, mantle, crust and stellar radiation, but did not include the surface or atmosphere. 

A planet’s atmosphere is shaped by many nonbiological factors, including heat and gases from the interior and from the planet’s star. But the atmosphere of a distant planet is also where astronomers hope to spot explicit evidence of life.

There are many ways that life might change an atmosphere: On Earth, plants and animals pump steady streams of oxygen and methane into the sky. Those two elements destroy each other when they mingle. Thus, an alien astronomer studying our planet might suspect that something alive is replenishing the supply of both gases.

That logic led human astronomer Gilbert-Janizek to add surface and atmosphere modeling to the existing Earth simulation, completing the picture of how chemicals move through all of the Earth’s systems. 

The result is a model that can be tuned to study any rocky exoplanet that astrobiologists find interesting. Researchers can plug in basic details about that planet and run the simulation to see whether the model can reproduce the observed atmosphere without the influence of life. If they can’t get a match, the planet in question gets even more interesting.

“Dr. Gilbert-Janizek’s work represents an exciting step toward understanding where life can exist in the universe,” Barnes said. “After more than a decade of work by many scientists, Dr. Gilbert-Janizek has finally completed a model of the Earth that simultaneously reproduces properties of Earth’s core, mantle, surface and atmosphere. That calibration gives us confidence that future simulations of exoplanets will be accurate.”  

Gilbert-Janizek says the new and improved model can also help inform the design of future telescopes built to study distant planets, like the proposed . 

“Realizing the ambitious goals of a telescope like the Habitable Worlds Observatory requires decades of work across many generations of scientists,” Gilbert-Janizek said. “I’m so grateful to join this lineage and one day pass the torch to the next generation so that we can continue chipping away at this question of whether or not we are alone in the universe.”

Other Ģ����Ƶ co-authors include former astronomy doctoral students , now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oklahoma and , now a high school teacher in the Seattle area.

A complete list of co-authors is .

This research was funded by NASA.

For more information, contact Gilbert-Janizek at sgilbert@ucr.edu or Barnes at rory@astro.washington.edu.

Source

The bivalve-rich beaches of Hood Canal were all summer after detection of a marine biotoxin that causes , a life-threatening foodborne illness that affects the nervous system.

Given that Washington’s commercial shellfish industry employs nearly 2,400 people and brings in more than $240 million each year, a monthslong closure during peak season had sweeping consequences.

Detecting harmful algal blooms early is critical for consumer safety and trust in the industry. The Washington State Department of Health oversees a that monitors toxin levels in shellfish tissue from various growing areas. The effort is supported by an unofficial partner: , a program launched by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2006 that migrated to Washington Sea Grant several years later.

Unlike the DOH, SoundToxins screens the water for harmful algae, which can expedite detection. When SoundToxins monitors detected �� — a species of phytoplankton that produces the toxin that causes PSP — they quickly relayed the information to the DOH, which closed the impacted marine areas before anyone got sick.

Although this type of advance warning can save lives, the future funding of the program is uncertain. Washington Sea Grant relies on a patchwork of research grants and federal and state funds to operate SoundToxins. Recent cuts to research funding and the current state of Washington’s budget have illuminated the precariousness of funding for vital programs like this. Washington Sea Grant remains committed to working with state and federal partners to find the right funding pathway to keep SoundToxins running.

A quantified the value of SoundToxins with survey data. Ģ����Ƶ News spoke with program manager about the results and the program.

How is the monitoring program and the early detection of harmful algal blooms (HABs) valuable?

Michelle Lepori-Bui: Harmful algal blooms can be really detrimental to the shellfish industry as closures have a direct impact on revenue and because recalls and illnesses affect the reputation of shellfish as a safe and healthy food source. Robust monitoring programs and early warning of these events help protect public health and minimize these impacts. There are many benefits to early detection of HABs to the general public and recreational and commercial harvesters that can be hard to quantify. Farmers can benefit by modifying harvesting activities to minimize losses, avoiding recalls, and maintaining trust in the market, while shellfish consumers and coastal communities benefit from safe local food sources and working waterfronts.

How does the new study demonstrate the value of SoundToxins?

MLB: This survey sought to capture the many tangible and intangible benefits of the program and distill them into a single economic metric using an approach called ‘willingness to pay.’ The study found that shellfish growers value the program with a willingness to pay $533/year for phytoplankton monitoring. With changing environmental conditions, shellfish mortality events, and heat waves, growers are facing an extremely challenging production environment. The finding that they are willing to pay this amount, even during these challenging economic times, shows how valuable this program is to coastal communities.

How does SoundToxins support the state-led effort?

MLB: The DOH’s biotoxin monitoring program is a series of steps in compliance with the National Shellfish Sanitation Program that starts with monitoring for biotoxins in mussel tissue. Mussels typically pick up toxins faster than other species, so they are a good indicator, but other species are tested as well. If toxins are detected, they can initiate recreational and commercial closures.

We’re not part of the official regulatory process, but our work can guide the DOH’s efforts through early warning. We maintain a database populated with volunteer data and a map that uses red, yellow and green color coding to report HAB presence on the coast and in Puget Sound and surrounding waters. We notify the DOH via email when something changes and it uses that information to prioritize certain samples or request additional samples.

