Current vaccine approach not enough to eradicate measles

New study models the feasibility of eliminating measles and rubella

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Current vaccination strategies are unlikely to eliminate measles, according to a new study led by faculty at the University of Georgia. 

The paper, which published today in The Lancet Global Health, explores the feasibility of eliminating measles and rubella using predominant vaccination strategies in 93 countries with the highest disease burden.

Despite marked reductions in the number of new measles and rubella cases worldwide, gaps remain between current levels of transmission and disease elimination. 

“Measles is one of the most contagious respiratory infections out there, and it moves quickly, so it’s hard to control,” said lead author Amy Winter, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UGA’s College of Public Health. 

The basic reproduction number (R0) for measles, which represents the number of people that one infected person is likely to transmit that disease to in a fully susceptible population, is roughly 18. By comparison the R0 for the original SARS-CoV-2 virus is estimated to be around three.

In 2017, the World Health Organization director general requested a report on the feasibility of measles and rubella eradication. One component of this report was to use transmission models to evaluate the theoretical feasibility of eradication of the two viruses given different vaccination strategies.

The assessment was a collaboration with the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Measles and Rubella Working Group, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and five modeling groups.

Using four national disease transmission models and one sub-national model, the modeling groups projected the annual case rates for measles and rubella for two vaccination scenarios.

Both vaccination scenarios use the two predominant vaccination approaches of routine vaccination as part of childhood immunization schedules and nationwide vaccination campaigns.

The first “business as usual” vaccination scenario continues vaccination coverage and campaigns into the future. The second “intensified investment” vaccination scenario optimally improved vaccination coverage over time. This scenario also included vaccination campaign cessation criteria – a stopping point for when campaigns are no longer deemed necessary because a large enough proportion of the population has been inoculated.

The models show that current vaccine strategies could eliminate rubella and congenital rubella syndrome in all 93 counties, but not measles. 

“The current strategy that we use, which is focused on improving routine vaccination coverage and supplementing it with nationwide vaccination campaigns until routine vaccination is high enough, that alone is not going to be sufficient to reach measles elimination. We need novel approaches,” said Winter. 

The authors evaluated two strategies that could help move a country to elimination faster and reduce the probability of measles outbreaks: One, improve how supplemental vaccine campaigns are delivered to ensure they are reaching children who are not receiving routine vaccinations.

Two, improve vaccine coverage equity by focusing routine and supplemental vaccination on sub-regions with the lowest vaccination coverage first to get them up to par.

“A world that is permanently free of measles and rubella would be an incredible achievement for humanity. Our work suggests that to reach this goal, we need to make vaccine coverage much more equal,” said co-author Mark Jit, professor of vaccine epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

“In other words, we need to work even harder to bring measles and rubella vaccination to the most underserved people around the world.”

The final strategy the authors present is a reconsideration of cessation criteria. Currently, most countries stop supplementing routine vaccines with vaccination campaigns once they reach elimination status, said Winter, but the models suggest that outbreaks are still likely to occur if countries rely on routine vaccines alone.

It’s critical, Winter warns, to remain vigilant to surveil for rubella and measles cases and rapidly respond to potential outbreaks even after elimination is achieved.

“We have a globally connected world, so there’s this constant pressure of importations of the viruses in places where it’s already eliminated,” she said. “That’s why keeping vaccination coverage high and continuing to improve surveillance for these diseases is important.”

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JOURNAL

The Lancet Global Health

ARTICLE TITLE

Feasibility of measles and rubella vaccination programmes for disease elimination: a modelling study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Sep-2022

This fungus shrinks in size to better infect the brain

Finding could spur new strategies to prevent the leading cause of fungal meningitis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HEALTH

 

IMAGE: THE INFECTIOUS FUNGUS CRYPTOCOCCUS NEOFORMANS RAPIDLY ENLARGES AND SHRINKS IN SIZE TO WITHSTAND DIFFERENT MICROENVIRONMENTS IN THE BODY. view more 

CREDIT: STEVEN DENHAM

(Salt Lake City) - A fungus that is a common cause of fungal meningitis undergoes a remarkable transformation once it enters the body, allowing it to infect the brain, according to new research by scientists at University of Utah Health. Studies in mice show that as the fungal intruder travels through the body, it shrinks and acquires characteristics that help infection to spread, all in a matter of days.

