Eric P Salathé Jr

Professor and Chair Physical Sciences Division University of Washington Bothell Adjunct Professor Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science University of Washington Seattle

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E-mail: salathe@uw.edu Office: Discovery Hall Room 452 J phone: 425.352.3226
Mail: Box 358538 | 11122 NE 180th Street | Bothell, WA 98011 | VCard

Regional climate Model
Statistical Downscaling
Upper Tropospheric Water Vapor
Curriculum Vitae

• Why is Louisiana flooding so badly and how can we prepare for it next time? (Mary Beth Griggs, Popular Science)

• Climate forecast for Seattle: warmer and wetter, with a chance of deluge (Grist)

• Salathé, E. P., Beggs, A., McJunkin, C., & Sandhu, S. (2023). The Relative Warming Rates of Heat Events and Median Days in the Pacific Northwest from Observations and a Regional Climate Model. Journal of Climate, 36(8), 2471-2481.
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Teaching

I teach in the newly formed Climate Science and Policy major in the Science & Technology Program at the University of Washington, Bothell. The B.S. in Climate Science and Policy will integrate fundamental courses in the sciences with courses in policy to train students tackle the the issue of climate change. Graduates of this program will be prepared for careers in government, private and non-profit sectors, and graduate programs in science and policy studies.

Courses

• BEARTH 155 Introduction to Climate Science
• BEARTH 310 Fundamentals of Weather and Climate
• BEARTH 320 Impacts of Climate Change
• BPHYS 317 Mathematical Physics
• BPHYS 450 Computation Physical Modeling

Research

Climate forecast for Seattle: warmer and wetter, with a chance of deluge (Grist)

I conduct research on regional climate change and climate impacts in collaboration with the Climate Impacts Group at JISAO, with a primary focus on the US Pacific Northwest. The primary focus of my work is to transform global climate change simulations into information suitable for studying regional impacts of climate change.

Simulations of global climate change and variabilty are the foundation for our knowledge about the climate. Global models, however, represent atmospheric and surface parameters with much too coarse a horizontal resolution to simulate regional processes, such as precipitation and streamflow, that determine the effects of climate on the region. Furthermore, global models do not account for surface features, such as topography and land use, that determine the regional climate.

This document gives a detailed overview of the regional scenarios methods used by the Climate Impacts Group. Web pages for the various methods are provided below:

• Statistical Downscaling
• WRF Regional Climate Modeling
• Regional ClimatePrediction.net

Regional climate data produced using these methods is used to support climate impacts applications as well as basic research into regional climate change.

Other research interests of mine include upper-tropospheric moisture and its relationship to the climate. Most of my work in this field has been in using satellite remote sensing data to understand various aspects of this problem. I have an ongoing interest in understanding the transport of moisture into the subtropics using satellite data, conventional meteorological data, and atmospheric model results.

At the Climate and Radiation Branch at the Goddard Space Flight Center, I used TOVS radiance observations to examine the moisture distribution in general circulation models.

While a graduate student in the Geology and Geophysics Department at Yale University, I examined the accuracy of satellite observations, in situ moisure measurements, and radiative transfer calculations using simulaneous aircraft and GOES satellite observations.

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