From its base at the southwest corner of the Seattle campus, the provides expertise, tools and resources on “all things climate” to partners and communities across the state.

was announced in the spring as the . Mauger is a research scientist with the UW Climate Impacts Group, which now houses the state climatologist’s office. Mauger’s research focuses mainly on water and floods in the context of climate change.

, a UW research scientist and the deputy state climatologist, studies such things as nighttime heat in Seattle and new ways to display weather data, as well as other trends involving heat and drought.

Together, they provide data and share news on whatever’s in the skies. From heat domes to hailstorms, from snowpack to summer drought, they provide perspective on the short-term and long-term weather woes and questions facing Washingtonians.

“Our goal is to help people understand the climate and how it affects their daily lives,” Mauger said.

Right now, many people in the region are curious about the upcoming winter season.

“This year we’re expecting to see a weak La Niña develop in the tropical Pacific Ocean,” Bumbaco said. For Washington that means “on average, we tend to have cooler-than-normal temperatures, a little bit more precipitation, and more snowpack by the end of our winter season during La Niña winters.”

Mauger and Bumbaco also conduct research on changes in rainfall patterns and flood risks, and on temperatures and wildfire risks for the coming season and over the longer term. Visit the Office of the Washington State Climatologist’s website to check out the seasonal , a list of or to subscribe to a on the current state of Washington’s climate.

For more information, contact Mauger at mauger@uw.edu or Bumbaco at kbumbaco@uw.edu.

To deal with those threats and prepare for the impacts still to come, 10 state agencies collaborated on the . Using the latest science as a foundation, the state’s new climate strategy, released Sept. 30, identifies actions that agencies will take to address the top climate change threats facing Washington: drought, changing ocean conditions, flooding, extreme heat, and wildfires and smoke.

The strategy’s creation was directed by the Washington Legislature, bringing together the state departments of agriculture, commerce, ecology, fish and wildlife, health, natural resources, transportation, the Washington State Conservation Commission, the Emergency Management Division and the Puget Sound Partnership. The UW Climate Impacts Group grounded the work with the most up-to-date science and developed a framework to measure progress on climate resilience.

The Legislature has also directed the 10 agencies to update the plan every four years to incorporate the latest science, resources and concerns into the strategy.

“This plan gives our state a road map to respond to major climate impacts like wildfires, smoke, severe heat, drought and flooding,” said , interim director of the UW Climate Impacts Group, which acts as a hub for climate information and adaptation strategy for Washington state agencies and communities. “By understanding what the state can do, what resources are available, and where they can have the greatest impact, we can limit the damage caused by these events, protecting lives, livelihoods and the environment that supports us all.”

In the plan, each of the responsible agencies will act as the lead for specific actions, based on their existing roles and expertise.

“Washington got lucky this summer. We had fewer major wildfires and more moderate drought,” said Laura Watson, director of the state Department of Ecology. “We know that was just a temporary reprieve. We’ve seen devastating proof in recent years of how vulnerable our state is. We are very susceptible to rising temperatures, summer wildfires, drought and winter floods. We have to prepare now so we’re ready for what’s to come.”

UW Climate Impacts Group contributors also included , Washington’s State Climatologist, and , a climate resilience specialist. , who’s now deputy director at the , of which the UW is a member, contributed while based at the UW Climate Impacts Group.

Adapted from a Department of Ecology . For more information, contact Stowe at stowec@uw.edu.

A launch event will take place 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, at the UW. Space is limited but reporters are welcome to register . At the launch, UW researchers who contributed to the 5th National Climate Assessment will also share the latest science and findings from the assessment’s Northwest chapter.��

Many Tribes in Washington and Oregon call coastal areas home, meaning they are especially affected by climate change. They also face changes in wildfire risk and in changes to fisheries that are economically and culturally important.

A led by the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s Climate Impacts Group, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and Washington Sea Grant compiles the experiences of Washington and Oregon coastal Tribes as they prepare for climate change. The report aims to build on successes and identify common barriers to progress.

“Every year the climate crisis continues to elevate and accelerate. The lack of a coordinated federal response is what causes Northwest coastal Tribes — and other coastal communities — to suffer from hazards which are imminently impacting life, property, Tribal rights and resources,” said project co-lead of the . “With direct quotes from Tribal citizens and staff with lived personal and professional experiences, [this report] describes the immediate urgency of the federal government to take coordinated climate action.”

