Blog Archives

Microsoft Plumbs Ocean’s Depths to Test Underwater Data Center

1/31/2016

The New York Times-

REDMOND, Wash. — Taking a page from Jules Verne, researchers at Microsoft believe the future of data centers may be under the sea.

Microsoft has tested a prototype of a self-contained data center that can operate hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, eliminating one of the technology industry’s most expensive problems: the air-conditioning bill.

Eyes on the River

1/28/2016

Pacific Standard-

Virtually navigating our waterways sounds like a good time to outdoor enthusiasts, but it could also help policymakers monitor a critical natural resource.

The thing about a wild river is that it’s not all rapids. A wild river—a protected resource in the United States and other countries—can be a trickle or a torrential flow; its water can be silty or clear; it can carve through canyons or spread out over grasslands; and a single wild river can be all these depending on the season and terrain.

Kokanee return | Third highest spawning run in the last two decades

1/28/2016

Issaquah Reporter-

So far, it appears to be a solid return year for the rare, fresh-water salmon swimming back to their spawning grounds in Sammamish and Bellevue. Likely 4,000 kokanee, a species closely related to the sockeye salmon but which only live in Lake Sammamish, will have returned to familiar breeding streams by spring, estimated David St. John, coordinator and chair of the Lake Sammamish Kokanee Work Group.

These numbers would make this year’s return the third highest in the last two decades, he said.

Pope Resources, Port Gamble S’Klallam negotiating conservation easement

1/25/2016

North Kitsap Herald-
Representatives of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and Pope Resources stood on the old mill site on July 23 to bless the beginning of the final cleanup of the site and the nearshore. And then, an ancestral song was sung and the S’Klallam language was spoken, here at this place the grandparents’ grandparents knew as Teekalet. And what was past was made present.

Can innovation save Arctic sea ice?

1/25/2016

Alaska Dispatch News-

The ice floating on top of the world covers pretty much the entire Arctic Ocean in midwinter. By late summer it shrinks to half that much. If trends continue, by midcentury the summer ice may take up less space than Japan.

As the Arctic Ocean becomes more blue, it absorbs much of the sun's heat that it once reflected with great efficiency. This warmer ocean would quicken the melt of the Greenland ice sheet, which would lead to sea level rise. It might encourage wacky weather patterns all over the globe.

UW scientists capture underwater eruption with new fiber-optic array, set up HD web cam

1/16/2016

Seattle Times-

Data is flowing from an ocean-bottom observatory off the Pacific Northwest coast that was the brainchild of a UW oceanographer, and the first results are explosive.

The idea was hatched in a bar more than two decades ago.

University of Washington oceanographer John Delaney and a colleague were nursing cocktails and venting their frustration with the traditional approach to studying the underwater world.

Alaskans fly south for Arctic symposium

1/15/2016

Alaska Public Media-

The University of Washington School of Law is hosting policymakers from Alaska and around the country for discussions on Arctic security and politics, development, transportation and shipping, environmental protection, and climate change.

Tidal Turbine Connected with Onshore Electricity Grid

1/13/2016

French marine renewable energy pioneer SABELLA has completed a cable operation connecting a tidal turbine to an onshore grid.

Climate Change: Study Highlights Importance Of West Coast In Understanding Climate Change

1/11/2016

With climate change on the rise, researchers are looking to the West Coast waters for answers. As climate warming increases and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide continue to rise, scientists continue to look to the Pacific Ocean along the West Coast as a model of how other areas of the ocean will respond to the coming decades of environmental change. If oceans continues to undergo acidification and low-oxygen zones keep expanding, coastal oceans from British Columbia to Mexico are the most ideal areas to look for early warning signals.

Thornton Creek gets a makeover from the ground up

1/11/2016

Seattle Public Utilities is taking a new and experimental approach to improving the health of Seattle’s biggest urban stream.

Swift and green, the Cedar River is alive, both on the surface and below.

A little-known wilderness teems just out of sight, in the river below the river — the saturated soils, gravel sand and rocks under and along the river’s main channel. This is the so-called hyporheic zone: a realm where functions vital to the overall health of a stream and even the watershed take place.

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