Internet famous climate scientist with North Bay roots sounds the alarm over climate change

“My role is very unusual, I’m lucky to have it,” Swain said, adding that his role is only possible thanks to ongoing support from The Nature Conservancy of California.

The importance of effective, impartial messengers became increasingly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, characterized by oceans of “misinformation and active disinformation,” said Swain, “where the reality you inhabit is now very much predictable by your political party.”

“That’s a huge problem, societally-well beyond climate change-and one I address in my capacity as a public-facing climate scientist.”

Elephant in the room

He had different ambitions, coming out of San Rafael High School.

At UC Davis, Swain worked toward his degree in Atmospheric Science, which put him on a career track to be a meteorologist, or weather forecaster.

At some point in that process, his goals shifted. Climate change, it became clear to him, would be the most important, overarching issue of his lifetime.

“I said,‘ OK, I’m still a weather geek, I still think the weather is cool. But climate change is the big elephant in the room. ‘”

He also noticed that many of the scientists writing and talking about climate change were not actually that well versed in weather, having approached the field from different areas of expertise.

“Maybe they were carbon cycle scientists, or high energy physicists, or ecologists or something,” he said.

Approaching the subject of climate change with his meteorology background seemed to Swain “an interesting angle that actually has a lot of societal relevance.” After all, he explained, “how we as a society experience climate change is through the shifting envelope of weather.”

In 2011 he enrolled at Stanford, where he earned a Ph.D. in Earth System Science. Swain’s time in Palo Alto coincided with a historic drought in the American West, followed quickly by an equally historic firestorm in Northern California. The infernos of October 2017 – including the Tubbs fire, which burned some 3,000 homes in Santa Rosa alone – seemed to usher in a period of larger, more destructive wildfires.

Scary superlatives

Swain’s decision to study the causes and impacts of extreme weather and climate events was made, it seemed, at a time such events were occurring more and more frequently.

“Let’s just say that was not a coincidence,” he said.

He wasn’t alone. Increasing scientific interest in extreme weather events, Swain points out, is the result of a surge in those events – not all of which, he qualified, can be chalked up to climate change.

“Extreme weather is not a monolith,” he said. Climate change is driving some weather extremes, but not all of them. It may not be responsible for extreme cold, for instance, or extreme wind.

“But the list of things that climate change isn’t making worse is shorter than the list of things that it is, especially in a place like California, where we’re seeing much worse wildfires, we’re seeing worse droughts, we’re seeing more intense downpours ” – on those vanishingly rare days when it does actually rain.

“This past year has really exemplified that,” he continued, “with one of the wettest days in state history ” – Oct. 21, 2021 – “followed by the driest winter on record, in the middle of an extreme drought.”

“That’s a lot of superlatives,” said Swain, who was, pardon the pun, just getting warmed up.

The fires ravaging the Golden State over the last decade, Swain continued, inflicted a level of destruction unseen “not just in Northern California, but really anywhere in the world, since the advent of modern firefighting.

“It’s been a century, really, since we had fires that burned thousands of structures – except in wartime settings,” when that destruction was intentional.

“But now, we’re seeing fires that have burned thousands of homes, almost every year.”

Flood danger, winter wildfires

Lest people fixate too much on fire and drought, Swain reminds us that this region is experiencing extremes “at the other end of the spectrum.”

He’s collaborating with The Nature Conservancy on a project called ARkStorm 2.0, focusing-as its Old Testament-inspired handle suggests-on the rising risk of a mega-flood in California, a result of intensified atmospheric rivers ushered in by climate change.

That project also explores the possible use of “strategic flood plain management” including “levee setbacks, floodways and bypasses, and flood-managed aquifer recharge” to lessen those risks.

Swain is also collaborating with The Nature Conservancy on a project exploring how to better address California’s accelerating wildfire crisis through the increased use of prescribed burns-fires set to thin forests of built-up fuel and prevent much bigger blazes.

The windows for safely conducting such intentional burns are narrowing, as fire season stretches at both ends. The massive wildfires charring hundreds of thousands of acres in northern New Mexico in recent months began as prescribed burns that got out of control.

Experts are studying the feasibility of conducting prescribed burns during winter months, which are “getting warmer and drier in a lot of places,” said Swain.

He experienced that phenomenon firsthand on December 30, 2021, when he was forced to evacuate his Boulder, Colorado area house by the Marshall fire. Fanned by 100-mph winds, that conflagration tore through suburbs east of Boulder, destroying over 1,000 homes. Swain’s was spared.

He was evacuated again for a February wildfire that ended up burning no homes.

“These are strange things to be saying,” he noted, “given the calendar.”

Sometimes, for kicks, Swain will drive east out of Boulder, onto the Great Plains in search of supercell thunderstorms, one of which recently decanted a volley of hail onto his car.

Those dings were soon obscured by ash from wildfires in Arizona “that has landed on my car’s roof in the last few days.

“I’m not sure if that’s a metaphor for something.”

What is sure is that Swain will keep explaining what is happening, and why, as this crowded theater continues to burn.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at [email protected] or on Twitter @ausmurph88.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
AGADIR-GROUP