Results will be shared with Northwest coastal Tribes and other governmental and nongovernmental entities.

“The report is based on listening sessions with Northwest coastal Tribes, and summarizes the barriers and unmet needs they face in their efforts to prepare for climate change,” said project co-lead Meade Krosby, who is director of the UW-based and senior scientist at the UW . This report was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the .

The project team held six Tribal listening sessions, each 2.5 hours long, in varying formats. Three listening sessions took place during Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians conferences already attended by many Northwest coastal Tribal members.��Two sessions were held virtually, and one was hosted by an individual Tribal Nation. Participants in each session met in small groups and shared information with each other and with a moderator.

All participants had the choice of making their comments public or not, and of contributing anonymously or under their name. Researchers later coded all the contributions and summarized the overall findings. Contributions represented 13 Tribal nations, roughly half of the federally recognized Tribes within the study’s coastal regions. The overall findings include:

• Despite being national leaders in climate adaptation, Northwest coastal Tribes face significant needs in realizing their adaptation goals
• Key barriers and unmet needs centered in five areas: funding, staffing, technical expertise, partnerships and communications
• Successful efforts noted strengths in many of these same areas, such as securing external funding, the dedication of Tribal staff, and building robust partnerships

Participants described specific situations and frustrations, including the piecemeal nature of federal funding; challenges recruiting and retaining key staff; potential partners’ lack of familiarity with Tribal processes and priorities; and establishing stable support for long-term initiatives.

Participants’ quotes included:

“If you just looked at the total amount of Tribal land, you’d say: ‘Well, there’s lots of places that the Tribe can move,’ but if you take away all the places that are sacred or culturally significant, or habitat for important species, or landslide hazard, or some other hazard, the options are diminished. We must also be careful not to move away from one hazard into another. How bad would it be if we move away from the shoreline, and we put ourselves in harm’s way for fire?”

– Robert Knapp, environmental planning manager and climate resilience lead, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe

“Some of the challenges that we face on the coast are due to the magnitude of some of the projects that we need to undertake. For example, we are in the midst of relocating our two main Quinault villages on the Washington coast. That’s a multimillion-dollar, multi-agency effort … It’s very difficult to integrate our plans and priorities for village relocation with those of the agencies and constrains on available funding.”

– Gary Morishima, natural resources technical advisor, Quinault Indian Nation

“To build capacity we need funding sources that are long-term, that we can say to Tribal leadership: ‘We know we’re going to have funding for five or six years, so we want to hire this person who’s an engineer, who’s a project manager, who can take on these projects, talk to other [external] engineers, and who can make these projects happen.’”

– Rochelle Blankenship, Tribal council member and executive director, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe

The report concludes: “While these findings do not fully represent the depth and breadth of [the challenges faced by Northwest coastal Tribes] and what is required to address them, we hope they will help build awareness among funders, policymakers, climate service providers and others to mobilize necessary action in support of the climate adaptation efforts of Northwest coastal Tribes.”

In related upcoming work, the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative’s Tribal Coastal Resilience effort at the UW was as part of a to support coastal readiness in Washington state.

The grant will support hiring a full-time climate adaptation specialist to provide technical assistance to Northwest coastal Tribes, Krosby said. That person will also coordinate a small grants program that will distribute most of the funds to Tribes to support their adaptation efforts. The grants program was designed to respond to Tribal priorities without imposing barriers that often make funds difficult to apply for and administer. Awards will be made starting in 2025.

“We’re really excited that this is happening at the same time our report is coming out,” Krosby said. “So it’s not just describing the problem. It’s also: Here, let’s bring some resources to bear based on what we learned.”

Other co-authors on the report are Ryan Hasert at the UW Climate Impacts Group; Kylie Avery at the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians; and Chandler Countryman and Melissa Poe at UW’s Washington Sea Grant. The project’s Tribal advisory group and report reviewers include representatives from the Makah, Tulalip, Coquille, Squaxin Island, Swinomish and Quinault Tribes and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

For more information, contact Marchand at amarchand@atnitribes.org, and Krosby at mkrosby@uw.edu or 206-579-8023.��

Three current UW scientists were among the authors of the assessment, which summarizes climate change that has already occurred, and that is projected in coming decades. This fifth edition includes two new chapters, on economics and on social systems and justice.

