The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

By Evan Bush, NBC News

The magnitude-8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula sent a wave of water racing at the speed of a jetliner toward Hawaii, California and Washington state, spurring warnings and alarm overnight Wednesday.

But when the tsunami waves arrived, they didn’t cause devastation or deaths in the United States, and the inundation might not have appeared threatening in some locations where warnings were issued.

That doesn’t mean the tsunami was a “bust,” that it was poorly forecast or that it didn’t pose a risk, earthquake and tsunami researchers said.

“You start to hear ‘tsunami warning,’ and everyone immediately thinks of the last Hollywood movie they saw, and then it comes in at 3 feet and people are like, ‘What’s that?’” said Harold Tobin, the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and a professor at the University of Washington. “We should count it as a win that a tsunami occurred, we got a warning and it wasn’t the worst-case scenario.”

Here’s what to know.

How strong was the Kamchatka earthquake? And why did it change so much?

Initial reports from the U.S. Geological Survey pegged the Kamchatka earthquake at magnitude 8.0. Later, it was upgraded to 8.8.

“That is not uncommon for very, very large earthquakes in those initial minutes,” Tobin said. “Our standard algorithms for determining the size of an earthquake quickly saturate. It’s like turning up an amp and getting a lot of distortion.”

One of the first signs the earthquake was stronger than the initial seismic reports said was an initial measurement from a buoy about 275 miles southeast of the Kamchatka peninsula.

The buoy, which is part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) system, is connected to a seafloor pressure sensor about 4 miles below the surface.

The sensor registered a 90-centimeter wave — more than 35 inches — which is eye-popping to tsunami researchers.

“That’s the second-largest recording we ever saw in the tsunami world,” said Vasily Titov, a senior tsunami modeler at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, adding that it indicated there was “a catastrophic tsunami propagating in the ocean.”

Titov said the only higher reading was from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan.

Seismic models later confirmed that Wednesday’s earthquake was magnitude 8.8, which means it released nearly 16 times as much energy as a magnitude-8.0 earthquake, according to a USGS calculation tool.

Tōhoku was much bigger.

Tobin estimated that earthquake released two to three times as much energy as was observed in Kamchatka. Titov said the tsunami in Japan was also about three times larger.

In addition, he said the Tōhoku earthquake “produced an anomalously large seafloor displacement,” lurching and moving more water than expected, even for an earthquake of its magnitude.

At Kamchatka, “it’s likely that there was less seafloor displacement than could have happened in a worst-case or more dire scenario for a magnitude-8.8,” Tobin said, though more research will be needed to confirm that theory.

[…]

Why were people in Hawaii evacuated for a 5-foot wave?

Yong Wei, a tsunami modeler and senior research scientist at the University of Washington and the NOAA Center for Tsunami Research, said a 1.5-meter (5-foot) tsunami wave can be very dangerous, particularly in shallow waters off Hawaii.

Tsunami waves contain far more energy than wind waves, which are far shorter in wavelength and period (time between waves) and slower in speed.

Wei said tsunami waves of the size that struck Hawaii can surge inland “tens of meters,” produce dangerous currents and damage boats and other moveable objects.

“People die. If they stay there and they don’t get any warning, 2 meters can definitely kill people,” Wei said. “If you’re on the beach, strong currents can definitely pull you out into the ocean and people will get drowned.”

Tobin said the initial warnings were conservative but appropriate, in his view.

“I don’t want people to think, oh, we had a warning and nothing much happened and pooh-pooh it — ‘I can ignore it,’” he said. “Warnings by nature have to err a bit on the side of caution.”

…

Read more about CICOES research on tsunami forecasts and modeling.

By Monica Allen, NOAA

Ice forecasts would boost public safety, subsistence fishing, hunting, transportation and commerce

NOAA and the University of Washington have joined with the Native Village of Kotzebue, Alaska, to create a new forecast model that will help predict the spring ice breakup on a major lake outside the village.

Hotham Inlet, known locally as Kobuk Lake, is a 38-mile-long, 19-mile-wide lake that transforms each fall when the ice freezes into a prime place for fishing and a critical travel corridor for people on snowmachines and with dog teams.

The lake is a few miles from Kotzebue, the largest community and the economic and transportation hub in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough. The iced-over lake allows local communities to create an ice road to transport air freight that arrives in Kotzebue to communities around the lake, visit friends and make it easier for people from smaller villages to get to Kotzebue for shopping.

While NOAA National Weather Service ice forecasts provide information about ocean and coastal sea ice and ice breakups on major rivers, there are no specialized forecast models for Alaskan lakes, even large ones like Kobuk Lake, which is fed by two rivers and influenced by tidal flow from the Chukchi Sea.