Who collects the data?

MLB: SoundToxins is a very cost-effective program because we have really amazing monitors, partners and volunteers. A lot of different folks do the actual monitoring. We work with tribes, growers, environmental education groups and individuals at 35 different sites throughout the region. We provide them with equipment and training and support the database, and they collect and analyze the samples, posting everything online within 24 hours.

What happened this summer? How was it different from years past?

MLB: We got an alert from our monitor in early June that they found Alexandrium cells in a sample from Hoodsport, which is pretty far south in Hood Canal. That alert went straight to the DOH and it reacted quickly, requesting more samples from various parts of Hood Canal.

Historically, there haven’t been many incidents of PSP in south Hood Canal. There were a few blooms in the early 2000s and a big bloom in 2015 that went further south than usual, close to Hoodsport but not to the end of Hood Canal. That was considered unprecedented and this year surpassed that.

It’s understood globally that harmful algal blooms are increasing in frequency, severity and impact. This is partially related to changing climate conditions. Also, phytoplankton like Alexandrium respond to nutrients in the water. The input of nutrients from human activities can influence blooms. We have seen things showing up in places they haven’t been before and increasing in intensity.

A lot of people are working on models to predict harmful algal blooms, but it’s complicated, especially in our area where there are a lot of complex water bodies. We need to continue doing the research to try to understand things better, but in the meantime, monitoring is critical.

Co-authors include Michelle Lepori-Bui, marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; , water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; Vera Trainer, a Ģ����Ƶ research scientist in environmental and forest science and director of the Olympic Natural Resource Center; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and of NOAA; and Jerry Borchert and Tracie Barry of WA DOH.��

This research was funded by the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Prevention, Control, and Mitigation of HABs.

For more information, contact Lepori-Bui at mdtlb@uw.edu.��

Source

The U.S. House of Representatives this past summer that would make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent in the United States — meaning there would be no turning back the clocks each fall. Nineteen states, including Washington, . If the bill is ultimately signed into law, the change would go into effect in those states.

The bill is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate. are a central issue because permanent DST would lead to darker mornings from November to March. This would mean darker commutes for everyone, but how much would it affect children going to school? Ģ����Ƶ researchers did the math for 14 out of the 19 states that preapproved the change. Using school start times, enrollment data, and latitude and longitude measurements, the team calculated just how many days each child would be commuting to school in the dark and then added the trips together.

In Washington, there would be almost 35 million more trips to school in the dark under permanent DST compared to the current system of switching between DST and Standard Time twice a year. The other 13 states followed a similar trend, with Georgia having the highest deviation from the current system — 71 million more trips. When the researchers extrapolated these results for the rest of the country, it added at least 2 billion more dark commutes to school.

The team also analyzed traffic collision data from the U.S. and found that it was roughly twice as likely for a fatal crash involving a school-aged pedestrian to occur during dark mornings than after sunrise.

The researchers Oct. 29 in Current Biology.

“It’s called the ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ because you get an extra hour of light at the end of the day. But you will take that hour from the morning. You could call it the Sunshine Destruction Act,” said senior author , Ģ����Ƶ professor of biology. “These dark mornings will inequitably affect children who have to go to school at a certain time. It’s a very tangible metric that anybody from any state or socioeconomic background can relate to. Nobody wants their kids to go to school in the dark.”

Dark mornings affect everyone. Exposure to bright light in the morning helps set our circadian clock, which helps regulate many facets of our lives, such as our mood, sleep and appetite. Without that morning light, our bodies struggle to regulate these key functions.

“When we send kids to school in the dark, we are depriving them from an opportunity to get that morning daylight,” said lead author , a Ģ����Ƶ postdoctoral scholar in biology. “We were asking what’s the cost for these children. We wanted actual numbers, a real number of kids based on the geographic location of each school.”

The study revealed the areas that would be the hardest hit by the switch: communities on the western edge of their time zones, such as Forks, Washington, and communities with early school start times. For example, Mississippi and Alabama schools have an average start time of earlier than 8 a.m. and both balloon from about 2 million dark trips for each state under the current system to more than 20 million dark trips for each state under permanent DST.

“Some districts probably never experience a dark commute under the current system, and, if this passes, suddenly they will wake up to this new reality that their kids are going to school in the dark,” Rodríguez Ferrante said. “Keep in mind that we used the actual start time listed for each school, and a lot of schools offer breakfast or other things before school, so the kids could be getting there even earlier.”

The researchers argue that permanent DST would also undo the benefits of having a delayed start time for high school students, which is intended to account for teenagers’ shifted circadian clock compared to kids and adults.

“I’ve heard the argument, ‘If we’re in permanent DST, we can just delay the school start time to address these issues,'” de la Iglesia said. “Well, if we do that, you will end up going to work later. And everything is going to get delayed. You will get out of work an hour later, and you will miss the opportunity to enjoy your evening light. And essentially, we’re just going to be realigning everybody to solar time. That, by definition, is Standard Time.”

