Episode 16: Daniel Swain

Daniel Swain, Ph.D., is a climate scientist in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and The Nature Conservancy   of California. He is the founder of the blog Weather West. 

If you have a flash flood in an uninhabited desert, then it’s not causing anyone any problems. But if you have an ark-storm scenario in the Central Valley and you exceed the capacity of the levees in Sacramento, that’s a whole different question. So I think a lot about what recent experience tells us about the urgency of addressing the problems that we’re going to clearly face in the decades to come. 

Notes and references from this episode: 

@Weather_West - Daniel Swain on Twitter

Weather West blog, by Daniel Swain

Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA

Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes, National Center for Atmospheric Research

The Nature Conservancy of California

"Controversial restriction on 49ers-Rams NFC Championship Game tickets abruptly disappears on Ticketmaster,” by Eric Ting, SFGATE

“The Climate Scientist Who Is Demystifying Extreme Weather,” by Madeleine Gregory, Vice

“What a Dry January Means for California’s Drought,” by Soumya Karlamangla, NY Times  

“Study: Sierra Snowpack Could All But Disappear In 25 Years,” by Jay Barmann, SFist

“‘Fire season never really ends in California’: Cal Fire is preparing for winter, but fire dangers persist,” by Andres Picon, SF Chronicle

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