News & Blog
An Undergraduate Computer Science Major Engages in Interdisciplinary Research on Southern Ocean Phytoplankton Modeling
Written by Ayush Nag. Ayush is now a software engineer at SpaceX Starlink. The Southern Ocean is a large part of the global carbon cycle and phytoplankton play a key role by converting CO2 to organic carbon, which can be transported to the deep ocean. Previous works examined phytoplankton presence and CO2 flux but didn’t take community species composition into account.
Read more$1.5M donation transforms interdisciplinary research at the Program on Climate Change
The Program on Climate Change is expanding interdisciplinary climate science research efforts across the University thanks to the recent generous donation from Professors William Calvin and Katherine Graubard. This strengthened commitment to the Graubard Fellowship enhances the College of the Environment’s ability to recruit top PhD students by giving fellows the flexibility to pursue interdisciplinary collaborations and define their own research projects.
Read moreGraubard Fellowship Supports Reconstructing Past Arctic Sea-Ice Coverage
The Arctic region is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. Consequently, sea-ice coverage has reduced rapidly, with the summer minimum September sea-ice declining by about 40% since 1979. Sea-ice loss threatens the food security and infrastructure of coastal communities, drives unresolved changes in biological productivity, and promotes further global warming through ice-albedo feedback. However, model projections of the timescale of Arctic sea-ice decline and the resulting changes to the Arctic ecosystem vary widely.
Read moreAnnouncing 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.
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