The discovery could lead to new strategies for blocking Cryptococcus neoformans infection and preventing detrimental effects on the host. C. neoformans is the leading cause of a rare but deadly swelling of the brain that occurs in people with weakened immune systems.

“Cryptococcus cells in the lungs are very diverse with different sizes and different appearances. So, when my graduate student showed me pictures of the uniformity of cells from the brain, I was shocked,” says Jessica Brown, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at U of U Health and the study’s senior author. “It suggested that there was some very strong reason why only this population of cells were making it that far into the body.” Her former graduate student, Steven Denham, PhD, is leading author on the study. Their research recently published online in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The fungus adapts rapidly to withstand microenvironments in the body

Brown’s fascination with the fungus came from the observation that it thrives in so many different habitats. In the wild, the organism lives in rotting wood and bird droppings. If it is inadvertently inhaled, the fungus can survive in the lungs and then travel in the bloodstream to the brain and other organs, each of which has its own challenging micro-environment.

Previously, other scientists found that the fungus copes with living in the lungs by growing to 10 times its normal size, presumably becoming too large for the host immune system to destroy. But in other parts of the body, fungal cells are much smaller. Brown wondered, could the cells’ extra-small size be another type of advantage? Perhaps that characteristic helps them colonize other organs, such as the brain.

To find out, her team infected mice with various sizes of C. neoformans. They found that in comparison to medium and large cells, the smallest cells preferentially infected the brain. These cells were not only diminutive but differed in other ways. Compared to larger fungal cells, they had unique features on their surface that were similarly important for accessing the brain. They also turned on a different set of genes.

This evidence suggested that the small fungal cells, that Brown dubbed “seed” cells, were not just miniature versions of larger cells. They had undergone a wholesale change.

After searching for triggers, Brown’s group found that a specific chemical—phosphate—could induce the shift. Knowing that phosphate is released when tissue is damaged during infection, Brown speculates that the chemical accumulates in the lungs, the first site where fungi settle after entering the body. This allows the fungal cells to reconfigure themselves as seed cells, which enables the infection to spread further.

From bird guano to the brain

Oddly enough, the fungi’s ability to effectively target the brain may have originated from a unique source: bird guano. C. neoformans thrive in pigeon droppings, which have high levels of the seed cell-triggering molecule, phosphate. Brown’s team found that the gooey stuff nudges C. neoformans into that alternate state like nothing else they had tried.  

Brown thinks this could demonstrate how the fungus’ pathogenicity arose in the first place. “We think that selective pressures from environmental niches like pigeon guano are somehow able to confer to C. neoformans the ability to infect mammals,” she says.

Regardless of how the fungus’ infectious property arose, Brown’s team is now trying to block that ability with FDA-approved drugs. They are determining whether there may be an existing compound that blocks C. neoformans from becoming seed cells that could provide a ready-to-go remedy for preventing or treating fungal meningitis.

# # #

In addition to Brown, co-authors are Steven T. Denham, Brianna Brammer, Krystal Y. Chung, Morgan A. Wambaugh, Joseph M. Bednarek, Li Guo, and Christian T. Moreau from U of U Health.

The research published as, “A dissemination-prone morphotype enhances extrapulmonary organ entry by the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans” with support from the National Institutes of Health.

About University of Utah Health

University of Utah Health  provides leading-edge and compassionate care for a referral area that encompasses Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and much of Nevada. A hub for health sciences research and education in the region, U of U Health has a $428 million research enterprise and trains the majority of Utah’s physicians and health care providers at its Colleges of Health, Nursing, and Pharmacy and Schools of Dentistry and Medicine. With more than 20,000 employees, the system includes 12 community clinics and five hospitals. U of U Health is recognized nationally as a transformative health care system and provider of world-class care.

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JOURNAL

Cell Host & Microbe

DOI

10.1016/j.chom.2022.08.017 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A dissemination-prone morphotype enhances extrapulmonary organ entry by the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Sep-2022

Beyond sound: Bimodal acoustic calls used in mate-choice and aggression by red-eyed treefrogs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GETTYSBURG COLLEGE

 

VIDEO: A MALE RED-EYED TREEFROG RESPONDS TO SOUND AND VIBRATIONS OF A RIVAL MALE'S CALL BY PRODUCING AGGRESSIVE VIBRATIONAL SIGNALS. view more 

CREDIT: DR. MICHAEL CALDWELL

One would be hard-pressed to take a walk outside without hearing the sounds of calling animals. During the day, birds chatter back and forth, and as night falls, frogs and insects call to defend territories and to attract potential mates. For several decades, biologists have studied these calls with great interest, taking away major lessons about the evolution of animal displays and the processes of speciation. But there may be a lot more to animal calls than we have realized.