Daniel Zhang, a high school student, and Ģ����Ƶ biology undergraduate students , , Jessie Lu, , Elena Kully-Rivera, , are also co-authors on this paper.

For more information, contact de la Iglesia at horaciod@uw.edu and Rodríguez Ferrante at guadarf@uw.edu.

Source

Scientists may add a new dwarf planet to the official roster of our solar system.

The distant, icy body, provisionally dubbed 2026 ED138, orbits our system beyond Pluto. It was spotted earlier this month by a scientist combing through data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the . Initial measurements place ED138 among the largest dwarf planet candidates ever discovered beyond Neptune; if confirmed, it would join the five dwarf planets recognized by the : Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.

The results were presented at a press conference today by , a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and by , a Ģ����Ƶ professor of astronomy and leader of Rubin’s solar system team. Holman first spotted the candidate and Jurić contributed additional observations.

“If confirmed as a dwarf planet, ED138 would join a very small family of worlds,” Holman said. “Rubin will image the whole southern sky again and again for 10 years, so any others hiding in the places earlier surveys skipped are now within reach.”

“Finding an object this big, roughly 1,000 kilometers across, is something that happens maybe once in a generation,” Jurić said. “It’s the largest trans-Neptunian object found in about 20 years, and Rubin turned it up while we were still commissioning the telescope.”

On the evening of Oct. 13, Holman was running data collected by Rubin earlier in 2026 through a search code he developed with colleague Kevin Napier. The code is built to look at billions of detections of moving objects, compare them and find the detections that correspond to the same object. Using this method, Holman uncovered ED138, and he immediately noticed that its brightness and distance indicated that it is unusually large.

“My first reaction was one of excited disbelief,” Holman said. “Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong.”

To remove any doubt, Jurić searched through Rubin’s catalogs and images and found 20 more observations, going back to March 2026. The team also spotted ED138 in archival images from other surveys going all the way back to 2016, allowing the team to trace more than ten years of ED138’s orbit. 

ED138 is currently at a distance of about 46 astronomical units (), where 1 au is the average distance between the Earth and the sun. For reference, dwarf planet Pluto orbits at an average distance of 40 au. This classifies ED138 as a trans-Neptunian object () — objects that orbit the sun at a distance greater than Neptune’s.

Scientists study the size, composition and orbital trajectories of TNOs to understand how the solar system formed, how the giant planets migrated over time and how smaller objects have been scattered throughout this evolution. 

Not all TNOs are considered dwarf planet candidates, with the distinction being in the size and shape of the object. To be a dwarf planet an object needs to be massive enough for its own gravity to pull it into a round shape. Based on ED138’s distance, brightness and estimated surface reflectivity, the team estimates that its size is between 600 and 1,500 kilometers; icy bodies this large are expected to be round. Further observations are needed to measure its exact size and confirm its nature as a dwarf planet. 

ED138 was found in a region of sky close to the plane of the Milky Way — a crowded area filled with millions of stars. To most telescopes, ED138 has been lost among the myriad background sources, which is likely why it was not discovered until now. Rubin Observatory’s regular and continuous monitoring of the entire Southern Hemisphere sky, combined with powerful algorithms that sift through millions to billions of points of light to identify those corresponding to small moving objects, enabled the team to spot ED138 within the crowded field.

ED138 joins the rapidly growing sample of solar system objects discovered by Rubin since it began collecting early data in preparation for the (LSST), which began in June 2026. In April, before LSST formally began, the Rubin solar system team announced observations of over , which included roughly 380 new TNOs. At the time, the team called this large submission “the tip of the iceberg” and expressed their excitement for the discoveries to come once LSST began. With the discovery of ED138, those hopes are coming to fruition.

“Rubin is giving us an unprecedented capacity to explore the sky through a combination of speed, depth, and precision,” Jurić said. “And the discovery is just the beginning: Once we identify a new object, we can search back months, and sometimes even decades, finding it in images where nobody knew to look. This ability to both discover and ‘precover’ objects is transforming how quickly and accurately we can determine their orbits and understand the distant solar system.”

The public can interact with this discovery on , an interactive web-based app that provides an intuitive way to explore the structure of our cosmic backyard in three dimensions and in real time.

Operations of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory are funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

For more information, contact Mario Jurić at mjuric@uw.edu.

This story was adapted from a press release by NOIRlab. More images and video clips are available on the .

Source

It all started with Halley’s Comet.

was a toddler in 1986, the last time the was visible to the naked eye. One night, her family kept her up late to try and spot it above their home in East Taunton, Massachusetts.

“I was fussy and tired until they pointed up,” Levesque recalled, “and then all of a sudden I just went, ‘W��Dz�’.”

Levesque’s career interests followed a trend after that.

“People would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I would say, ‘Well, I’m going to be a ballerina or an astronomer,’ or ‘I’m going to be a firefighter or an astronomer,’ or ‘a violinist or an astronomer’,” she said.