, a professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences, was an author on the chapter on . Ebi also co-authored the human health chapter of the fourth assessment, released in 2019, and was a contributing author to the same chapter in

“It is indisputable that climate change is harming human health and well-being, from exposure to extreme weather and climate events, changes in the geographic range and seasonality of infectious diseases, alterations in air quality, reductions in food- and water-security, and impacts on mental wellness,” Ebi said. “Historically marginalized and under-resourced communities face greater harms and exacerbations of health inequities. Future health risks could be reduced, but not eliminated, by strengthening health systems, implementing effective adaptation measures, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.”

Dr. , a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, of global health and of emergency medicine, was an author on the chapter. Hess was previously a lead author of the human health chapter in the third assessment.

“We have ample evidence that climate change is worsening air pollution — in part due to increasing wildfire smoke and pollen levels — and there are clear and worsening impacts on human health,” Hess said. “These impacts are felt most acutely in low-income communities and communities of color. But we also know that smart policies and coordinated action can simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and improve health for all, particularly the most impacted.”

, a research scientist at the Climate Impacts Group, was a co-author of the . She also contributed to a cross-cutting section , a new feature that centralizes critical information on key trends.

“The Fifth National Climate Assessment includes more information on response actions and emphasizes action at the state and local levels,” Raymond said. Since 2018, Raymond said, adaptation plans and actions at the city and state level have increased by about a third across the U.S.

Raymond also highlighted the increased focus on engagement in the assessment process, and special steps that have been taken to increase the accessibility of the assessment to wider audiences.

“The process included more opportunities for public engagement, and the fifth assessment includes some great new communication features — Spanish translation, a six-episode podcast series, 92 art pieces featured throughout the assessment and forthcoming regional webinars and workshops,” Raymond said.

also co-authored the Northwest chapter while she was affiliated with the UW Climate Impacts Group. Asinas is now at the Urban Ocean Project in Brooklyn, New York.

��

For more information, contact Ebi at krisebi@uw.edu, Hess at jjhess@uw.edu and Raymond at clrfire@uw.edu.

Two years after that event — the deadliest weather-related disaster in state history — a collaborative effort led by two ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý teams, the Climate Impacts Group and the Center for Health and the Global Environment, or CHanGE, has drawn up recommendations for how people and groups across the state could prevent future heat-related illness and save lives.

“There’s a lot we can do, right now, to save lives in Washington,” said , interim director of the UW Climate Impacts Group. “This report is a call to action — it outlines the things that we know work. Extreme heat is a complicated governance challenge that requires coordination across levels of government, including many state agencies without a health mandate, and across the private and public sectors.”

“The report highlights the wealth of knowledge we already have about effective strategies,” said Dr. Jeremy Hess, director of CHanGE, who treated patients during the June 2021 event and helped develop a related risk-mapping tool. “We need to commit additional resources and build on early investments to protect the most vulnerable.”

The , led by the UW Climate Impacts Group and released June 20 in English and Spanish, points to solutions. There is no single fix, it argues — the best approach is a broad mix of strategies that address both short-term emergency response and long-term risk reduction. The report builds on a recent co-authored by Vogel that compared Washington’s heat dome experience against other regions that typically deal with heat. It found that many of the most common strategies, such as cooling centers, don’t work on their own. Some people might not recognize their risk, and others might lack transportation to cooling centers. Laws to protect outdoor workers, such as those recently passed in Washington, don’t work without enforcement.

The new report suggests a more comprehensive statewide strategy that could reduce illness and death during future heat events. Some of these general suggestions include:

• Providing air conditioners to low-income households, protecting tenants’ rights to install air conditioning window units, and revising building codes to require cooling in new construction
• Establishing volunteer networks to check on older or ill neighbors, those who live alone, and other high-risk residents
• Providing transportation to cooling centers
• Developing a portfolio of strategies, because redundancy is crucial
• Increasing enforcement of laws protecting outdoor workers, especially in the earliest and most dangerous days of extreme heat
• Locating toilets and shade structures close to outdoor workers, to encourage breaks
• In urban areas, increasing green roofs, tree cover and structures that provide shade

A full list of strategies is available in the , which was prepared with partners including Gonzaga University in Spokane, the Office of the Washington State Climatologist, the Washington State Department of Health and UW EarthLab.