A new study appearing in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Dr. Michael Caldwell and student researchers at Gettysburg College demonstrates that the calls of red-eyed treefrogs don’t just send sounds through the air, but also send vibrations through the plants. What’s more, these plant vibrations change the message that other frogs receive in major ways. The researchers played sound and vibrations produced by calling males to other red-eyed treefrogs surrounding a rainforest pond in Panama. They found that female frogs are over twice as likely to choose the calls of a potential mate if those calls include both sound and vibrations, and male frogs are far more aggressive and show a greater range of aggressive displays when they can feel the vibrations generated by the calls of their rivals.

“This really changes how we look at things,” says Caldwell. “If we want to know how a call functions, we can’t just look at the sound it makes anymore. We need to at least consider the roles that its associated vibrations play in getting the message across.”

Because vibrations are unavoidably excited in any surface a calling animal is touching, the authors of the new study suggest it is likely that many more species communicate using similar ‘bimodal acoustic calls’ that function simultaneously through both airborne sound and plant-, ground-, or water-borne vibrations. “There is zero reason to suspect that bimodal acoustic calls are limited to red-eyed treefrogs. In fact, we know they aren’t,” says Caldwell, who points out that researchers at UCLA and the University of Texas are reporting similar results with distantly related frog species, and that elephants and several species of insect have been shown to communicate this way. “For decades,” says Caldwell, “..we just didn’t know what to look for, but with a growing scientific interest in vibrational communication, all of that is rapidly changing.”

This new focus on animal calls as functioning through both sound and vibration could set the stage for major advances in the study of signal evolution. One potential implication highlighted by the team at Gettysburg College is that “we may even learn new things about sound signals we thought we understood.” This is because both the sound and the vibrational components of bimodal acoustic signals are generated together by the same organs. So, selection acting either call component will also necessarily shape the evolution of the other. 

The red-eyed treefrog is one of the most photographed species on the planet, which makes these findings all the more unexpected. “It just goes to show, we still have a lot to learn about animal behavior,” reports Dr. Caldwell. “We hear animal calls so often that we tune most of them out, but when we make a point to look at the world from the perspective of a frog, species that are far more sensitive to vibrations than humans, it quickly becomes clear that we have been overlooking a major part of what they are saying to one another.”

This research was performed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Gettysburg College, with funding from the Smithsonian Institution and the Cross-disciplinary Science Institute at Gettysburg College.

Female choice trial (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

Journal of Experimental Biology

DOI

10.1242/jeb.244460 

ARTICLE TITLE

Beyond sound: bimodal acoustic calls used in mate-choice and aggression by red-eyed treefrogs

Putting sharks on the map: A new standard to identify important habitats

A new set of global criteria will help identify important areas for sharks, rays, and chimaeras to secure the protection they desperately need in the face of extinction.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: BASELINE MAP OF SHARK AREA-BASED CONSERVATION. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE: HYDE ET AL

To date, shark, ray, and chimaera species have not been sufficiently considered in the planning of marine protected areas.  However, a publication in Frontiers in Marine Science by researchers from the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group, IUCN’s Ocean Team, and the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Taskforce have developed a new framework to fundamentally change how sharks are considered in the design of protected areas and therefore support the protection they desperately need in the face of extinction.

Ms Ciaran Hyde, Consultant to the IUCN Ocean Team, explained: “We still have so much to learn about many shark, ray, and chimaera species, but unfortunately several studies indicate that many protected areas are failing to adequately meet their needs. However, Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) will help to identify areas for these species using criteria which have been specifically designed to consider their biological and ecological needs.”

As apex predators, sharks provide many vital functions for maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Sharks shape fish communities, ensure a diversity of species, and even help our oceans sequester more carbon by maintaining seagrass meadows.

“Losing sharks, rays and chimaeras will not only affect the health of the entire ocean ecosystem, but also impact food security in many countries,” highlighted Lynn Sorrentino, IUCN Ocean Team Programme Officer.

Vulnerable to human threats

However, their apex status makes them more susceptible to anthropogenic threats. Many of these species are impacted by fishing, especially in tropical and coastal areas where large communities live along the coast and depend upon fish as their main source of protein.