Levesque’s childhood infatuation stuck. Today she is a professor of astronomy at the Ģ����Ƶ who studies “big and weird stars.” She’s authored two textbooks on and , as well as general-interest on astronomy. And in 2027, she will become the next editor-in-chief of the American Astronomical Society’s portfolio of academic journals, making her the first woman to serve at the helm of six of astronomy’s busiest and most prestigious research outlets.

“I published my very first research paper in The Astrophysical Journal more than 20 years ago as an undergrad,” Levesque said. “The AAS Journals have played such an enormous role in the history of astronomy and in so many of our careers, and my predecessors have established an incredibly high standard of care and commitment in how the journals are run. I’m excited and honored to become the next steward of that legacy.”

Levesque became interested in stars as a child, and she carried her enthusiasm through to a degree in physics from MIT. Her first research project there brought her to the in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she studied — a star so large that one would engulf Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter if it were placed where our sun is.

“I got really interested in these huge, unstable stars — they die explosive, spectacular deaths as supernovae, and leave behind mysterious things like black holes,” Levesque said. “We tend to think of stars as just big round balls of gas. But when you look closer, they turn into these brain-bending objects that stretch our ability to comprehend the universe.”

From MIT, Levesque hopscotched to a doctoral program at the University of Hawaii, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado, Boulder and then, in 2015, an appointment at the Ģ����Ƶ. Along the way, her taste in stars has only gotten stranger: At the Ģ����Ƶ she studies hypothesized oddities called (TZOs), which are red supergiants with for cores. While in Colorado, Levesque and collaborators . Today, much of her work at the Ģ����Ƶ is dedicated to finding more possible TZOs and understanding how they might form — though their existence still isn’t a sure thing.

“We could absolutely be wrong,” Levesque said. “Other researchers have published papers since our initial discovery arguing that TZOs couldn’t possibly be stable, or that the star we found wasn’t actually a TZO. Still others have published papers saying, ‘We looked closer at your candidate and we think it really is a TZO.’ So it’s a subject of debate, which I think is great. If we made a mistake, I desperately want someone to find it.”

Levesque has been involved with the American Astronomical Society Journals for 10 years. She’s currently serving as a science editor, which entails running the journals’ peer review process, matching submissions with reviewers and shepherding drafts through to publication.

“Getting involved with the journals has been a great way to support the astronomy community on a large scale,” Levesque said. “The AAS Journals are such a great resource in our field, so working with them is really impactful. Plus, it helps me keep tabs on the latest science.”

The editor-in-chief role, though, is a much larger proposition.

“It’s a big job,” Levesque said. “It is essentially a full-time position. But I like the idea of getting to devote so much of my time and attention to this.”

When she officially steps into the role next fall, Levesque will navigate a critical and chaotic moment for academic research and publishing. She sees twin challenges ahead for the journals: remaining solvent in the dicey landscape of federal funding, and managing a firehose of paper submissions unleashed with the help of artificial intelligence.

“We’re certainly seeing lots of papers that are auto-generated junk,” Levesque said. “But there’s also a huge uptick in people simply being able to do research faster or to write down their research faster. We’re figuring out how to manage the influx of papers and deciding what constitutes appropriate use of AI.”

Levesque betrays no intimidation about juggling her faculty position with the new leadership role at the journal. She’s letting friends and family be overwhelmed on her behalf.

“When I tell people that I’m moving into this role, there’s sort of this look of like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re going to be dealing with funding disasters and AI is going to upend everything, isn’t this terrifying?’” Levesque laughed. “In this landscape, the AAS Journals are more important than ever. It’s never been easier to generate and share information, but it’s also never been harder to trust information. Publishing is a crucial part of how our field shares trustworthy science, so for me it’s worth the effort.”

For more information, contact Levesque at emsque@uw.edu.

Source

A scans the sea for fish from 100 feet in the air. Upon seeing a school, it pitches its body into a nosedive, somehow breaking the surface at 70 miles per hour without breaking its neck. This daring maneuver seems to defy the laws of nature, but it’s standard hunting behavior for plunge-diving seabirds.

A Ģ����Ƶ study in the Anatomical Record shows that gannets and boobies have unique morphological adaptations that allow them to survive impact. Several of their neck vertebrae are joined by an additional contact surface that helps stabilize the cervical column. The overall shape of the vertebrae is also stockier than other birds.

“We wanted to figure out what makes gannets so special, so good at diving and looking at their biology helped us understand how they can survive these impacts,” said senior author , a postdoctoral scholar at the Ģ����Ƶ’s Friday Harbor Labs.

The ecological record shows repeated instances in which birds develop physical traits in response to their environment. Charles Darwin was among the first to record this in in the 1830s — in finches on the Galápagos Islands — and researchers are still discovering new examples today. The connection between beak shape and foraging behavior is well documented, but the link between neck structure and feeding has received less attention.

The Ģ����Ƶ researchers began years ago. Gannets are built to withstand immense pressure on the head and neck that compresses the cervical column. Engineers typically favor short and fat structures for things built to tolerate compressive force, but these birds have long, slender necks with segmented vertebrae.

Gannet necks have 15 stacked vertebrae that bend slightly in an s-curve. that the muscles surrounding their vertebrae help lock them in place to prepare for impact, but few studies have looked at the actual morphology of��diving birds’ necks.