“This new model we are developing is the future of ice prediction,” said Jiaxu Zhang, the project leader who is a research scientist at the UW’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “We want to make it useful and relevant to the people who depend on knowing the condition of ice for safe fishing, hunting, transportation and trade. And the best way to do that is to work directly with the people of Kotzebue on it.”

Unlike traditional ice models that treat ice as one continuous sheet, this new model will simulate how individual ice floes crack, move and pile up — complex processes that are key to predicting exactly when and where Kobuk Lake ice will break up.

For thousands of years, the community has used its Indigenous knowledge and deep understanding of ice to plan their fishing and hunting. But with changing temperatures and weather, this new model which combines physical science with Indigenous knowledge could improve the forecasting of spring breakup for Kotzebue and become a model for other Alaskan and Arctic locations.

The residents of Kotzebue bring valuable knowledge of the ice, the wildlife that inhabit it and the ways they have detected when the breakup is occurring in the past.

Ice fishing provides major source of protein for locals

“Fishing here is really important for us,” said Bobby Schaeffer, an elder from Kotzebue who contributes to the project. For Schaeffer and many of his neighbors, much of their protein comes from subsistence fishing and hunting.

Kobuk Lake is well known for a large whitefish called sheefish that can grow as large as 50 pounds. Community members also fish for herring and a variety of smaller whitefish species. These fish are then frozen, pickled or dried to be consumed throughout the year.

The ice fishing season typically begins in late fall and continues into May. In recent years, the ice in parts of the lake has broken up earlier than it did 20 or more years ago, said Schaeffer. He attributes it to the warming atmosphere, which is affecting not only the ice formation and thickness, but all the fish migration patterns, birds, seals and caribou that depend on the lake’s ecosystem.

Team gathers aerial and on-ice observations for model

To create the model, Zhang and her interdisciplinary team collected observations of the ice before and during breakup, including aerial surveys from a NOAA Twin Otter airplane operated by NOAA Commissioned Corps officers and crew. In May, the aircraft was loaded with sensors to take high-resolution images and LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), a remote-sensing method that uses laser light to measure distances and create highly detailed 3D representations of ice thickness, surface roughness, and environmental features.

In addition to the aerial observations, Schaeffer and Alex Whiting, the Native Village of Kotzebue environmental program director, collected observations on the ground and on the ice. Schaeffer measured the thickness of the ice over time by drilling holes in strategic locations on the ice. Tyler Kramer, a Kotzebue high school student, monitored the salinity of the water flowing into the lake from the Chukchi Sea. By understanding how much salt water flows into the lake and how much of the colder fresh water from rivers blocks that salt water flow into the lake, the scientists have key information for the model about how the warmer saltier water accelerates ice melting from below.

The Kotzebue community members have also contributed a wealth of information about how the breakup has occurred in past years, areas where it is likely to soften first and areas where ice may support fishing and hunting longer into the spring before it breaks up.

Two interesting focal points of the research are the formation of annual pressure ridges running across the lake and recurring thin ice areas that melt out early in the breakup process.  While the location of these open water areas reappear in the same place each year, the position of the associated cracks can change from year to year, according to an analysis of satellite images and the current observations. Understanding the forces that cause these phenomena will help to create a successful and accurate breakup model.

The next step to building a model is to create what’s called a hindcast, a validation technique that involves running historical observations through the model and comparing the accuracy of the output to the actual timing of past ice breakups. From this, the team will create and test a model to predict future ice breakup.

By Lauren Kirschman, UW News

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is a system of ocean currents that plays a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate by transporting heat from the Southern to Northern Hemisphere. Confined to the Atlantic basin, the AMOC modulates regional weather — from mild summers in Europe to monsoon seasons in Africa and India.

Climate models have long predicted that global warming will cause the AMOC to weaken, with some projecting what amounts to a near-collapse relative to the AMOC strength in observations today. But a new study from a team of researchers that included the University of Washington shows that the AMOC is likely to weaken to a much lesser extent than current projections suggest. The study was published May 29 in Nature Geoscience.

A severe weakening would have far-reaching consequences, including changes in regional sea level rise, and major shifts in regional climate, such as colder conditions in northern Europe and drier weather in parts of the Amazon and West Africa.

“Our results imply that, rather than a substantial decline, the AMOC is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21^st century — still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest,” says David Bonan, lead author of the study and a UW postdoctoral research fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies.

The researchers developed a simplified physical model based on fundamental principles of ocean circulation — specifically, how sea water density differences and the depth of the overturning circulation are related — that also incorporates real-world measurements of the ocean current’s strength. The real-world data was collected over 20 years with monitoring arrays and other observations of the Atlantic basin.

