Center for Climate Science

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA in Los Angeles, tweeted that the power shutoffs were “a necessary bad idea in the short term” that shifts the financial costs from the power companies to the public.

As the winds move over the Sierra Nevada in eastern California, they flow like water over rocks in a stream, compressing and warming. Slicing through valleys, the winds gather more speed, desiccating the air. “If you imagine the atmosphere over your head as a sponge, you can’t wring it out anymore,” says Daniel Swain, a...

Propelling this drying-out process are the Diablo and Santa Ana winds, which start east of California. Autumn is the start of cold, low-pressure storms over the Great Basin, several thousand feet up in Nevada and Utah. As they move, these winter storm systems “leave behind cold air and are replaced by surface high pressure,” said...

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA in Los Angeles, tweeted that the power shutoffs were “a necessary bad idea in the short term” that shifts the financial costs from the power companies to the public. The first part of PG&E power cuts began midnight Tuesday into Wednesday in northern California. It affected more than...

Temperature records toppled, and some were smashed, over a vast region of the U.S. this past fall week, including record October highs in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Newark, Raleigh, Nashville, New Orleans, Pensacola, Indianapolis, and beyond.  And in the past week, over 300 daily record highs were broken.  But, it’s not the number of records that’s...

There was some wild weather over the weekend in Yolo County as residents in the Woodland and Davis area experienced a tornado and hailstorm.  The twister occurred Saturday around 6:40 p.m., right after the National Weather Service sent out an emergency tornado warning that included the message “take cover now.” Daniel Swain is a climate...

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said the state is unlikely to get enough rain soon to stamp out its risky fire weather. Based on PG&E’s current criteria, that means more shut-offs are all but certain if the winds pick up and temperatures are high enough. But it’s hard to say for sure.

Alex Hall, climate scientist and director of the UCLA IoES Center for Climate Science, talks with KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis about what climate change has in store for the Los Angeles region—and what we can do about it.

Los Angeles’s summer marine layer — aka June Gloom, aka May gray — is one of the most unique aspects of living along the coast. It keeps things cool through the morning and burns off in the afternoon to reveal gorgeous blue skies. WHAT HAPPENS IN 50 YEARS? I asked some climate scientists. “We don’t...

A massive “blob” of warm water is lurking off the California coast, and it could mean that Los Angeles won’t experience a true autumn. (Does it ever, though?) UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain says there’s a “high confidence” that temperatures will be warmer than average this fall. That’s partly due to an enormous new marine...

A massive marine heat wave that caused record warming of ocean waters off the West Coast five years ago, sending salmon numbers crashing and malnourished sea lions washing up on beaches across California and other Pacific states, is back, scientists said Thursday. The ocean phenomenon, which researchers called “The Blob” when it appeared in 2014...

With the planet at stake, who can blame you for not saving 10% of your income for a future you’re not sure will arrive? While it’s easy to feel powerless, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Nature Conservancy at UCLA, tells CNBC Make It that he has...