To do so, the researchers collected specimens of diving birds and non-diving birds from . The team performed CT scans to create detailed three-dimensional models of the cervical vertebrae and then analyzed the images with geometric , a statistical method for studying biological samples that establishes landmarks for comparison. They considered the forces associated with various feeding styles and chose birds that represented a spectrum, pulling in additional morphological data from .

“Birds that rotate their heads side to side, or move them front to back, separate out from birds that use their heads in compression,” said lead author , a graduate student of biology at Ģ����Ƶ’s Friday Harbor Labs. “We see that the birds that plunge-dive have more robust vertebrae. They’re thicker, wider, and also shorter, shaped more like a square.”

The stocky shape of the vertebrae provides added support, as does the additional contact surface, called an articular facet, in second through the sixth vertebrae. In this case, researchers think the extra facet keeps the birds’ necks from bending backward when they hit the water at an angle. Instead, the load gets transferred down the cervical column.

The researchers also observed more blocklike vertebrae in other diving birds, such as the kingfisher, but did not detect the extra facet. Kingfishers belong to a different avian family and are much smaller than gannets and boobies, but their necks seem to have evolved in a similar way. The structural relationship is also proportional: the larger the neck, the larger the vertebrae.

Kingfishers and the bigger plunge-divers also experience the same amount of force per neck area during a dive. Although total force scales with neck size, the amount of stress on the tissue is the same. Both groups experienced peak force nearly five milliseconds after impact despite the size difference.

Moving forward, the researchers hope to explore how force transfers down the neck in more detail. They also think this link between structure and function could help paleontologists identify plunge-diving birds from fossils.

“It feels like something I didn’t previously think about and probably overlooked before,” Vanderberg said. “I’m curious to start looking more closely at vertebrae in general, not just in birds.”

Co-authors include , professor of biology and of aquatic and fishery sciences at Ģ����Ƶ; , assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Ģ����Ƶ; , graduate student of mechanical engineering at the Ģ����Ƶ; and of the University of California, Riverside.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation, Friday Harbor Laboratories Research Endowment Fellowship, Ģ����Ƶ Friday Harbor Laboratories Award, and Jim and Camille Uhlir.

For more information, contact Vandenberg at megvdb4@uw.edu.

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Last month, a group of 175 researchers, including eight from the Ģ����Ƶ, co-authored published in Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The paper provides a roadmap for future climate assessments in the U.S. by synthesizing the science and identifying research priorities based on existing gaps. “U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions” is the first article to appear in a launched by the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Many of the scientists who co-authored this commentary were invited to contribute to the sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA), slated for early 2028, but were then dismissed in April 2025 after the Trump Administration for the assessment. The fifth NCA was published in 2023.��

The federal government is legally required to produce a National Climate Assessment chronicling climate change every four years per the . These assessments track new and evolving risks related to climate change, as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. The national scope is key to ensuring that funding and policies represent a broad range of experiences and concerns. 

“International assessments are valuable, but they are not always tailored to the specific regions and issues that are important in the United States. National assessments fill that gap,” said , Washington state climatologist and a research scientist in the Ģ����Ƶ Climate Impacts Group.

The special collection is not intended to replace the NCA but rather compile research for other scientists, policymakers and members of the public to aid in decision making. The commentary kicks off the collection by identifying where research has advanced, and how risks have changed, in the years since the last assessment. 

“Our understanding of climate change and its impacts continues to evolve,” said , professor of global health, of environmental and occupational health sciences, and of emergency medicine in the Ģ����Ƶ School of Medicine. “Conducting regular climate assessments allows us to systematically evaluate that new evidence, incorporate it into our understanding of current circumstances, present it to stakeholders, and apply it to near-term decisions in our respective sectors.” 

Ģ����Ƶ News asked each of the Ģ����Ƶ contributors to elaborate on their role in authoring the commentary and how it connects to their research.

, research scientist, Ģ����Ƶ Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies: “I’m an oceanographer with intimate experience in federal research funding mechanisms and with a broad familiarity with ocean warming and CO2 uptake with associated acidification and feedback on marine ecosystems and fisheries. Initially I was appointed to coordinate among federal agencies, academics and policymakers, but that changed dramatically when the Trump administration eliminated NCA6. In the scramble I became more of an author, and an editor of the Ocean section. 

“Some of my research at the Ģ����Ƶ involves ocean model development in collaboration with NOAA. It was a natural fit to contribute to the discussions on ‘Simulations of ocean conditions’ and on ‘Innovations in ocean observation and data science.’”

, professor of urban and environmental planning “I led the urban team and the section on urban regions. Urban regions are central to climate assessments. They concentrate populations and human activities, contribute substantially to climate change, and shape how impacts propagate across neighborhoods, metropolitan systems, national supply chains, and global markets. They are also critical places to examine where mitigation and adaptation reinforce one another, where they create trade-offs, and how benefits, costs, and risks are distributed across communities. 

