NW drinking water concerns could get worse as the climate changes 

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Thunderstorms high in the Cascades recently stirred up a lot of dirt in a central Washington river, causing problems for people on its banks. All the dirt in the Naches River was too much for the City of Yakima’s water treatment plant to handle. Desert cities and towns could see situations like this happen more often as the climate continues to change. Climate Impacts Group research is referenced.

Opinion: How we can better protect all residents during WA’s next heat wave

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Drs. Jason Vogel and Jeremy Hess write about the recent report, “In the Hot Seat: Saving Lives from Extreme Heat in Washington State,” for the Seattle Times. “We clearly need to prepare for extreme heat going forward. If we do not take the lessons of 2021 to heart, the consequences will be predictable and devastating. We have been warned.”

Saving lives in heat waves

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Two years after the deadly Pacific Northwest heat dome, new research findings from the UW, Gonzaga, the state department of health and the state climatologist’s office offers ways to prevent loss of life in future excessive heat waves.

New report, tool suggest how Washington can better protect against extreme heat

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Two years following the 2021 heat dome, a collaborative effort led by two University of Washington 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. The Climate Impacts Group’s latest report on extreme heat in Washington State is referenced. Dr. Jason Vogel is quoted.

What can be learned from the Pacific Northwest’s 2021 heat wave

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A new report reveals strategies to prevent the hundreds of deaths tied to the prolonged heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest for several weeks in late June and July 2021, leading to a widespread public health emergency that strained the state’s emergency and healthcare systems. The Climate Impacts Group’s latest report on extreme heat in Washington State is referenced.

Can Seattle take the heat? Officials say area is better prepared this summer

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Emergency officials say the Seattle area is better prepared for extreme temperatures this summer than it was before the Northwest’s deadly heat dome of 2021. But making the region thoroughly heat-proof could take many years, and climate activists say government is not moving with the urgency that a climate crisis deserves. The Climate Impacts Group’s latest report on extreme heat in Washington State is referenced.

Saving lives from extreme heat: Lessons from the deadly 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave

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The heat dome that descended upon the Pacific Northwest in late June 2021 met a population radically unprepared for it. Dr. Jason Vogel, Climate Impacts Group, and Dr. Brian Henning, Gonzaga University, co-authored this article for the Conversation. The Climate Impacts Group’s latest report on extreme heat in Washington State is referenced. This story was also run in the Lake County News, Kiowa County Press, Times Union, Fast Company, the Everett Daily Herald and the Daily News.

CIG scientists publish paper on extreme heat and response options

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Heat waves are becoming more common and intense in Washington state and beyond as a result of climate change, increasing the risk of heat-related illnesses and death. Climate Impacts Group researchers Zach Kearl and Jason Vogel studied the impacts of extreme heat on public health in urban and suburban areas of Washington state. Their resulting paper, Urban extreme heat, climate change, and saving lives: Lessons from Washington state, was recently published in Urban Climate. The paper examines the key factors conditioning public health impacts of extreme heat and a suite of policy options in Washington state.

Kearl and Vogel found extreme heat affects subpopulations differently because of various contextual factors and social determinants of health; this suggests a wide range of policy alternatives is necessary to meaningfully improve health outcomes community wide. Moreover, the array of policy alternatives identified often rely on programs and agencies whose missions do not explicitly prioritize public health. They conclude that without mechanisms for formal coordination among implementing partners and agencies with a role in protecting public health, important policy alternatives that serve vulnerable subpopulations will likely be neglected.

CIG study investigates influence of federal policy on local climate action

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Dr. Jason Vogel, interim director of the Climate Impacts Group, is co-author on a recently published article in Sustainability on the influence of federal policy on local climate adaptation efforts. 

The article, Climate Adaptation at the Local Scale: Using Federal Climate Adaptation Policy Regimes to Enhance Climate Services, was published earlier this month in a special edition of Sustainability focused on climate services. 

Vogel and his co-author, Charles Herrick, reviewed 17 case studies of local climate adaptation efforts for the role of federal law, policy and programs, the organizations and agencies involved, and the use of science. 

They found in many cases, federal laws and policies provide a framework for local policy as well as “technical and fiscal resources beyond what any individual locality could muster on its own.” An overlooked element of the climate adaptation landscape, they write, is the role of federal policy as a “bottom-up” approach to local climate action, as local governments take advantage of policy tools to achieve their own resilience objectives. 

They suggest that climate services providers can take one or both of two approaches to integrate this knowledge into their work. One is to work directly with communities to navigate federal laws, policy and governance. Another is to engage with federal agencies to learn how policies are being implemented to achieve climate resilience at the local scale. 

Ultimately, they propose that organizations working in climate adaptation “may need to move beyond existing models of co-production to embrace an ‘apprenticeship’ model.” The apprenticeship model, they write, would allow climate service providers to learn the ins and outs of policy and governance so they can “recognize factors that influence the applicability, usefulness, and uptake of climate products and services.”