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Beth E. Caissie, assistant professor in the Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences, was recently awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to compile and analyze sea-ice records from several glacial-interglacial cycles in the North Pacific.

Awarded by the competitive Office of Polar Programs, the NSF grant will fund this research through 2022.

The goal of Caissie’s research is to determine how sea ice decreases when the Earth warms due to natural changes.

This project, “When the Earth Warms: Paleoceanography at the Southern Ice Margin in the Bering Sea During Three Glacial-Interglacial Transitions” builds on Caissie’s prior work creating diatom-based, quantitative and qualitative sea ice proxies in the Bering Sea. Her team will create large syntheses of North Pacific sea-surface temperatures and sea ice during the last 500,000 years.