“Our section argues that future assessments must represent cities as complex dynamic systems. We call for comparative, long-term evaluation of urban mitigation and adaptation strategies. For nature-based solutions, that means testing performance under future climate conditions and assessing multiple functions, life-cycle costs, social and ecological outcomes, and trade-offs rather than simply measuring short-term, project-level benefits.”

Mauger: “I contributed to the Northwest section of the paper, based on my expertise in regional climate impacts and adaptation science, specifically around water and flooding. Our synthesis reflects many of the emerging issues I see in my work helping communities, tribes, agencies and others to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. For example, we highlight new research on the effectiveness of resilience actions — as more communities take action on climate, I am seeing a greater need for research of this kind.”

, principal scientist, Ģ����Ƶ Climate Impacts Group: “I also contributed to the Northwest section of the paper. My work at Ģ����Ƶ aims to provide the science, tools and guidance needed by governments and communities as they respond to climate impacts and prepare for those to come. Most of this work is focused on the Northwest, with a heavy emphasis on ecosystems and natural resources. The Northwest section of the paper highlights many of the climate risks and adaptation advances and challenges my partners on the ground face every day.”

Hess: “The takeaways from the health section, which I helped draft, are that we need more information on health impacts from extreme weather and compound events, as well as information on the costs of these impacts. We also need more strategies for advancing adaptation in public health and health care systems; we need health care interventions to protect patients at particular risk; we need more information on nature-based solutions; and we need more information to help convey the health benefits of a clean energy transition. 

“The recommendations related to interventions and adaptation in the health sector are particularly relevant to my work at the Ģ����Ƶ, which is focused on climate change health impacts and opportunities for increasing resilience of the public health and health care systems. I research these issues and also provide leadership related to sustainability and climate resilience for Ģ����Ƶ Medicine.”

, professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences: “I was an author on the Air Quality chapter that focused on how climate change could alter exposures to poor quality, from pollen to wildfire smoke to indoor and outdoor air quality. One of my areas of research at Ģ����Ƶ is quantifying the extent to which reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce morbidity and mortality from outdoor air pollution. The evidence is robust that the economic value of the health benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be of the same order of magnitude — if not larger — than the costs of reducing emissions. In other words, reducing greenhouse gas emissions would benefit Americans by decreasing hospitalizations and deaths.”

Other Ģ����Ƶ co-authors include , research scientist of environmental and forest sciences and Deputy Director of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative and , affiliate professor of environmental and forest sciences. 

For more information, contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu.

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A Ģ����Ƶ-led center for optoelectronics — technologies that combine light and electronics — brings researchers from 14 universities across the U.S. together with the mission to develop new materials to transform information technology with light. This research has broad ranging applications, from enabling photorealistic virtual reality displays for telehealth calls, to secure, optical quantum communication links to ensure that data remains private on the internet.

Founded in 2021 as a , the , or NSF IMOD, has received a second round of funding from the NSF to continue its work for the next five years.

The research tackled by NSF IMOD is so interdisciplinary that it requires researchers from backgrounds such as chemistry, physics, engineering and materials science to work together.

“There’s still this idea that scientists go in their labs, put on their safety goggles and lab coats, and then work alone for hours at a time. The point of this center is to tackle problems that are too big for one scientist or even two or three to tackle by themselves,” said NSF IMOD director , Ģ����Ƶ professor of chemistry. “We have all these people from different disciplines working together to advance optoelectronics and semiconductor technology that we couldn’t do just as individual scientists.”

“Until our center came along, quantum dots were thought of as something you made in a beaker in a chemistry lab. And if you could paint them on a TV or phone display, that was great,” said Ginger, who is also the B. Seymour Rabinovitch Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the chief scientist at the Ģ����Ƶ . “But they weren’t something that you could put as a discrete component in an optoelectronic circuit. That’s something that we’ve proven you can do.”

With chemists, material scientists, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, physicists and electrical engineers on the team, researchers at NSF IMOD created something unprecedented: a way to print quantum dots, . The team showed that they could strategically place quantum dots into specific cavities, which could one day be the building blocks for quantum communication, and possibly even quantum computing.

The team hopes to continue this research direction over the next five years, further refining quantum dots as well as the cavities the dots get placed into.

NSF IMOD’s interdisciplinary nature gets passed down to its students as well. One of the center’s main goals is to develop researchers into leaders in the fields of semiconductor and optoelectronic technology. Every summer, NSF IMOD trainees from different disciplines come together at the Ģ����Ƶ for in multiple disciplines. The students synthesize quantum dots, study single photons of light in Ģ����Ƶ’s , make quantum dots, and learn to calculate the electronic structures of advanced materials. The collaborations established during this course and throughout the NSF IMOD training program helps students graduate with the ability to work in complex, interdisciplinary teams.

Trainees also gain real-world experience in the form of internships at a variety of companies, including some of NSF IMOD’s industry and national lab partners. A partial list of NSF IMOD’s partners includes ; ; ; ; ; and More partner information can be found on .

“We’re already seeing our students get hired at everything from startup companies to large semiconductor firms for the exact skills they’re being trained for in the center,” Ginger said. “We’re really excited to see our students start taking important roles, and then eventually we hope they move into leadership roles in this space of commercializing new semiconductor materials.”

