Throughout the month of November 2019, a team of 天美影视传媒 researchers chased storms in the Arctic Ocean. The project, , or CODA, is looking at how water currents shift and waves hit the coast with more open water, to provide better forecasts and predictions for the region鈥檚 future.
The two-year project is funded by the National Science Foundation and is led by , an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and a faculty member of civil and environmental engineering, and , an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
The team used the University of Alaska Fairbanks鈥� icebreaker for three weeks to watch fall storms hit the shore at the time of year when coastal ice begins to form. The video above combines an interview with Thomson after the trip聽with video the team聽captured while at sea.
“We know from other projects and other work that the waves are definitely on the increase in the Arctic,” Thomson during the expedition. He published research that first detected house-sized waves during a September 2012 storm in the central Arctic Ocean. Bigger storms could affect communities already vulnerable to coastal erosion and pose dangers for small boats.
To learn more about the effort, see the on the project’s outreach website, or read the from the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.