As Dr Rima Jabado, Chair of the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group explained: “Sharks are a long-lived species: many take a long time to reach sexual maturity and then only give birth to a few young. This makes them particularly susceptible to fishing pressure and with an estimated 37% of species with an elevated risk of extinction, they are facing a biodiversity crisis. Results from the ISRA project will inform policy and ensure that areas critical to the survival of sharks, rays, and chimaeras are considered in spatial planning.”

Developed by experts, conservation agencies, and governments

Work on the ISRA Criteria was supported by the Save Our Seas Foundation. They were developed through a collaborative process involving shark experts, conservation agencies, and governments and include four criteria and seven sub-criteria. These consider the complex biological and ecological needs of sharks, including areas important to threatened or range-restricted species, the specific habitats that support life-history characteristics and vital functions (eg, reproduction, feeding, resting, movement), distinctive attributes, and the diversity of species within an area.

Dr Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, co-chair of the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Taskforce and Deputy Chair of the IUCN SSC Cetacean Specialist Group noted: “All efforts are being made to ensure that the ISRAs contain the best and most up-to-date place-based information that science can offer to decision makers, managers, and marine users. As the ISRA program proceeds by covering progressively the whole extent of the ocean (and relevant inland water) surface, a very broad involvement of the shark expert community world-wide is expected.”

By bringing together information from scientific publications, reports, databases and the expertise of individual shark experts, ISRAs are a powerful tool for governing bodies to develop policy and design protected areas.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2022.968853 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Putting sharks on the map: a global standard for improving shark area-based conservation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Sep-2022

Anthology highlights the value of pathways as cultural heritage

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

 

IMAGE: PATHWAYS LEAD US FORWARD AS WE WALK ALONG THEM AND ALSO TAKE US BACK IN HISTORY. THESE NARROW THOROUGHFARES ARE FOUND THE WORLD OVER AND ARE AS OLD AS HUMANKIND ITSELF. view more 

CREDIT: LARS JOHANSSON

Human history and cultural heritage in various places are often well researched and documented.

A new anthology edited by three Swedish researchers explores what ties these places together – footpaths.

“They are unobtrusive remains, but with a very significant cultural footprint,” says Daniel Svensson, historian at Malmö University.

Pathways lead us forward as we walk along them and also take us back in history. These narrow thoroughfares are found the world over and are as old as humankind itself. But they are only preserved while they remain in use.

“Look but don’t touch is often the name of the game in museums that depict history or cultural heritage. But with pathways it’s the other way around: as long as we keep walking along these remains, they will still be there. Movement becomes part of a living cultural heritage,” says Daniel Svensson.

In the recently published anthology titled Pathways: Exploring the Roots of a Movement Heritage, Daniel Svensson has worked with Katarina Saltzman from the University of Gothenburg, and Sverker Sörlin from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, to gather texts that describe pathways from a range of perspectives. 15 researchers from countries including India, Israel and the UK have provided a broad range, which has been divided into three parts with history, storytelling and cultural heritage as their themes.

Intangible pathways and cow paths

Although pathways are often overlooked, there is research that has examined pathways as historical remains. There are church paths and school paths as testaments to old patterns of movement in daily life, and coexistence with animals in a past agrarian society can be seen in cow paths that were also used by people. The book includes a chapter that looks at the old English Rights of Way. These rights have also been enshrined in written law, where a pathway that has been used for more than 20 years is considered to be public.

“In another chapter, pathways high in high alpine terrain function as an exhibition space along a mountain pass on the Austrian/Italian border which was a scene of battle in the First World War,” says Daniel Svensson.

The storytelling part of the book draws on examples from pilgrim trails where stories and legends about what happened to the pilgrims live on. There are also descriptions of entirely intangible pathways in computer games. In the early versions of the Zelda computer game, you had to take a certain pathway to progress in the game. Modern computer game worlds are often very extensive, and it can be hard to get an overview of them; players choose to navigate and move between important locations using pathways that they create in those worlds.

“The cultural heritage section in the book is where we bring something new to the table. We have a great amount of material cultural heritage, but pathways remain overlooked. Just as an old building in Gothenburg is important cultural heritage to many, so too can the 8 km trail in Skatås be cultural heritage to those who like to run along it. The movement itself becomes a form of cultural heritage,” says Sverker Sörlin, intellectual historian at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Rising value

When the editors requested articles for inclusion in the anthology, there were many researchers who felt called on to write something. According to the editors, pathways are being valued more and more.