And it’s not just graduate students who benefit from NSF IMOD. The center hosts a program, and has programming for younger students as well. As part of their science communication training, NSF IMOD trainees become who can facilitate outreach events, such as at the Pacific Science Center. The team has also developed a for K-12 teachers to find lesson plans to use in their own classrooms.

“Just as the atomic structure of a quantum dot produces unique and exciting properties, the exceptionally interdisciplinary structure of NSF IMOD is enabling foundational science and technological innovations that would not otherwise be possible,” said , a program director in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, which manages NSF IMOD.

Over the past five years, NSF IMOD has published 140 papers, hosted 36 undergraduate students through its REU program and hosted more than 85 outreach events.

“One day I hope that we’ll have photonic computing where we’re massively reducing the energy cost for computation by using a computing paradigm that’s based on the research we’re doing now,” Ginger said. “That’s the kind of thing that’s probably still a decade or more away. But that’s why the government invests in basic science now, because the basic science research of the materials today leads to technology that exists 15 years from now.”

NSF is expected to provide NSF IMOD $22 million over the five-year term of the award. The 14 academic institutions that make up NSF IMOD are the Ģ����Ƶ; University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University; University of Chicago; Northwestern University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Maryland; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder; Arizona State University; Rice University; Lehigh University; City College of New York; and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In addition to Ginger, other Ģ����Ƶ faculty involved with NSF IMOD include , associate professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering at the Ģ����Ƶ; , a Ģ����Ƶ professor of chemistry; , professor of electrical and computer engineering; , associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, and technical director of the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds; and , professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering. Fu chairs Ģ����Ƶ . Fu, Lin and Majumdar are faculty members with the Ģ����Ƶ . Cossairt, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are member faculty at the Clean Energy Institute. Ginger, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are faculty researchers with the Ģ����Ƶ .��

For more information, contact Ginger at dginger@uw.edu.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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Irrigation canals form a sort of circulatory system for global agriculture. Across the world, millions of kilometers of human-made canals carry water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs downhill to farmland. Canals are vitally important to human food production, yet many agricultural areas lack the means to monitor the ebb and flow of water through these waterways. This forces farmers and water managers to rely on scattered gauges, inspections and local reports to make decisions about water use.

A new study from the Ģ����Ƶ suggests, however, that the tools needed for more comprehensive monitoring may already exist. In the study, researchers analyzed data from a NASA satellite built to track over time the water level of oceans, lakes, rivers and other large bodies of water. That project was never designed to track smaller bodies like canals. Yet, when the researchers looked at roughly 800,000 kilometers of canals in Asia, they found that the satellite could measure water levels with moderate to high confidence at more than 85% of locations.

The discovery could give farmers around the world a powerful new tool to manage precious water resources, prepare for droughts and improve food security in their communities.

“What we are seeing is not simply a new satellite capability,” said co-author , a Ģ����Ƶ professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It may represent a fundamentally new way of managing the water conveyance systems that sustain modern agriculture.”

Sept. 30 in Geophysical Research Letters.

The satellite at the center of the study, , is a joint effort of NASA and international partners. In orbit since December 2022, the satellite monitors the Earth’s surface water at least once every three weeks using a tool called , which compares multiple radar scans over time to detect elevation changes.

Oceans, lakes and other large bodies of water are relatively straightforward to track in this manner. Irrigation canals, on the other hand, are frequently narrower than 20 meters, which puts them at the extreme low end of the satellite’s observation power. The project’s architects assumed that fluctuations within small canals would be invisible to the satellite.

Hossain wasn’t so sure. In 2025, he and collaborators published the (GRAIN), a global dataset that used and machine learning to chart 3.8 million kilometers of canal networks. Lead author , a Ģ����Ƶ graduate research assistant in civil and environmental engineering, then overlaid SWOT’s radar data on top of the canal map to see whether he could find meaningful elevation changes where there were canals.

“It was quite the accidental and pleasant discovery to see that SWOT is able to track flow direction and water levels in most of the canals skillfully,” Sharma said. “GRAIN mapped where canals are. SWOT revealed what was happening inside them. They complemented each other beautifully.”

As a proof of concept, the team focused on canals in 22 countries across Asia — a region where irrigation plays a critical role in feeding roughly 3 billion people. Researchers looked at the satellite’s data along 800,000 kilometers of canals within that region. They then assigned a confidence score to each kilometer based on how closely the satellite’s view of the canal water matched the known contours of the land and how strong the signal was compared to the noise in the data. As an additional check, they compared the satellite’s data to real canal measurements in the United States and found that their confidence levels matched the system’s actual abilities.

Of all the kilometers studied, the team designated 37.5% as highly observable, 46.9% as moderately observable and 15.6% as poorly observable. The highest-confidence areas corresponded to well-organized, wider canals, smooth slopes and open surroundings. Dense vegetation around canals proved the satellite’s biggest obstacle. The satellite’s performance is expected to improve over time as Hossain and other scientists working with SWOT data build better algorithms and analysis methods.

