Climate Change News (CCN)- Autumn 2009
Climate Change News (CCN) is a quarterly newsletter designed to keep you up-to-date on PCC activities and to help create a community of students, faculty and researchers interested in issues related to climate and climate change.
Welcome
5 November 2009
As we bid a warm summer goodbye, we look forward to the 2009/2010 academic year with an eye toward building the PCC within the context of the new College of the Environment, refining the certificate program, and providing opportunities for outreach, education and research in climate related issues.
PCC Leadership
Each year the graduate students elect a new representative to the PCC advisory board and a few faculty members rotate on and off the board. Board members are active in an advisory capacity, but are also active participants in PCC sponsored activities, including the fall and public lecture reception, the summer institute, and more. We thank Dennis Hartmann and Becky Alexander, both from Atmospheric Sciences, for their contributions to the PCC and the advisory board over the past few years, and welcome to the board two new members, Dargan Frierson and Cecilia Bitz, both from Atmospheric Sciences. We also acknowledge Paul Hezel (Atmos) for his representation of graduate student issues to the board, and his active interest in PCC educational activities. Earlier this quarter the climate graduate students elected and Brian Smoliak (Atmos) as their new representative to the board. For a complete list of board members visit the website participants page.
New PCC fellows and First Recipients of the Graduate Certificate in Climate Science introduced at the Annual Fall Meeting at the Waterfront Activity Center on 22 October 2009.
At our annual "Climate on Campus" meeting, 75 representatives of the climate community from UW and PMEL gathered informally to meet new students, faculty, postdocs, and others working on climate issues. We welcomed two new PCC fellows, Stephen Po-Chedley from Atmospheric Sciences (advised by Qiang Fu)
and Nick Siler from Earth and Space Sciences (advised by Gerard Roe).
Climate Postdoctoral researchers from JISAO and the PCC introduced their interests (see Winter 2009 newsletter for background on each postdoc) and we acknowledged the recent departure of Ju-Zhi Hou, a PCC postdoc working in paleoclimate with Julian Sachs. Ju-Zhi joined the PCC less than a year ago and recently accepted a position working at the Division of Tibet (Qinghai-Xizang) Plateau at the Institute for Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Science.
The PCC is quite pleased to announce our first group of students to complete the Graduate Certificate in Climate Science (GCeCS) approved by the Board of Regents in Winter 2008. Over the summer and early fall six graduate students completed the required coursework (see Graduate Certificate) and their capstone projects. Capstone projects may be designed around the framework of a specific project in which the PCC has been involved, or may be designed by the student under the advisement of a faculty member and project advisor.
Rei Ueyama (Atmos) worked with advisor Michael Lazarus (Stockholm Env. Institute) to create a presentation designed to educate Japanese laypeople and students about climate change and the greenhouse development rights framework. She presented this work to two audiences in Japanese.
Kelsey McDuffee (Ocean) advised by Ed Waddington (ESS), created a notebook for visitors to Mt. Rainier National Park, describing climate and climate change impacts.
Lia Slemons (Ocean) advised by Richard Gammon (Ocean), developed several inquiry based workshops to accompany a lecture series on climate organized by the Mountaineers.
Kirsten Feifel (SMA/Ocean) Alyssa Atwood (Ocean) and Andrea Fassbender (Ocean), advised by LuAnne Thompson, worked with the WSU Carbon Masters to develop a climate science module that was given to the first team of carbon coaches.
Additional detail will soon be available on the PCC website, under Academics/Graduate Certificate. If you are interested in working on a GCeCS, please submit an (application form) to the PCC office (uwpcc@u.washington.edu).
Overview of 2009 Summer Institute
Theme: Pacific Northwest Climate: Past, Present and Future
Approximately 80 participants, including faculty, invited speakers, research scientists and graduate students, gathered for 3 days in September for the annual PCC Summer Institute. Each year the topic focuses on our annual theme and speakers are invited from UW and beyond to address the topic from different perspectives. This past September the Summer Institute doubled as a Friday Harbor Lab Centennial Symposium and was largely funded by an external donor. We thank Dr. Nate Mantua for organizing the event, and both Friday Harbor Labs and an outside donor for their support of this research institute.