CHanGE led development of a related, more specific heat and health tool that can help focus the report’s recommendations by tailoring them to a community’s specific risks. The (CHaRT) is interactive, which allows local decision-makers to better understand how climate, environmental, social and economic factors contribute to heat risk in their communities. Users can view the short- and long-term risk of dangerously high heat in their community and explore the various demographic, socioeconomic, geographic and medical factors that contribute to that risk.

The tool also provides guidance on how to account for a community’s specific needs, both in the short and long term. This information includes summaries of each intervention’s effectiveness, as well as expected costs and implementation timelines.

A community with many young children, for example, might consider opening splash parks and sending extra lifeguards to popular swimming spots when temperatures rise. Meanwhile, an urban community with little shade may opt to plant more trees with an eye toward long-term heat mitigation. Splash pads can be implemented quickly and have a local impact, while increasing tree canopy will take decades and can affect entire neighborhoods.

“There are two timeframes we’re trying to support action on,” said Hess, who is a professor of emergency medicine, of environmental and occupational health sciences and of global health at the UW’s School of Public Health. “One is a pretty short time frame, where you get a heat warning, it’s going to be hot seven to 10 days from now. What can you and your agencies do to prepare to support the community? How do you support the parts of the community that are most at risk?

“Then there’s the longer-term, multi-year time frame. That’s a completely different set of challenges. This tool allows for that planning on multiple time scales.”

For more information, contact Hess at jjhess@uw.edu and Vogel at jmvogel@uw.edu.

Many people are now aware of climate change, the need to curb greenhouse gases and to prepare for coming environmental shifts. But knowing how best to prepare can be a challenge, both for individuals and for local agencies.

The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s has released an interactive tool that lets state agencies and local governments see what climate scientists project for their county and what they might want to consider when developing their districts’ comprehensive plans.

The tool, released in late 2022, lets users zoom in to their county to see projections for heat, drought, extreme precipitation, flooding, wildfire, sea level rise and reduced snowpack through 2100.

UW News sat down with developer , a research scientist at the UW Climate Impacts Group, to learn more about the new tool and its uses.

Q: We hear about other climate reports, like the international IPCC report or the U.S. National Climate Assessment. How does the Climate Mapping for a Resilient Washington tool fit in?

Matt Rogers: There’s not really a shortage of climate reports. But a lot of the current tools or reports have a much broader scope — they look at the entire U.S., or the whole Pacific Northwest. This particular tool focuses on Washington state, and on the information that local governments need to prepare for climate change.

I like to think of this tool as broad in scope, but not necessarily comprehensive in depth. It has a wide variety of different metrics, but it does not explore them in as much depth as our other tools. For example, this tool includes sea-level rise, but not as much information as our specific .

Q: How did this project come about?

MR: The Climate Impacts Group set out to help support climate information needs for updating the . Based on feedback from state agencies, there was clear interest in providing local governments with the climate data, information and resources that they needed to add a climate resilience element to their comprehensive plans. This is the basic information on expected changes in the climate that local governments can use to prepare for climate change.

This tool is new for Washington state. Like the tool in California, it’s meant to give information specific to Washington state that local communities and governments can use to plan for their area — as opposed to summarizing data over the entire state.

Q: How can people use this tool?

MR: To make the tool more approachable for people who may not frequently work with climate data, we’ve included filters to cut down on the information that you’re sifting through. For example, if you’re concerned about water, you can filter to look only at climate indicators that may be particularly important for the water resources sector.

Users can select 30-year time periods from now to 2100 and choose different future emissions scenarios, depending on the trajectory for greenhouse gas emissions.

On the tool’s map you can click a specific point, and it will give you a specific number for that point. But we do want to caution people that it’s more appropriate to look over a wider region, like a county, as opposed to a particular point, which can give a false sense of precision.

Many other climate tools only include information on exposure to climate change, or how conditions are changing. This goes one step further and provides some guidance on other information that might be needed to assess climate change impacts. For example: Does your community rely on snowmelt for drinking water or irrigation? Is your population particularly vulnerable to extreme heat events? The tool provides some questions to ponder when looking at these climate indicators and using them to inform local climate resilience planning.

Q: What, generally, can Washington state expect under climate change?