Results show that the AMOC will weaken by around 18-43% by the end of the 21^st century. While this represents some weakening, it’s not the near-collapse that more extreme climate model projections suggest.

By Joe Selmont, CICOES

Each year, the ocean and atmosphere exchange billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂). This process is one of the planet’s most powerful natural balancing acts — and it’s not happening uniformly over time or across the world. 

In a new international study including researchers from the University of Washington and NOAA, a team of scientists has shown that the Pacific Ocean is taking up more CO₂ than ever before, and that this uptake is increasing over time.

The study is part of a larger effort called RECCAP2, an international collaboration coordinated through the Global Carbon Project. One of RECCAP2’s goals is to “take stock” of carbon in the ocean. This is an ambitious task that requires synchronizing observations, models, and expertise from many countries. 

For the Pacific Ocean, this meant assembling decades of measurements and modeling results to understand not just how much carbon the Pacific absorbs, but how that uptake is changing over space and time. According to the study, between 1985 and 2018, the Pacific absorbed, on average, about 2.6 billion tons more carbon per year than it did in pre-industrial times. And the annual rate of uptake has been growing steadily each decade — by about 0.1 billion tons per year.

“This is a comprehensive synthesis of a lot of collaborative research on the Pacific Ocean over the last several decades,” said Brendan Carter, an oceanographer at the UW’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies. “Across the world, scientists are taking on the challenging task of tracking ocean carbon dioxide uptake from a lot of different angles.”

Carter worked alongside Richard Feely, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and other collaborators from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Together, they compared results derived from several methods: observational data from research cruises, autonomous vehicles, and moored sensors, as well as outputs from many different models — sophisticated simulations that aim to represent ocean physics and chemistry from first principles.

Both approaches have strengths and limitations. 

Observational data and estimates, Carter explained, are grounded in the real world and require fewer assumptions. But the vast majority of the ocean is not being measured at any given time, so estimation techniques are still needed to fill in the gaps. 

Models, on the other hand, can simulate every part of the ocean at every moment — including future conditions. In theory, this eliminates blind spots. In practice, however, a model’s accuracy depends on the assumptions it is built upon. And while those assumptions are grounded in historical data, the ocean and atmosphere form an especially complex system, inevitably introducing some unpredictability. 

This underscores why the research team used a wide variety of methods.

Carter said, “By using both observations and models — and multiple kinds of models — we can compare results and learn where our approaches agree, and where the uncertainties still lie.”

One key finding from this comparison is that despite occasional differences, the methods tended to converge upon similar results in many regions. That gives researchers growing confidence in their estimates, and allows them to track trends over time.

And in the Pacific, the trend is clear: CO₂ uptake is increasing. But Carter, Feely, and the rest of their team wanted to determine what is driving this increase. 

“The southern Pacific is one of the largest CO₂ sinks on Earth,” said Feely. “But we also see a huge amount of variability across the Pacific — especially in the equatorial Pacific, which is strongly affected by El Niño events.”

During El Niño years, warm water spreads across the equator, reducing upwelling — the process by which deep, carbon-rich and nutrient-rich water rises to the surface. Once at the surface, this upwelled water exchanges carbon with the atmosphere, often for the first time in decades or centuries. It releases old “natural” carbon accumulated by the decomposition of plants and animals over the years, but also picks up some of the carbon that humans have added to the atmosphere over that same timespan. However, the upwelled nutrients support the growth of marine life near the surface, which enables the ocean to take back some of the natural carbon.

“That dance of carbon — the interplay between natural and anthropogenic sources, upwelling, and biology — that is what we’re trying to understand and quantify,” Carter said.

Despite year-to-year and regional variability, the team’s analysis shows a consistent increase in CO₂ uptake across the Pacific over recent decades. In one sense, that’s good news: the ocean continues to perform a vital role in moderating the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. 

But Carter and Feely also expressed caution. There are concerns related to ocean acidification: as more carbon enters the ocean, it initiates a series of chemical reactions that increase acidity. This may have consequences for all kinds of marine life and ecosystems — and the humans who rely upon them. Plus, chemical principles suggest that as more CO₂ is absorbed, the ocean’s ability to take up additional carbon may eventually slow down.

“We’re trying to get the best data we can,” said Carter. “That way, the methods we use to project future scenarios will be as accurate as possible.”

This research reinforces the necessity of both global collaboration and methodological diversity. The strength of the conclusions, Carter emphasized, come not from one model or one dataset, but from combining many.

“By having so many groups, each with their own tools and expertise, we’re able to create a fuller picture,” he said. “With big questions like this, it’s important that we work together.” 