Presentations included one on the hisotry of Friday Harbor Labs, a public lecture to the FHL community on marine ecosystems and climate change in the PNW, ocean acidification, paleoclimate perspectives, planning for climate change, and more. The executive summary is below, and more detail on the summer institute, including a participant list, session listings, and links to presentations, where available, can be found on the event page.
The graduate students were asked to consider the presentations and provide their perspectives. An excerpt: "..a variety of observations and ideas were presented, spanning the current research landscape, from downscaling of climate model output to archaeological evidence for climate change impacts on people of the PNW. Despite characterizing the body of knowledge accumulated to present, the speakers featured at the institute also spoke of outstanding questions facing climate scientists."
To read vignettes written by PCC grad students, illuminating potential avenues for future investigation click here.
Executive Summary
By Nate Mantua
The Program and Climate Change held its annual Summer Institute September 14-17 at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) on San Juan Island. This year's theme -- Climate Impacts on the Pacific Northwest: past, present and future - attracted a lively and diverse group of academics, professionals, and students. Attendees included 40 faculty, staff and professionals, 31 UW graduate students, and one UW undergraduate (from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences). This year's interdisciplinary theme had broad appeal, drawing graduate students from 8 different UW departments. These included the PCC's three core departments of Oceanography, Earth and Space Sciences, and Atmospheric Sciences, plus Biology, the College of Forest Resources, the Evans School, the School of Marine Affairs, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The first day of the SI began with an interesting and informative presentation on the history of FHL by Dr. Claudia Mills, who in her day job studies gelatinous zooplankton (jellyfish and ctenophres) at FHL. FHL was established in 1903 and is now one of the United States' oldest operating marine biology stations. Later on that night Nate Mantua gave a well attended evening public lecture on the topic of Climate Change and the PNW's marine ecosystems at the Friday Harbor Community Theater. He emphasized that there is strong physical forcing on the west coast's marine ecosystems, especially related to coastal upwelling and long-distance teleconnections to the tropical El Nino Southern Oscillation, and that future changes in coastal marine systems are likely to bring many surprises like the recent observations of Humboldt Squid in PNW waters, shelf hypoxia off the Oregon coast, and troubling steep declines in the abundance of Fraser River sockeye salmon populations.
The second day of the SI began with 5 talks in a session on patterns of variability and change in the historical climate of the PNW. Mark Stoelinga, formerly a research professor in Atmospheric Sciences now working for Seattle's 3 Tier Environmental Group, started the session with an overview of the complexity in PNW weather and climate. Mike Wallace from Atmospheric Sciences spoke about large scale teleconnections, and Phil Mote from Oregon's Climate Change Research Institute followed with a presentation that described some of the challenges scientists face in using data from the PNW regions' weather observing network for climate studies. The final two talks in the morning session focused on regional climate modeling, with Ruby Leung from Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Lab speaking about her research with high-resolution models for the PNW, and Cathy Hohenegger speaking about her research into land-atmosphere feedbacks and their impacts on the climate of the Alps.
That evening featured talks by Eric Salathe of JISAO's Climate Impacts Group and another by Phil Mote. Eric described some of the challenges scientists face in downscaling large scale climate model outputs to finer scale information, while Phil demonstrated some of the breadth of his knowledge with a review of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and how they are being used in the IPCC's assessments.
The second full day of the SI started with a session on paleoclimate and paleo-environmental perspectives of the Holocene in the PNW region. Guest speakers Michael O'Neal from the University of Delaware and Brian Menounos from the University of Northern British Columbia described results of research into the glacial history of the near and distant past. Dr. O'Neal's talk presented evidence from a recently completed study of paired photographs that indicate many PNW glaciers are just as extensive now as they were in the early 1950s, while Dr. Menounos reviewed evidence form glacial moraines that provide a deeper temporal context that indicates many PNW glaciers are smaller now than they were in the mid-1800s, and many glaciers have undergone extensive changes in size during the Holocene. Frank Lake, from the US Forest Service's Southwest Station, showed how challenging it can be to interpret parts of the archaeological record in the light of other sources of paleoclimate information.