MR: There’s quite a bit that I can talk about here. Snowpack definitely stands out: There’s a pretty stark reduction in projected April 1 snowpack, and an associated reduction in summer streamflows, particularly in the lower elevations of the Cascades and Olympic mountains. Those foothills are really where all the snowmelt gets funneled in the spring and summer months.

Another thing that stands out is extreme precipitation. One of the metrics we have in the tool is days with greater than 1 inch of precipitation. Some areas in Western Washington — for example along the coast and on the western slopes of the Cascades — stand out for an increase in days with precipitation greater than 1 inch.

We also have an increase in extreme heat events, both in minimum and maximum temperatures. That’s pretty consistent across the state. Areas at higher elevations will see it less, but otherwise the state is pretty consistently projected to see an increase in extreme heat events.

The last one I’ll mention is wildfires. The likelihood of climate and fuel conditions that support wildfires is projected to increase as temperatures increase, particularly east of the Cascades. But later this century there are projected increases on the west side of the Cascades, as well.

Q: Where does the data used to create these projections come from?

MR: We leveraged the knowledge and expertise of the Climate Impacts Group to compile and curate the best available regional-scale climate projections for the Pacific Northwest. Data comes from different places. For example, we used the Weather Research and Forecasting model’s downscaled developed at the UW, for extreme precipitation. We used streamflow data developed from the project. We use the dataset from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for looking at August stream temperatures.

All those datasets are downscaled. Researchers took the IPCC global climate models, which have a pretty coarse resolution of 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude, which doesn’t leave many data points for Washington. Then they do a statistical analysis or run a regional climate model over a smaller area to get better information over a local region.

Most of the information on this tool is downloadable — not just the information you can see or pull off the visualization, but also the underlying data. So this tool is also meant to be a resource to access regional climate data.

Q: Who do you foresee as the main audience for this tool?

MR: Our target users are mainly local government planners. Right now in Washington state agencies are encouraged, but not required, to include climate resilience elements in their comprehensive plans. However, there is a that would require climate resilience elements of comprehensive plans. So we could see a lot more need for this tool in the near future.

Q: It can be depressing to see these projections for more heat waves, more wildfires, less snowpack and rising seas. What can communities do with this information?

MR: This is meant to inform local governments so that communities can plan for the future. Let’s say, for example, you’re worried about salmon habitat in your particular region, and you’re curious about stream temperatures, because that has an impact on the spawning cycles of salmon and their ability to reproduce. This tool can give you information about those projected changes so you can identify whether future stream temperatures may be a problem for your area.

As another example, let’s say you’re worried about your community’s ability to respond to extreme heat events. Knowing that extreme heat events are projected to rise, and the different rates of increase in your area, can inform your preparation efforts.

We hope this tool will support efforts to prepare for climate impacts and give local governments the information they need to help preserve ecosystems and save lives.

, a climate adaptation specialist at the UW Climate Impacts Group, led the tool’s development, with additional support from the University of Idaho’s Research Data & Computing Services. Development of the tool, which is freely available, was funded by the state of Washington.

For more information, contact Rogers at rawrgers@uw.edu.

A new project uses virtual reality to help communicate what climate models are predicting: Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing Earth’s temperature, melting glaciers that could create many feet of global sea level rise by the end of this century.

The project, available to community groups through The Seattle Public Library, uses Oculus Quest 2 goggles to help viewers imagine rising seas from a vantage point along the South Seattle waterway.

“Creative, interactive communication tools like virtual reality experiences offer a powerful way to spark conversations and action around climate change by helping show how a global-scale issue shows up in a very real way in our own communities,” said project leader , who began the effort at the UW Climate Impacts Group and is now at the University of Minnesota.

The headsets and accompanying are available as of this spring for checkout by community groups, such as Boys and Girls Clubs, youth groups or 4-H Clubs, which agree to take responsibility for the equipment. The Seattle Public Library is looking at more ways to make the experiences available to the public.

The VR experience builds on a Seattle Public Library project that used historical photos, maps and artifacts to show the history of the Duwamish River — from times when the Duwamish Tribe used the waterway for transportation, through the industrial pollution of the 1900s, to today’s ongoing . It extends the timeline to a future in which the riverfront is clean but rising sea levels lead to more flooding of coastal and lowland areas.