Read the full study in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

By Theo Stein, NOAA Research

For decades, firefighting crews counted on falling temperatures and rising humidity at night to dampen wildfire activity, allowing them to rest, regroup and prepare for the next day.

Over the last 20 years though, satellite measurements have confirmed a change reported in the western US by firefighters on the ground: a dramatic increase in nighttime fire activity by larger fires. Previous studies attributed the increase to warmer, drier nights, conditions that help to maintain the flammability of fuels.

New research from NOAA, the University of Washington and the U.S. Forest Service has investigated other weather conditions that influence fire behavior, the extent to which these factors have been changing over recent decades and how they may have contributed to changes in nighttime fire behavior.

“We looked for simultaneous changes in winds, atmospheric mixing and fuel moisture that might enhance nocturnal fire activity,” said lead author Andy Chiodi, a University of Washington scientist working with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. “Our results show that, indeed, all the atmospheric measures that influence wildfires have changed towards supporting more intense nocturnal fire behavior.”

The findings were published in the Journal of Climate.

The implication of these findings, said Chiodi, is that researchers need to better understand the interplay of each of these factors in driving increases in nocturnal fire activity, which not only complicate firefighters’ jobs, but also could jeopardize public safety.

In 2022, a study led by the US Forest Service confirmed that the amount of fire radiative power, or the amount of heat generated by burning, detected at night over the contiguous U.S. by two NASA satellites (VIIRS and MODIS) increased by approximately 50 percent during the 2003-2020 study period. That study found the change was most pronounced for the larger fires burning in drier heavy fuels that experienced more active nighttime burning.

The current study expands on Chiodi’s previous work that examined changes in night time vapor pressure deficit, which determines the rate at which woody fuels lose moisture to the air, over the western U.S. during the last 40 years. As fuels dry they become more susceptible to burning. The study found over that period that the number of dry-air nights had indeed increased.

The new paper explored not only the frequency of dry nights but also how often they were accompanied by other weather factors conducive to burning. “It’s important to know how each of these has changed to accurately interpret changes in nighttime fire behavior,” Chiodi said.

Chiodi explained that typically, when the sun sets, reduced solar heating cools the surface, calms winds and turbulence, and allows for the formation of a stable layer at the surface, called the planetary boundary layer, which acts as a kind of cap. Reduced wind speeds tend to moderate fire activity. Cooler air below a lower, stable boundary layer traps humidity and smoke, which can further subdue fire behavior.

The new study found that in the 2010s, dry-fuel nights were not only more than 10 times more frequent compared to the 1980s and 1990s in some locations, fire risk was compounded by simultaneously windier and deeper boundary layers, over 81% of the Western U.S.

“So the problem is that it’s not just drying out, it’s that places that are getting drier are seeing a double or triple whammy: drier nights, more wind and a deeper atmospheric boundary layer.”

The study found southern California, especially the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, are hot spots for this trend. This region was already quite dry in terms of fuel moisture in the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, it has experienced some of the greatest increases in frequencies of dry and windy nights.

These insights not only have value for operational firefighting decisions, Chiodi said they can also help inform decisions about when conditions are appropriate for prescribed burns, which are critical for mitigating wildfire risk, especially near developed areas.

Chiodi is presently working with Forest Service colleagues to build user-friendly tools that can quickly identify safe weather windows for effective prescribed burns.

By NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center

To locate endangered North Pacific right whales, scientists listen for their calls in Alaskan waters believed to be a part of their historical feeding grounds. To do this, scientists use underwater microphones, known as hydrophones. The NOAA Fisheries/University of Washington scientific team documented sounds from these rare right whales at all six acoustic mooring sites in the Aleutian Island passes and northern Gulf of Alaska. This is remarkable because it is believed that fewer than 50 animals remain in the eastern population. The findings also support the idea that the whales use this area as a migratory corridor.

“We detected these whales in both the eastern Aleutian Island passes and northern Gulf of Alaska habitats,” said lead author Dana Wright, conservation biologist for the University of Washington Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies. “We observed peaks in calling between June and August at most sites, which supports the belief that these areas are currently being used as feeding grounds.” 

The scientists were listening for the two most common sounds that these rare whales produce: the upcall and the gunshot call. North Pacific right whale upcalls follow an upsweep pattern and occur in irregular spaced clusters of calls, called bouts. In contrast, their gunshot calls are very short (less than 1 second) broadband signals. They’re made up of a wide range of sound frequencies—like the snap of your finger or a clap. These calls can occur in a pattern to create songs. 

