A new University of Washington–led study projects that in the next 35 years increasing boreal fires will actually slow global warming by 12% globally and 38% in the Arctic. Because the aerosols in smoke reflect more sunlight and make clouds brighter, summer temperatures during fire season drop, leading to reduced sea ice loss and cooler winter temperatures.
A new UW statistical study shows only 5 percent chance that Earth will warm less than 2 degrees, what many see as a “tipping point” for climate, by the end of this century.
The year 2016 was officially the hottest in recent history, beating previous records in 2014 and 2015. UW scientists let you hear the data speak for itself.
University of Washington scientists have put world’s longest-running measure of atmospheric carbon dioxide to music. The result is a 90-second rendition of human-induced climate change: The video project was done by Judy Twedt, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences, and Dargan Frierson, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences and amateur musician. Their techno soundtrack maps musical notes to the Keeling Curve, a 58-year record of carbon dioxide measured high in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in…
Two University of Washington teams claimed top prizes in a national competition to design a game about climate adaptation.
A new study in Nature Geoscience explains a major feature of global precipitation, and shows how a current originating from the poles influences tropical rainfall in Africa and southern India.
Air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere in the mid-20th century cooled the upper half of the planet and pushed rain bands south, contributing to the prolonged and worsening drought in Africa’s Sahel region. Clean air legislation in the 1980s reversed the trend and the drought lessened.
Drops forming on the outside of your drink don’t just make the can slippery. Experiments show that in hot, humid weather, condensation heats a drink more than the surrounding air.
One of the most persistent biases in global climate models is due to poor simulation of cloud cover thousands of miles to the south.