The next step for researchers is to build practical tools that leverage SWOT data. Hossain and collaborators at the Ģ����Ƶ are already building such systems to monitor and improve water delivery in South Asia and to aid in canal management in the western United States.

In time, farmers around the world could use SWOT-powered tools to monitor which canals are carrying sufficient water; see where water levels drop unexpectedly or where canal flow might be stagnant; and understand the evolution of water delivery across an entire growing season. For example, a farmer preparing to plant rice might see through SWOT that there won’t be enough water arriving to their field to support the growth of the crop, and switch instead to a less water-intensive crop like corn or wheat.

Altogether, this new view of agriculture’s circulatory system could improve drought preparedness, strengthen food security and help researchers map humanity’s change to the global freshwater cycle.

“Some of the most important scientific discoveries happen when a tool designed for one purpose unexpectedly reveals something else,” Hossain said. “SWOT may be offering a similar surprise.

“A mission built to study oceans and rivers has begun revealing the hidden dynamics of the canals that sustain agricultural production around the globe. What was once invisible is becoming measurable.”

Co-authors include and , Ģ����Ƶ graduate research assistants in civil and environmental engineering; , a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech who completed this research as a Ģ����Ƶ doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering; and at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

This research was funded by NASA.

For more information, contact Hossain at fhossain@uw.edu.

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Although Mars may have once resembled Earth, the rocky red planet now appears far from hospitable. Still, certain details — such as ice-bound water — pique researchers’ curiosity. Much like on Earth, ice contains valuable records of past climate that could say whether Mars hosts, or has ever hosted, life.

Aside from the poles, where ice is sometimes exposed, most of Mars’ ice is buried beneath a dusty surface layer. Dust impacts climate by darkening ice, which changes how much sunlight is reflected into space. A Ģ����Ƶ study shows that the north pole of Mars contains less dust than scientists thought.

“We know there is water ice in the area surrounding the north pole of Mars, but there has been widespread disagreement as to how dusty that ice is,” said , a senior research scientist at the Ģ����Ƶ’s . “If it is dustier, the ice will be darker. Just like a dark T-shirt in the sun makes you warmer, dusty ice gets warmer and vaporizes faster on Mars.”

Much of what we know about how Earth’s climate has evolved through millennia comes from sampling ice. Scientists drill deep into polar ice to draw out long cylinders that contain a record of the local atmosphere. Like a tree’s rings, these records can be dated to ancient periods of Earth’s history. But this is no easy task on Earth. On Mars, it’s even more complicated.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated its 50 years ago. In 2008, the successfully sampled ice near the north pole, a major triumph after the went missing near the south pole in 1999. The Ģ����Ƶ researchers used data from the Mars Phoenix mission, combined with observations from orbiting satellites, to complete this study.

Several years ago, Khuller discovered a discrepancy in the way researchers were analyzing the physical properties of ice on Mars. The leading approach was developed for studying soil on the Moon, but when Khuller checked its accuracy on Earth, the seemed off.

In this study, Pari Mohan, who recently graduated from the Ģ����Ƶ with a degree in geoscience, worked with Khuller to redo the calculations using a different method. Theirs is based on an approach developed by , Ģ����Ƶ professor emeritus of Earth and space science, and an expert in analyzing snow and ice.

“His methods had been used successfully to study snow and ice on Earth for decades. So I thought it would be interesting to adapt these Earth-tested methods to Mars,” Khuller said.

The results suggest that the north pole is stacked “like an ice-cream sandwich,” with layers of dustier ice between slabs of cleaner ice. A dusty layer of frost forms over the ice every winter and disappears in the summer, revealing older, cleaner ice. Previous estimates suggested that the top layer of polar ice contained as much as 25% dust by mass, but this study says it’s closer to 3%.

“By looking at how the brightness changed over time, we figured out that there is a frost that forms in the winter and it’s more dusty. In the Martian summer it goes away, exposing cleaner, older ice,” Khuller said.

These layers contain key details about the climate of Mars thousands of years ago, when the ice is thought to have formed from snowfall. Mars experiences massive ice ages that have deposited shallow ice on roughly one-third of the planet.

Earth is stabilized by the gravitational pull of its moon. Mars, having only two small moons, “oscillates wildly,” Khuller said, which causes these dramatic ice ages.

In a , Khuller and colleagues suggested that layers of dust and ice could create conditions for life on Mars. The dark layers could help trap sunlight and form pockets of meltwater within the ice. These pockets, enriched with nutrients from the dust, could potentially host bacteria and primitive life forms.

Similar pockets of shallow, dusty meltwater found in ice on Earth are often teeming with life in the summer. In the winter, the liquid water freezes and the microbes become dormant until the next summer.

“The fact that Mars and Earth both have these similar layers of water ice and dust is interesting,” Khuller said. “Why does one planet have life and the other doesn’t?”

Uncovering details about the climate moves the needle, but answering this question may take years. Khuller hopes to expand on this work by applying these improved methods to other regions of the red planet.

For more information, contact Khuller at akhuller@uw.edu.

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