Portrait

Eric P Salathé Jr

UWB Associate Professor Climate Science
School of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics
University of Washington Bothell
E-mail: salathe@uw.edu phone: 425.352.3226 Office: Discovery Hall Room 352 J [directions]
Mail: Box 358538 | 11122 NE 180th Street | Bothell, WA 98011 | VCard
  • 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, EP, A Beggs, S Sandhu, and C McJunkin, 2022: Projected trends in Pacific Northwest heatwaves from a regional model ensemble. J Climate, in press.
    [PDF]

  • Mass, CM, EP, Salathé, R Steed, and J Baars, 2022: The Mesoscale Respon se to Global Warming over the Pacific Northwest Evaluated Using a Regional Climate Model Ensemble. J Climate , 35 (6), 2035 2053. 2053.
    [PDF]

  • Lorente Plazas, R., T. P. Mitchell, G. Mauger, an d E. P. Salathé, 2018: Local Enhancement of Extreme Precipitation during Atmospheric Rivers as Simulated in a Regional Climate Model. J . Hydrometeorol ., 19, 1429 1446.
    [PDF]

  • Salathé, EP and GM Mauger, 2017: Climate Change, Heavy Precipitation and Flood Risk in the Western United States. In Climate Change and its Impacts , Leal Filho, W., C Murphy, P Gardoni (Eds). Climate Change Management.
    [PDF]

  • Warner, M. D., C. F. Mass, and E. P. Salathe, 2015: Changes in Winter Atmospheric Rivers along the North American West Coast in CMIP5 Climate Models. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 16, 118-128.
    [doi:10.1175/JHM-D-14-0080.1

  • Mauger, G., Y. Bauman, T. Nennich, and E. Salathe, 2015: Impacts of Climate Change on Milk Production in the United States. Professional Geographer, 67, 121-131.
    [doi:10.1080/00330124.2014.921017 | UW_News | Draft_PDF]

  • Salathe, E. P., A. F. Hamlet, C. F. Mass, S. Y. Lee, M. Stumbaugh, and R. Steed, 2014: Estimates of Twenty-First-Century Flood Risk in the Pacific Northwest Based on Regional Climate Model Simulations. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 15, 1881-1899.
    [doi:10.1175/JHM-D-13-0137.1

  • Liu, M., Rajagopalan, K., Chung, S. H., Jiang, X., Harrison, J., Nergui, T., Guenther, A., Miller, C., Reyes, J., Tague, C., Choate, J., Salathé, E. P., Stöckle, C. O., and Adam, J. C.: What is the importance of climate model bias when projecting the impacts of climate change on land surface processes?, Biogeosciences, 11, 2601-2622, 2014.
    [doi:10.5194/bg-11-2601-2014]

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

  • BCUSP 140 Scientific Journeys: Global Warming
  • BST 200 Introduction to Climate Science
  • BCLM 300 Fundamentals of Weather and Climate (anticipated Fall 2012)
  • BCLIM 320 Impacts of Climate Change

  • STMATH 125 Calculus II
  • STMATH 308 Matrix Algebra
  • B ENGR 310 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:

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.