Many of the farms in the Forest of the Finns region in northern Värmland have been preserved, but the pathways that ran between them were at risk of falling into oblivion after roads for cars took over as the transport routes. Now some of the old pathways have been selected for inclusion in the hiking trails found there.

“Pathways are living traces of the past. As new pathways come into being while others disappear, we often continue to tread where others have gone before us. Nevertheless, pathways have rarely been regarded as valuable cultural heritage, possibly because they are so discreet and impermanent,” says Katarina Saltzman, ethnologist and landscape researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

Pathways will remain in the future, but their use may change. We have started cycling on pathways when the mountains above the treeline.

“It’s difficult to preserve pathways for the future in a static state because they have to be used. If their use changes, then so does the pathway,” says Daniel Svensson.

The antology´s cover.

CREDIT

White horse press

Self-reported Illness Experiences and Psychosocial Outcomes for Reservation-Area American Indian Youth During COVID-19

Linda R. Stanley, PhD¹; Meghan A. Crabtree, PhD¹; Randall C. Swaim, PhD¹; et alMark A. Prince, PhD¹

Author Affiliations Article Information

JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(9):e2231764. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.31764

Original Investigation 

Infectious Diseases

September 14, 2022

Key Points

Question  How did American Indian youth who live on or near reservations experience the COVID-19 pandemic?

Findings  This cross-sectional study among 2559 American Indian students in grades 6 through 12 found that approximately 14% of the sample reported having had a test result positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, a higher rate than for all cases nationally and for children nationally, and three-quarters of the sample reported someone close contracting COVID-19, while more than one-quarter reported someone close dying from COVID-19. Regarding perceived psychosocial impacts, COVID-19 was associated with strained friend relationships, lower school engagement, and less social connectedness, although more than 60% of students reported feeling no change or a decrease in negative emotions, such as sadness and anxiety.

Meaning  These findings suggest that although COVID-19 mortality and morbidity rates were high on American Indian reservations, psychosocial impacts were complex and many students were resilient in the face of the pandemic.

Abstract

Importance  Impacts of COVID-19 on reservation-area American Indian youth are unknown and may be substantial owing to the significant COVID-19 morbidity and mortality experienced by American Indian populations.

Objective  To measure self-reported illness experiences and changes in psychosocial factors during the COVID-19 pandemic among reservation-area American Indian youth.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This cross-sectional study included a random sample of US schools on or near US Indian reservations during Spring 2021, stratified by region, with students in grades 6 to 12 completing cross-sectional online surveys. All enrolled self-identifying American Indian students in grades 6 to 12 attending the 20 participating schools were eligible to be surveyed; participants represented 60.4% of eligible students in these schools. Data were analyzed from January 5 to July 15, 2022.

Exposures  Onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Outcomes of interest were COVID-19 self-reported illness outcomes for self and family and close friends; perceived changes in family and friend relationships, school engagement, social isolation, and other psychological factors since the COVID-19 pandemic began; and worry over COVID-19–related health outcomes.

Results  A total of 2559 American Indian students (1201 [46.9%] male; 1284 [50.2%] female; 70 [2.7%] another gender; mean [SD] 14.7 [8.9] years) were included in the analysis. Approximately 14% of the sample reported having had a test result positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection (14.3% [95% CI, 11.4%-17.6%]), a higher rate than for all cases nationally at the time of the survey. Regarding prevalence of COVID-19 among family and close friends, 75.4% (95% CI, 68.8%-80.9%) of participants reported having at least 1 family member or friend who had contracted COVID-19, while 27.9% (95% CI, 18.8%-39.3%) of participants reported that at least 1 family member or close friend had died of COVID-19. Regarding psychosocial impacts, COVID-19 was associated with strained friend relationships (eg, 34.0% [95% CI, 28.4%-40.0%] of students reported worry over losing friends), lower school engagement, and less social connectedness (eg, 62.2% [95% CI, 56.7%-67.4%] of students reported feeling less socially connected to people), although more than 60% of students also reported feeling no change or a decrease in negative emotions. Males were less likely to report perceived negative impacts, especially for negative emotions such as sadness (29.2% [95% CI, 23.3%-35.9%] of males vs 46.1% [95% CI, 43.9%-48.3%] of females reported feeling more sad) and anxiety (21.8% [95% CI, 18.2%-25.8%] of males vs 39.2% [95% CI, 34.1%-44.6%] of females reported feeling more anxious).

