News & Blog
Becoming a Scientist 4.0
By Michelle Tigchelaar & Johanna Goldman As the District of Columbia was preparing itself to watch the James Comey hearing the way soccer fans watch World Cup matches — in a bar at 10am — we were huddled together in a building just blocks away from the center of action, preparing ourselves instead for Day 4 of the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium.
Read morePCC-IGERT students write New York Times article to advise state policy makers
By Katherine Crosman (Evans School of Public Policy and Governance), Leah Johnson (Applied Physics Laboratory & School of Oceanography), Eleni Petrou (School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences), and Hillary Scannell (School of Oceanography) Feverish conditions in the Pacific Ocean in recent years sparked a global conversation on the impacts of a changing climate on coastal ecosystems and communities. In response, The New York Times (NYT) published an article, which became the focus of a Pacific-wide competition.
Read moreFormer PCC graduate student of ESS says goodbye to glaciers
Twila Moon, a PCC Fellow and former Department of Earth and Space Sciences graduate student recently wrote an article in Science talking about the the global retreat of glaciers. Moon states that "photographs and aerial and satellite images of glaciers show consistent, substantial, and anomalous retreat from the Antarctic Peninsula through Patagonia, Kilimanjaro, and the Himalayas to Greenland and the Arctic. Iconic glaciers—such as many in Glacier National Park, Montana—have already disappeared".
Read more at ScienceKnut Christianson is in Rolling Stone
Knut Christianson from the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, is featured in Rolling Stone for his work regarding Thwaites Glacier. Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell talked to Knut about the possible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Read more at Rolling StoneFormer PCC member Hilary Palevsky discusses the meaning of science activism
Hilary Palevsky, a former member of the Program on Climate Change, talks about the meaning behind the March for Science. Palevsky states that it is important to listen "to the voices of the most marginalized people when we talk about how we stand up for science because in a lot of ways, the organization of the March for Science reproduced a lot of the same issues that have been long standing in the scientific community”.
Read More at WCAIAbby Swann talks about climate change denial
Abby Swann from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Biology talked to David Hyde, a reporter from KUOW in Seattle about climate change denial. She explained why she signed a protest letter directed at the EPA director Scott Pruitt and expanded on a conversation she had with a border agent when traveling abroad.
Listen at KUOWDavid Battisti and Tom Ackerman talk about geoengineering in the NYT
David Battisti and Tom Ackerman of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences were quoted in The New York Times this past week. When talking about the uncertainty of putting aerosols in the atmosphere Battisti said it is “not obvious to me that we can reduce the uncertainty to anywhere near a tolerable level — that is, to the level that there won’t be unintended consequences that are really serious". Ackerman said that “we are doing an experiment now that we don’t understand" when talking about the risk of starting to geoengineer.
Read more at The New York TimesClimate change is not in the future but is here and now
“The present consequences of climate change are severe, and will be more so for the next generation.” Read the op-ed by Paul Johnson to the Seattle Times published March 31, 2017. Paul Johnson in a professor of oceanography here at UW who has been co-teaching an undergraduate course titled “Climate Extremes” for over 20 years.
Read moreKristin Laidre awarded 2017 Pew Marine Fellowship
Kristin Laidre was awarded the 2017 Pew Marine Fellowship to study the effects of climate change on polar bears. Laidre's project entails working with researchers and agencies in four Arctic nations to compare data across all studied polar bear populations and compile the most comprehensive assessment to date of population status. Laidre plans to examine the potential this metric has for assessing population status.
Read more at UW TodayDargan Frierson and Judy Twedt create "The Sound of Earth's Fever"
With NASA releasing the 2016 global temperature data, Dargan Frierson and Judy Twedt made quick work of the high temperatures. Using the global temperature data from 1880-2016, they created a song about the Earth's global temperature. Lower notes mean lower temperature, and higher notes are higher temperature. They chose notes from a musical scale and added drums just for effect. Dargan and Judy state that they "pause in 1977, a critical year for climate" because "scientists were confident at this point that heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels were the main way humans were influencing the climate".
Listen on Soundcloud