News & Blog
Announcing the PNW Climate Ambassadors: Building Capacity for Public Climate Conversations
How do scientists develop confidence and experience having conversations with the general public around climate science, global and local impact, and solutions when their areas of expertise are in a disciplinary science such as oceanography or urban planning? In Fall 2024, the Program on Climate Change (PCC), and the Washington State Climate Office (WASCO), set out to create a training program that would help develop the capacity for graduate students to do just that, and to serve as a community resource on climate science and solutions.
Read moreBeyond Prediction: Building Capacity and Innovation in Adaptation Through a Participatory Evaluation
As the impacts of climate change intensify, communities across Washington are increasingly engaging in climate change adaptation planning to prepare for more frequent and severe climate impacts. Monitoring and evaluation of these plans is a crucial step to improve their efficacy and implementation, but often goes undone, as many communities struggle to assemble the resources and staff capacity evaluation requires. This leaves a critical blind spot as to whether a community’s adaptation practices are yielding the desired results.
Read moreResilience in Diversity: Climate Change and Seed Selection on Organic Farms in Western WA
Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been stewarding seeds. Traditionally bred seeds are the result of careful selections over time, the inheritors of traits selected by both environmental pressures and human desires. Seeds hold information for how to birth life anew, passed down along with the knowledge of how to care for them. They are tended into crops used for familiar meals and healing medicines.
Read moreGraubard Fellowship supports high resolution mapping of Sea Surface Temperature anomalies
by Naomi Wharton The ocean can store approximately 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere. As a result, where and when energy is released from the ocean to the atmosphere can have significant consequences for weather and climate patterns. Sea surface temperature (SST) is a key indicator of air-sea processes that transfer energy between the ocean and atmosphere across many spatial and temporal scales.
Read moreFeatured Research Accelerator Project : Applying Microbial-Plant Partnerships to Build Soil Carbon
Much of the world’s crop production relies on the application of conventional nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers to soil. Although applied with the intention of providing sufficient nutrients to the crop to increase yield, much of the nutrients in the fertilizer go unused because many crops have poor nutrient use efficiency. This results in excess soil nitrogen and phosphorus, which then can leak into groundwater resulting in contamination and surface water eutrophication.
Read moreAccelerating Progress in Climate Science: Research and Graduate Student Funding leverage the framework built by the Program on Climate Change
The Program on Climate Change maintains a unique framework of intense cross-disciplinary collaboration that advances research and education in climate science, building knowledge, actions and solutions to address the climate crisis. New gift funds established by generous donors are providing new professors, post-doctoral scholars, and students the opportunity to leverage the PCC framework to pursue their ideas, making new connections among the UW climate community.
Read moreA Shifting Snowpack Links Climate Change with Wildlife Habitat Selection in the Northeast Cascades
by Ben Sullender, UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, PCC Graubard Graduate Fellow Climate change is rapidly reshaping what winter looks like in the Pacific Northwest. In maritime climates like western Washington, much of the seasonal snowpack accumulates in temperatures near freezing, so even a slight increase in temperature could switch winter precipitation from snow to rain. Colder, higher elevations, on the other hand, might maintain or even gain more snow as we get more precipitation in the winter.
Read moreForecasting the spatial extent of marine heatwaves
by Jacob Cohen, UW Oceanography, Recipient of a PCC Graubard Graduate Fellowship The ocean has absorbed 90% of recent warming associated with anthropogenic climate change; as a result, extreme ocean heat events, known as marine heatwaves (MHWs), are becoming more frequent and more intense. These extreme events can have detrimental impacts on marine ecosystems as well as coastal industries. Accurate MHW forecasts will allow local decision makers and industries to respond to and plan for these events.
Read moreCan ecological forestry improve public health outcomes? The Graubard Fellowship supports a case study in the Central Sierra
by Claire Schollaert As wildfires become more frequent and severe due to climate change and postcolonial fire management practices, there is growing consensus among the forest management community that prescribed burning should be used on the landscape to reduce excess fuels and mitigate extreme wildfire risk. Despite the benefits of prescribed burning to forest restoration goals, these managed fires still produce smoke, which may impact the health of surrounding communities.
Read moreCommunity-engaged climate adaptation: partnering with Search and Rescue in Northwest Iñupiaq Alaska
by Charlie Hahn (Anthropology), Chase Puentes (Geography) and Ellen Koukel (Atmospheric Sciences) As part of their graduate research, Charlie, Chase, and Ellen worked collaboratively with a volunteer search and rescue group from the Iñupiaq village of Kivalina, Alaska. Their projects aim to build on the latest in climate science to produce knowledge relevant to both the academy and the community. This past winter, PCC Climate Solutions* funding allowed the students to travel to Kivalina to discuss with their collaborators proposals for better applying their research to community climate adaptation needs.
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