Through the headset, the user sees the shores of the Duwamish River, first with large conifers and then with small buildings in the foreground and today’s South Park Bridge in the distance. A voiceover explains how emissions cause sea-level rise, and an aerial view shows how that might look on city streets. Users can pick blueberries, clean up garbage along the shoreline, and finally set sea-level rise along the shoreline from 1 to 5 feet.

“We developed this experience so that Seattle communities could virtually walk through a future Seattle and see how climate change is shaping our landscape, including drastically rising sea levels,” said , the digital media and learning program manager at SPL. “We hope that creating an immersive experience will make the concept more tangible and inspire communities to think about how to adapt and build resilience to climate change.”

The VR experience ends with recommendations for reducing fossil fuel emissions, such as choosing to ride a bike instead of driving a car that burns fossil fuels and engaging in local climate action efforts, with contacts listed in the booklet.

“Although I had experience with video game development, I had never made anything for VR. I associated VR mostly with entertainment uses before working on this project,” said lead developer , a UW undergraduate in computer science. “I hope the experience makes people more aware of the history of the environments they exist in, and more mindful of their influence into the future.”

In addition to the VR experience, the team worked with Tableau to create an , available on the Climate Impacts Group website, that displays the projections for sea level rise depending on the location along the Washington coast, the climate scenario and the amount of geological rebound after the last ice age. Both products are based on sea-level rise projections published in 2018 for Washington state.

“These sea level rise projections and visualizations are hyperlocal — they are specific to the Washington coast, Elliott Bay and the Duwamish River valley,” said , the climate adaptation policy lead at Seattle Public Utilities.

“The VR experience provides an on-the-ground experience for sea level rise in South Park,” she said. “It’s more than gradations on a map, it’s about really getting a sense for what 5 feet of sea level rise would feel like.”

The VR experience was support by an from UW EarthLab, Seattle Public Utilities, the National Science Foundation, the University of Minnesota and the Academy of Interactive Entertainment in Seattle. Additional programming was by Seattle developer , with support from artists and . The experience is narrated by KEXP sound engineer .

For more information, contact Roop at hroop@umn.edu, Strong at stront2@cs.washington.edu and Grodnik-Nagle at Ann.Grodnik-Nagle@seattle.gov. At SPL, contact communications manager Elisa Murray at elisa.murray@spl.org. Community groups can request a kit .

Snover recently that she will retire on June 15 and plans to travel and spend time outdoors with her husband. Jason Vogel will act as interim director, and four senior staff members — Vogel, Meade Krosby, Guillaume Mauger and Crystal Raymond — will together carry out Snover’s duties until a new director is hired in the fall.

Snover’s impact on the local community isn’t going unnoticed: King County declared June 7, 2022, as “” and celebrated at the Washington Park Arboretum. During her last week on campus, UW News sat down with Snover to reflect on what she’s learned in almost 25 years of climate preparedness work.

When did you join the Climate Impacts Group?

AS: I was finishing up a UW doctorate in chemistry in 1998, and I wasn’t seeing a path that I wanted to walk down, so I took a leave of absence from graduate school to try to figure things out. , late professor of marine and environmental affairs, had just started the Climate Impacts Group. He was frustrated by the global nature of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and climate change assessments; he wanted to work on climate change, climate impacts and policy responses at a scale where people actually make decisions.

I was trying to find a way to connect science and decision-making and to work on what I cared about, which was the environment of the Pacific Northwest. I worked for Ed, helping to organize the first conference on the impacts of climate change on the Northwest, while on leave from graduate school. After finishing school, I went to work at CIG in 1999 as a postdoc, and I’ve basically been there ever since [laughs].

The Climate Impacts Group just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and you’ve been affiliated with the group for most of that time. How has CIG changed during your tenure?

In the late 90s, there was very little research on what climate change meant for the region, or what we should do to prepare for impacts. Our evolution has been moving from where we didn’t know much, to having done lots of the science necessary to actually know what impacts to expect. We’ve built awareness of the need to prepare for those impacts, and also the capacity in the region to do that preparation.

At the same time, people have started paying more attention to climate change. Part of that is because we’re harping on it, and part of it is because the world is changing. Now people who got their degrees at the UW, and have worked with the Climate Impacts Group, are in planning positions all around the region.

How has our region changed in terms of climate preparedness?

