Program on Climate Change

Hi! For those of you I haven’t met, I’m Elise, the departing Program for Climate Change (PCC) undergraduate assistant and a graduating senior in oceanography. I’ve been working in the PCC for the last three years, and during that time I’ve learned and grown a lot. I started at UW as a transfer student during my sophomore year. I moved to Seattle not knowing a single person.

Western Washington has experienced several climate-related events over the last few years, such as the 2021 heatwave and flooding this past December. However, experiences of these events are not evenly distributed across the population. Frontline communities, including people of color and low-income communities, experience climate change and environmental hazards first and worst. Community organi…

Graduate fellowship awards to students working on climate are a part of the PCC’s identity.  The first fellowships were awarded in 2002 to incoming graduate students in the natural sciences.  Twenty years later, in 2022, a gift from William Calvin and Katherine Graubard brought new energy to the program with the establishment of the Graubard Fellowship.  We can now also support students working o…

My climate story started when I was seven or eight. We had a huge snowfall—feet of snow. Our neighbor’s white dog got lost in it, and playing outside with my family was the best thing I knew (never fear, we found the dog hiding under our other neighbor’s basement fridge). Over the next decade, snow became less frequent. Sometimes just a dusting.

This past spring, P-GraSC launched a Coffee Chat matching program for graduate students and postdocs to help foster one-on-one conversations, build a stronger sense of PCC community, and encourage climate-focused collaboration across the natural and social sciences.  Despite shared interests in broader climate-related questions, many grad students and postdocs rarely have opportunities for inform…

This quarter the PCC Undergraduate Cohort, UCo, spent time building community, connections with nature, and professional portfolios. As spring sprung, we headed outside on Earth Day with Beautify UDub for a campus clean-up. Joining this event helped build our greater campus presence and connection with undergraduate students and environmental student organizations. We worked together to reduce li…

When asked to picture a wildfire, most people imagine a forest—trees burning, smoke billowing, and flames casting shadows. Images of wildfire are becoming more familiar as large fires make headlines across the US. But the effects of fire extend beyond forests. Streams and rivers flowing through burned areas are also impacted by wildfire and can carry those impacts to downstream communities and ec…

P-GraSC is launching a new initiative for the 2026-27 academic year, centered on building interdisciplinary connections among PCC graduate students and post-doctoral scholars engaged in climate solutions work. The group will follow a cohort model, with participants meeting once per quarter to share brief presentations of their research, engage in feedback and discussion sessions, and build interd…

Through the Climate Solutions Fund, I was able fly to Churchill, Manitoba for outreach with the local school and field sampling. It was during the sea-ice algae spring bloom, a time of high productivity crucial to local ecosystems. Churchill is a small subarctic community on Hudson Bay with polar bears, belugas, and the northern lights that can only be accessed by airplane or train.

It’s time to select a new Graduate Student Representative (GSR) to the PCC Board! This is an annual process. The GSRs serve as liaisons between PCC’s graduate students and faculty, postdocs, research scientists, undergraduate cohort, and staff. The role, and duty of the GSRs is to solicit graduate student input on numerous topics over the course of the academic year and to convey this to the PCC …

by Hemalatha (Hema) Velappan Historically, climate communications mostly relied on strategies postulated by the knowledge-deficit model, which assumes that sharing the scientific and technical aspects of the problem will prompt people to be concerned about the issue and modify their behavior. While this approach enhanced knowledge about the issue, it proved ineffective in motivating people to tak…

By Elena Rheingans (New PCC Undergraduate Assistant) I reach the fisheries building after a gloomy walk through puddles that splash against my boots.  Once I enter though, I am in event mode and ready to welcome the PCC community to our event.   The 12th annual winter welcome was held on March 11th from 5-7 pm in the Fisheries Sciences building.  It was my first event with the PCC as the incoming…

The PCC seeks applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar to develop and conduct novel climate science research that would benefit from the expertise, cross-disciplinary interactions, and collaborative environment of the PCC community. We anticipate offering one Postdoctoral Scholar appointment in 2026. Applicant research proposals should demonstrate relevance to the areas of climate system science a…

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. The purpose of this research, funded by a PCC Research Acceleration award to P.I.’s Alison Gray …

Has paleoclimate genuinely changed our understanding of modern day climate? With an animated pre-Summer Institute paper discussion this past August, my PhD journey at UW began. Starting graduate school with an immersion in current thinking on paleoclimate via three days spent at Friday Harbor Laboratories attending the Summer Institute felt fitting. After all, I came to UW motivated to understand…

Beginning college was a chaotic time for me. It was my first time being independent, I had moved far from home and was spending time trying to make new friends. The whole time, I had one question lingering at the back of my mind: What do I want to do with my career? I was completely lost at answering this question when I started at UW, with only a vague idea of wanting to do science but no clear …

The PCC Undergraduate Cohort (UCo) is guided by the mission to connect students to climate science, careers, and community. The current mission statement stands as: “This year we strive to further build an interpersonal community of students and direct our events around the interest of our members. We will continue to uphold our tradition of student networking and professional development, this y…

A core goal of PCC and its Graduate Steering Committee (P-GraSC) is to bring together the many people at UW who do work related to climate change. P-GraSC includes graduate students from Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, Oceanography, Earth and Space Science, the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA), the Information School, Evans School of Public Policy, Political Science, and the De…

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 interdiscip…

My name is Amirah Casey, and I am a third-year graduate student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Science. I am divided between two areas of research that are related: climate impacts and climate solutions. Along with these research interests, I am deeply committed to enhancing science communication. I do this through the usual forms of outreach, like presenting at conferences and working on p…