The greatest number of detections occurred in the whale’s designated critical habitat off Kodiak, Alaska between September and November. Right whales have been acoustically detected at mooring sites further north, in the whale’s Bering Sea critical habitat, at the same time of year.

In addition to summer and fall, right whales were also detected for at least 1 day at each of the mooring sites between December and April. This is when scientists believe the species migrates between its northern feeding grounds to lower latitudes.

“One of the great mysteries about this species is that we still don’t know where they go once they leave the feeding grounds,” says Wright. “One hypothesis is that these whales swim along the coastline of the northern Gulf of Alaska, between Kodiak Island and the Aleutian Islands, as part of their migratory route. The winter detections in our dataset are helping to piece together the puzzle.”

The timing of overwinter (roughly December–May) detections at the Aleutian Islands Pass sites relative to the Bering Sea detections supports their use as a migratory corridor. This study area includes Unimak Pass, a major vessel traffic corridor where right whales have been acoustically detected in prior years.

The Importance of Identifying Habitat for Eastern North Pacific Right Whale Population Recovery 

The genetically distinct eastern population of the North Pacific right whale is one of the most endangered large whales in the world. This is largely due to targeted, extensive legal and illegal commercial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Historically, North Pacific right whales’ range included the Gulf of Alaska, eastern Aleutian Islands, and eastern Bering Sea. Stomach content data from harvested whales suggest that these areas were feeding grounds. However, the contemporary distribution of the eastern  population, including possible migratory routes, is poorly known.

Data from this study and other recent research led by Wright using ratios of amino acids in the skin tissue are helping to uncover a record of migration and foraging. 

“Given their remote and elusive nature, opportunistic photographs taken by the public can also be really helpful,” said co-author Jessica Crance, marine mammal biologist, Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “In fact, the first visual evidence of a North Pacific right whale feeding in the Bering Sea during winter months was provided by a fisherman.”

If you are ever fortunate enough to spot a North Pacific right whale, your photos could provide another valuable clue about their movements. 

Remember to keep a safe distance (500 yards at minimum). Take photos or video of the sides of the whale’s head if you can. Please send the photos or videos along with your name, and the location where you made your sighting, to np.rw@noaa.gov.

By Theo Stein, NOAA

The global ocean covers 71% of the planet. Across these vast spaces, interactions between the ocean and atmosphere are primary drivers of Earth’s weather, climate and marine productivity.

Satellites, instrumented moorings, and infrequent ship-borne research missions have revealed much about these interactions, but large areas of the ocean are significantly undersampled.

To fill in the gaps, scientists have increasingly turned to an array of Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USV), some of which can navigate tens of thousands of kilometres to capture key observations autonomously. Most rely upon renewable energy from wind, waves, and the Sun for propulsion and to power their sensors and telemetry systems.

“This technology is currently booming,,” said Ruth Patterson, an oceanographer with Charles Darwin University in Australia. “We urgently need to establish a global network to agree on standards and best practices so that USV data can be used to enhance our understanding of the oceans and climate.”

To rectify that, Patterson and an international team of researchers including scientists from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), the University of Washington, and the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES), conducted a review of the global use of USVs and how well the recommended attributes of a global observing network are met.

The Observations Coordination Group (OCG), which oversees the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), has identified ten important attributes of an in-situ GOOS network, about half of which were well-met or progressing. In particular, the review cited 200 USV datasets, published in 96 peer reviewed studies, capturing observations of 33 physical, biogeochemical, biological and ecological processes spanning the air-sea transition zone across the global ocean.

“An endorsed USV GOOS network needs to have or be working towards a data management infrastructure that includes defined standards and recommended practices,” said Kevin O’Brien, a CICOES scientist and vice chair of the OCG. “This is the next step for an emerging network of GOOS.”

The review was carried out under the auspices of the Observing Air-Sea Interactions Strategy (OASIS), a program of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development, and was published in the journal Frontiers of Marine Science.

Patterson will present a proposal to establish a permanent global USV network within the Global Ocean Observing System to the Observations Coordination Group during its April meeting in France.

PMEL scientist Meghan Cronin, co-chair of the OASIS program, said “this offers a roadmap for building this international network that offers a key to new frontiers in ocean sciences.”

Scientist(s): Dr. Meghan F. Cronin, Dr. Calvin W. Mordy, Dr. Adrienne J. Sutton, Eugene F. Burger, Dr. Dongxiao Zhang, Dr. Chidong Zhang, Kevin O’Brien, Catherine Kohlman, Dr. Elizabeth McGeorge

Watch CICOES Director John Horne on the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea’s web series Hidden Gems. He discusses a solar-powered acoustic monitoring system that delivers near-real-time data to support sustainable fishing.