I have this saying, especially for people who worry about climate change, that the happy secret is how much work is going on, especially in our region, to prepare for climate impacts. Of course, there’s also the reality of the glass only being half full – there’s still not nearly enough being done to prepare for the changes we know are coming, not enough urgency, not enough concern. But over time we’ve just seen more awareness of the fact that climate change actually matters for people and this region. I think there’s an emerging awareness that it matters now.

Another change that’s happened more recently is there’s so much more awareness of the distributional impacts of climate change – that many communities because of their positions, exposures, marginalization, etc., are more at risk than others. Part of preparing for climate change is making sure that those inequities are not only recognized but addressed.

What CIG projects – past, current or future – stand out to you as fulfilling the goal of regional climate preparedness?

The thing that jumps to mind is an old one, but we’re all really proud of it: In 2007 we published a for local governments that we co-wrote with King County on preparing for climate change. It was really widely used around the country, and the world, on how to think about climate risks and preparation in the context of local government and do something on a local level.

It’s not as flashy, but what comes to mind is that this kind of thinking is now embedded in all these different places, all over the region and the state. It’s a long list of smaller things. There’s a park in Tacoma that was redesigned because of sea level rise. Our state Department of Transportation considers future climate risks in all its project designs and long-term plans. Our state’s protocol for cleaning up toxic waste sites has been adapted to consider climate change. All those examples have some climate science embedded in the plans or the decisions.

A bigger recent highlight was a partnership with Washington Sea Grant to develop new sea level rise scenarios that were very locally specific, where people could look up different locations on the coast to see how much sea level is expected to change in a specific place, with different levels of certainty. It really advanced people’s ability to do risk-based planning.

Looking forward, CIG recently got significant NOAA funding for a five-year collaboration focused on advancing climate resilience for and with front-line communities in the Northwest. It’s a partnership with 10 different organizations, including the Affiliated Tribes of NW Indians, Front and Centered, and others. This is an exciting opportunity for us to build new partnerships and deepen existing ones to support coastal tribal communities and rural communities in achieving their own climate resilience goals. I’m definitely excited to see how it unfolds.

What would you say to people who feel depressed or hopeless in the face of climate change?

What I always say and think to myself is that, no matter how bad it looks, the future isn’t actually written yet. What that means is that we have a choice. And yes, it’s hard, it’s really complicated, nobody knows all the details of how to reorient our lives, our society, our communities and our businesses to address the existential need for both reducing and preparing for climate change. And yet — the future isn’t written. Every day, we as individuals, we as society, still have that chance to help create the future we want.

Climate was originally thought of as an environmental issue. But increasingly, people are seeing that climate is embedded in every aspect of ecology and society. When climate changes, everything is affected.

No matter what you do, or what your skills are, you can have a role in shaping that future and thinking about how we prepare for and reduce climate change. Early on it seemed like you had to be a scientist or an engineer to have a role in this issue, but that’s not true at all. Everyone is implicated in building a resilient society, by which I mean: everyone is responsible, and everyone has something to give.

For information, contact Snover at aksnover@uw.edu or Climate Impacts Group communications manager Tess Wrobleski at tessw2@uw.edu����

Two ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý experts in climate change and health are lead authors of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The new report titled , published Monday morning, details in over three thousand pages a “dire warning” about the consequences of inaction on reducing the emissions that are causing our planet to warm and on implementing interventions to prepare for and effectively manage the dangerous impacts of climate change already occurring.

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, in a . “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

����’s , professor of global health and environmental and occupational health sciences in the School of Public Health, and Dr. , professor of emergency medicine at UW School of Medicine and of environmental and occupational health sciences and of global health in the School of Public Health, are lead authors on . Ebi is also a contributing author on the IPCC’s .

Below, the UW professors discuss these threats and the critical necessity of addressing them.

Professor Ebi’s comments:

People are suffering and dying right now from climate change, with the risks projected to increase without urgent and immediate investments in health systems to protect and promote population health. The people and nature we care about in our lives are being affected, with more severe impacts occurring sooner than projected just a few years ago.

The magnitude and pattern of future climate change impacts will depend on choices made in other sectors, such as urbanization plans, efforts to manage growing wildfire risks, and modifications to water systems to account for changing rainfall patterns, and on significant and urgent investments in our health systems.