Jessica Lundquist from Civil and Environmental Engineering gave the first talk in a session focused on climate change impacts on the western US with a focus on some of the major unknowns in hydrology, including groundwater dynamics and evaporation. Markus Schnorbus from the University of Victoria's Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium described his recent analysis of the impacts of the bark beetle infestation on the hydrology of the Fraser River, and showed that the massive dieback of the pine forest in the Fraser Basin has likely had little impact on streamflow volume or timing in the mainstem Fraser River because so much of its runoff is supplied by higher more lightly forested terrain. Wing Chen and Ron Tressler from Seattle City Light described their efforts to evaluate the impacts of climate change on hydropower production, energy transmission and energy demand in the last presentation in this session.
Our final evening session featured two talks focused on marine ecosystems. Jan Newton from UW Oceanography discussed climate impacts on Puget Sound circulation and ecology, while Terrie Klinger presented a sobering review of ocean acidification and its potential impacts on coastal marine ecosystems.
The final theme session of the SI focused on planning for climate change. Spencer Reeder from Washington's Department of Ecology used a few examples to illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities facing scientists who engage in efforts to support regional climate change planning. Amy Snover described how researchers in JISAO's Climate Impacts Group have experienced the realm of providing scientific support for climate change planning over the past 15 years.
As described in this brief review, a wide variety of interesting and scientifically challenging topics was covered in this year's highly interdisciplinary Summer Institute. As in past years, our hosts at Friday Harbor Labs treated us extremely well, as did the fall weather in the San Juan Islands. We thank the SI participants, planners and benefactors for their continued support of this valuable annual event that has helped build a strong and productive PCC community on the University of Washington campus.
2009/2010 PCC Sponsored Courses
Autumn 2009
ESS/OCN/ATMS 586: Current Research in Climate Change, Coordinated by Chris Bretherton and Nate Mantua (Joint with CIG Seminar this year)
ATMS/ESS/OCN 587: Climate Dynamics, taught by Dargan Frierson and Steve Riser.
Winter 2010
ATMS/ESS/OCN 593: Communicating Climate Seminar, Coordinated by Chris Bretherton.
Spring 2010
OCN/ATMS/ESS 588: Global Carbon Cycle, taught by Julian Sachs and Steve Emerson.
ESS/OCN/ATMS 589: Paleoclimate Proxies, taught by Julian Sachs and Eric Steig.
ATM S/ESS 559 and OCN 558: Climate Modeling, taught by Cecilia Bitz and LuAnne Thompson.
PBAF595: Energy and Climate Policy, taught by Michael Lazarus; PCC has 15 entry codes, request yours from Miriam in the PCC office.
Additional departmental climate related courses, both graduate and undergraduate, can be found on our quarterly climate course listings.
e-list Subscription Information
To receive direct e-mail notices...
...of climate related seminars, subscribe to: https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/pcc_seminars
...from or for graduate students involved or interested in climate science, subscribe to: https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/pcc_grads_2006
...of updates to this newsletter and of general PCC community announcements (social events, summer institute registration, etc.), subscribe to: https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/pcc_newsletter
...to participate in PCC outreach activities, please e-mail Miriam at uwpcc@u.washington.edu.
Table of Contents
- Welcome
- PCC Leadership
- New PCC Fellows
- First Graduate Climate Certificate Recipients
- Overview of 2009 Summer Institute
- 2009/2010 PCC Courses
- e-list subscription information
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PCC Public Lecture with Brian Soden, University of Miami, on 11 February 2010
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PCC Summer Institute on Climate Feedbacks, 15-17 September 2010
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2009/2010 WUN Earth Systems Seminar: Co-Evolution of Life and the Planet. Virtual Seminar, one Wednesday each month at 9 am in HSB T-239. Click here for flyer, or visit PCC Monthly Event Listing
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Climate Calendar: updated several times a week
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Winter 2010 Climate Related Courses
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PNW Climate Impacts Group Newsletter
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College of the Environment
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University of Washington
Contributing to PCC Programs
Are you interested in helping the PCC via a private donation? If so, please contact Chris (206-685-7414 or breth@atmos.washington.edu) or Miriam (206-543-6521 or uwpcc@u.washington.edu) or give directly through the UW foundation website. We welcome contributions of all sizes!
Previous PCC Newsletters
- Box 355351, OSB 227
- Seattle, WA 98195-7940
- Phone 206-543-6521
- Fax 206-543-6393
- uwpcc@u.washington.edu