News and Events
UW, Tableau create interactive tool to explore more than a century of Pacific Northwest weather observations
The University of Washington’s College of the Environment has teamed up with Seattle visual analytics company Tableau Software to create a new, interactive visualization for historical observations of temperature and precipitation in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana, and for Washington snowpack.
The free online tool lets anybody interact with the records going back as far as 1881 and look for significant trends.
From skiing to salmon runs, the national climate report predicts a Northwest in peril
Climate change’s effects – among them, increasing wildfires, disease outbreak and drought – are taking a toll on the Northwest, and what’s to come will threaten and transform our way of life from the salmon streams to ski slopes, according to a new federal climate assessment released Friday.
The 1,000-plus-page report, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of climate change’s effects on the nation’s economy, human health, agriculture and environment.
New resources support tribes in preparing for climate change
Which Pacific Northwest streams will warm the most in the next 50 years, and where would restoration work make a difference for salmon? Where will wildfires and pests be most aggressive in forests as the Earth warms, and how can better management help?
As the natural world responds to climate change, American Indian tribes across the country are grappling with how to plan for a future that balances inevitable change with protecting the resources vital to their cultural traditions.
Anthropocene Film Salon
Join EarthLab and the Simpson Center for the Humanities for a screening of Chasing Ice, the first in our Anthropocene Film Salon series. After viewing this provocative film, we will host a discussion and social gathering in hopes of connecting people from the humanities, arts, and the physical and social sciences who would not otherwise meet. Our goal is to foster mutual learning and catalyze new, cross-cutting collaborations addressing the unique social-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene.
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UW professor of global health a lead author on new climate report
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, this week released a new document that looks at the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) above preindustrial levels. That was the more ambitious goal established by governments in late 2015 through the Paris Agreement on climate. Governments committed to keeping the planet’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels, but to aim for a change no greater than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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Reducing embodied carbon and operational emissions in buildings
Last week, at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft announced it is the first large corporate user of a new tool to track the carbon emissions of raw building materials. Microsoft is piloting the tool, called the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator, or EC3, in the remodel of its 72-acre Seattle campus.
The open-source EC3, which is running on Microsoft Azure, was developed by Skanska with the University of Washington Carbon Leadership Forum, Interface and C-Change Labs.
NW CASC Fellowship Program delivers actionable science and leadership
Creating science that can help natural resource managers and and policy makers make sound decisions about emerging climate-related risks is critical. Through the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center’s Fellowship Program, not only is decision-relevant science being advanced, but the next generation of leaders in collaborative research is also taking shape.
Key to the Fellowship Program’s success is its focus on helping early-career scientists deepen both their disciplinary expertise and their ability to collaborate with regional natural resource managers and decision-makers to develop science that helps answer critical management questions.
Sea-level rise report contains best projections yet for Washington’s coasts
One certainty under climate change is that global ocean levels are rising. A new report led by Washington Sea Grant and the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group provides the clearest picture yet of what to expect in Washington state.
The report includes projections for more than 150 different sites along the Washington coastline, from all marine shorelines in Washington state.
Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food
More carbon dioxide means less goodness from the crops we grow on land and the fish we harvest from the oceans. A new study published by EarthLab’s Kristie Ebi and colleagues in China and Japan found that increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of rice, the world’s most plentiful and valuable crop, as well as wheat and many wild plants.
Read moreInfluence of climate change on stream temperatures across the northwest
A team of researchers from the University of Washington, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Geological Survey and US Department of Agriculture published new research showing how water temperatures vary in over 7,000 miles of rivers and streams across the Pacific Northwest and northern California. Using high-resolution remotely-sensed water temperature data, this research helps identify potential influences of climate change on the availability of cold water for species like salmon.
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