There’s a long list of effective adaption options that can increase the resilience of our health systems and our health care infrastructure, as well as strengthen the capacity of communities to be better prepared to manage changing weather patterns. The major constraint for health is the insignificant investment in this area; catch-up investments are needed that at least keep pace with climate change.

Nearly all mitigation options have benefits for health. Benefits for our health arise from reducing exposure to harmful air pollutants from emissions from point sources like coal-fired power plants, reducing transportation that relies on internal combustion engines and increasing walking and biking, and changing dietary patterns to eat healthier diets.

The economic value of avoided hospitalizations and avoided premature deaths is of the same order of magnitude if not larger than the cost of implementing these mitigation policies. These policies will benefit the health of our families, friends and colleagues, with lower healthcare costs.

We can’t stop the next heat wave, but people don’t need to die. Not facing up to the risks just puts us in a much worse situation.

The future is in our hands. We may not be able to prevent flooding events or heat waves, but we can be prepared. The choices we make going forward will determine all of our futures.

Dr. Hess’ comments:

The chapter on health, well-being and the changing structure of communities is unprecedented in the breadth and depth of its assessment. And its findings are clear: Climate change is already posing significant and widespread burdens on health, through warming temperatures, extreme heat events, changing precipitation patterns and relative humidity, more frequent and severe storms, and wildfires.

More than half of the disease burden in the world is climate sensitive, and a wide range of diseases, from vector-borne and zoonotic infections, water- and food-borne diseases, injuries and a host of chronic noncommunicable diseases, are all affected.

The report highlights the clear risks to mental health, as well.

Estimates of future risks to health depend heavily on future greenhouse gas emissions, trends in socioeconomic development, rates of population increase, and patterns of aging and urbanization. Under high emissions scenarios, risks associated with heat, undernutrition, diarrheal diseases, and select vector-borne diseases will increase.

The report clearly highlights an overarching need for coordinated climate change adaptation across all sectors, including health, with emphasis on addressing social inequities and other underlying factors that drive vulnerability to climate change impacts.

In the health sector, this means investing in the climate resilience of health systems, increasing universal access to basic health care, developing heat action plans and other early warning systems, supporting efforts to reduce heat risk on the population level, enhancing surveillance for climate-sensitive conditions, controlling disease vectors and developing vaccines for vector-borne diseases, and reducing emissions from health care delivery.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions yield substantial health dividends that, in most cases, pay for the mitigation efforts themselves.

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Ebi is the founding director and Hess is the director of the ����’s . Contributing UW authors for Chapter 7 of the IPCC report are , associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, and , assistant teaching professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, in the UW School of Public Health. Also,��, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the UW School of Public Health, was a contributing author to of the full report.

The Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative will advance efforts to adapt to climate change in frontline communities — communities that have been excluded from spaces of power and who are disproportionately facing the impacts of climate change.

The program will be led by Director , with several community members and university partners steering the direction of the collaborative as members of the leadership team. The leadership team will include Snover along with Aurora Martin, co-executive director of ; Don Sampson, climate change program director of the ; Jennifer Allen, associate professor and senior fellow of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at ; and Russell Callender, director of .

“Many incredible organizations across Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington are joining with the UW Climate Impacts Group to work toward a future where all people and communities can thrive,” Snover said. “It is my hope that the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative will push the climate adaptation field toward equity and justice. I am proud that the Climate Impacts Group is helping to steward this shift, guided by the leadership of frontline communities, and I am honored by the trust and collaboration from these community partners.”

In addition to working with specific rural and coastal tribal communities, the collaborative is designed to accelerate climate adaptation in the Northwest, across the national network, and in state and federal climate resilience programs and policies. This will be accomplished through a variety of initiatives that transfer successful community-based innovations to similar communities; that influence the state and federal entities shaping the laws, policies and investment strategies that will determine future community resilience; and that invest in community capacity to help communities reduce vulnerability to a changing climate while pursuing their own community values.

The Resilience Collaborative is “breaking the mold of traditional climate adaptation efforts,” Snover said, “which, while important and necessary, will not be sufficient for preparing for the impacts of climate change. As the climate continues to change, impacting our economies, ecosystems and communities in ways that are varied and inequitable, this work has never been more urgent.”

Read more on the Climate Impacts Group’s . For more information, contact Snover at aksnover@uw.edu or Climate Impacts Group communications manager Tess Wrobleski at tessw2@uw.edu. ����