Conclusions and Relevance  This cross-sectional study provides novel insight into the perceived experiences of reservation-area American Indian youth, a population at uniquely elevated risk of poor health status and health care access, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although mortality and morbidity rates from COVID-19 were high on American Indian reservations, student reports of psychosocial impacts were complex and suggest many students were resilient in the face of the pandemic. These findings could be used to understand and address the challenges facing American Indian youth due to the pandemic and to guide future research that examines the factors and processes associated with the reported outcomes.

READ ON

 Self-reported Illness Experiences and Psychosocial Outcomes for Reservation-Area American Indian Youth During COVID-19 | Adolescent Medicine | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network

For the first time we can measure the thickness of Arctic sea ice all year round

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UIT THE ARCTIC UNIVERSITY OF NORWAY

 

IMAGE: THE IMAGE SHOWS MELTING SEA ICE IN THE ARCTIC PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE’S AIRBORNE SEA-ICE SURVEY ICEBIRD. view more 

CREDIT: ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUTE / ESTHER HORVATH

Using satellites, we are now able to measure the ice thickness – also in the summer. This is of great importance for the shipping in Arctic and future weather and climate forecasts. The solution is developed by an international team, led by researchers at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the University of Bristol. 

"The Arctic ice is melting faster than ever. We need knowledge about the thickness of the sea ice, both to reduce safety risks for businesses and shipping in the Arctic, but also to make forecasts for the future climate," says team leader Jack Landy at the Department of Physics and Technology at UiT who began the work while at the University of Bristol.

The research team has developed the first dataset showing the thickness of sea ice across the entire Arctic and through a whole year. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Satellites are dazzled by the melting ice

Satellites have been used to measure the thickness of ice in the Arctic since the 1980s. But the technique has only worked in winter, from October to March, when the ice and snow are cold and dry.

"In the summer months the satellites are dazzled by ponds of snow and ice meltwater that pool on the sea ice surface. Then they have been unable to distinguish between melting ice and water," says Landy.

Using AI to solve the problem

To solve the problem, the researchers have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and examined previous data from the satellites. Now they know when the satellites register ice and when they register ocean.

In addition, the team has constructed a new computer model of the satellite sensor, to make sure it is measuring the correct height and thickness.

This is good news for the shipping industry.

Safer to sail in Arctic waters

Shipping in the Arctic has increased rapidly in recent years, because of the ice melting. Particularly in the Barents Sea and close to Svalbard the shipping activity is high during summer. To sail safely, the boats need information about where there is ice and how thick it is, in advance.

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute provide sea ice forecasts for the Arctic but have lacked secure ice thickness data for the summer months.

“Using the new satellite data, we are finally able to make sea ice forecasts informed by the ice thickness, not only for the winter, but also for the summer. This will reduce safety risks for ships and fishing boats," says Landy.

"We can also predict whether there will be ice or not at a given location in September, by measuring the ice thickness in May," he says.

Increased understanding of the climate 

According to Associate Professor Dr Michel Tsamados from University College London the findings are also of great importance for our understanding of the weather and the climate.

He is one of the researchers behind the study and explains that the new data can be used in advanced climate models to improve our weather and climate forecasts.

– When we use the new ice thickness data in advanced climate models, it will improve both our short-term forecasts for the weather at the mid-latitudes and the long-term forecasts that show what climate we will have in the future," he says.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-05058-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

ARTICLE TITLE

A year-round satellite sea ice thickness record from CryoSat-2

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Sep-2022

Measuring the thickness of sea ice in the Arctic. Photo Christian Zoelly Norwegian Polar Institute

CREDIT

Christian Zoelly / Norwegian Polar Institute

The image shows melting sea ice in the Arctic photographed from the Alfred Wegener Institute’s airborne sea-ice survey IceBird.

CREDIT

Alfred-Wegener-Institute / Esther Horvath

The image shows melting sea ice in the Arctic photographed from the Alfred Wegener Institute’s airborne sea-ice survey IceBird.

CREDIT

Alfred-Wegener-Institute / Esther Horvath

UiT-researchers Polona Itkin and Jack Landy are deploying a sea ice mass balance buoy in the Arctic to record ice thickness.

CREDIT

Christian Zoelly / Norwegian Polar Institute