Using Video to Highlight Local Climate Change in Small Alaskan Community

By Amy Brodbeck, SMEA graduate student After earning a Bachelor’s of Science in biology in 2011, I spent the next five years of my life engaging with the public in the field of environmental education and outreach. Through these experiences, I gained insight into the general public perception of different aspects of the environment. The level of interest and understanding varied, but one factor remained relatively constant—people wanted to talk about climate change. 

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Knut Christianson on the need for self-steering drones under Antarctica’s ice shelves

Knut Christianson, an assistant professor of Earth and Space Sciences, was profiled in the Scientific American about his current multi-million dollar project. Christianson, along with the Paul G. Allen Philanthropies foundation, will send a fleet of seven underwater robots into the world on a risky yearlong mission. Their goal is to help forecast sea level rise by observing the melting processes where layers of warm and cool water mix at the shelf. The complex physics in this unique region are poorly understood and make for a highly intriguing study. Scientists have been unable to make robust predictions about the ice shelves’ future and this seeks to change that.

Read More at Scientific American

PCC Grads Travel to the 11th Annual Graduate Climate Conference

December 5, 2017 by Emma Kahle This November nine UW graduate students traveled east to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts for the 11th annual Graduate Climate Conference  We represented five different UW departments (ESS, ATMS, BIO, CEE, SMEA) and presented talks and posters on a range of topics from a commercial fisherman App that records climate data to using weather forecasting techniques to reconstruct past changes on the Greenland ice sheet. 

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Experiencing the Antarctic Through Art-PCC grads go on a field trip

by Michael Diamond, Atmospheric Sciences Graduate Student and PCC Graduate Student Representative On Saturday, October 28, a group of graduate students with the Program on Climate Change visited the Winston Wachter Fine Art gallery to see the exhibit “Antarctica” by artist Zaria Forman. The exhibit features detailed drawings of ice from Zaria’s four-week art residency aboard the National Geographic Explorer expedition ship. 

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A Philosopher and a Climate Scientist Walk into a Bar (to Give a Talk on Climate Change)

November 29, 2017 How we should act on climate change is not simply a question of science, but also one of values. When discussing climate change policy, it is not enough for us to draw on the science alone, we also need to discuss the values which inform whether we should act on that science. For scientists, discussing values often feels a little outside of their realm of expertise and comfort – a grey area in terms of what a scientist’s proper role should be. 

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New species relationships and interactions due to climate change

A new study led by doctoral student Elli Theobald, doctoral student Ian Breckheimer and biology professor Janneke Hille Ris Lambers help to uncover what subalpine communities may look like by the end of this century. Over the course of a few summers, the researchers studied the flowering patterns among the alpine species. They noted that the anomalous conditions of the 2015 suggested that new patterns of reassembled wildflower communities will occur, with unknown ecological consequences. However, there is not enough information to know who the "winners" and "losers" of reassembly will be, or even what "winning" or "losing" in this scenario would look like.

Read More at ESA

Mountain glacier change from space

David Shean, a soon-to-be assistant professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering, has developed a new way of measuring mountain glacier change. Shean uses high-resolution satellite images to track elevation changes on local mountain glacier regions. His hope is to integrate the observations of glaciers with climate models and ask, "based on what we know now, where are these systems headed?". This prediction could be used to better manage water supplies and flood risks in a warmer world.  

Read More at UW News

PCC Director Cecilia Bitz helps explain Antarctica's massive polyna

A polyna is an area of open water in sea-ice. Polynas are special because they are formed by either warm oceanic upwelling beneath sea-ice or strong katabatic winds from above—or both. Polynas give scientists a view into the processes underneath sea-ice. This specific polyna is the size of Maine and has not been seen since the 1970s. Bitz ("Dr. Sea Ice"), was interviewed by Bustle to help explain this odd event and what it means for sea-ice research.

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Things I learned from leading the PCC

The 2017 Program on Climate Change Summer Institute on “Population Health and Climate Change” that took place at the beautiful UW Friday Harbor Laboratory last week gave me the opportunity to reflect on my tenure as Director of the Program on Climate Change that started in fall 2011. In fall of 2010 at the beginning of my last sabbatical, I joined an effort to build collaborations between the newly formed College of the Environment and the also young Department of Global Health to focus on global environmental change and human health. 

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