Cliff Mass

Clifford "Cliff" Mass is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. His research focuses on numerical weather modeling and prediction, the role of topography in the evolution of weather systems, and on the weather of the Pacific Northwest. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the President of the Puget Sound chapter.

His book The Weather of the Pacific Northwest is one of the best-selling titles from the University of Washington Press.^[1] He maintains a popular weather blog, hosts a weekly public radio show, and gives frequent public lectures on topics ranging from Washington State weather history to the impact of climate change on global and regional weather patterns.

Education

Mass received a B.S. in Physics from Cornell University in 1974.^[2] As an undergraduate, Mass performed research on Martian weather patterns with astrophysicist Carl Sagan,^[3] and on the role of sun spots and volcanic eruptions on historical climate conditions with climatologist Stephen Schneider.^[4] He received his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 1978 with a dissertation on the role of African wave disturbances and climate variation in the Sahel region.^[5]

Academic career

Before joining the faculty of the University of Washington, Mass was a professor of meteorology at the University of Maryland from 1978-1981.^[2] He leads the University of Washington Mesoscale Analytics and Forecasting Group and the Northwest Modeling Group. He has published over 85 articles in peer-reviewed scientific venues, and served on the board of over a dozen regional and national meteorological committees, conferences, and scientific journals.^[6]

Outreach and scientific advocacy

Mass maintains a popular weblog in which he posts regular articles on meteorology, Pacific Northwest weather history, and the impacts of climate change^[7] written for the general public. According to Mass, "Global warming is an extraordinarily serious issue, and scientists have a key role to play in communicating what is known and what is not about this critical issue.^[8]"

Mass has stated publicly that he shares the scientific consensus that global warming is real and that human activity is the primary cause of warming trends in the 20th and 21st centuries.^[9][10] He has been critical of the Paris Climate accord for not going far enough to address the negative impacts of climate change.^[11] However, Mass is also frequently critical of what he has characterizes as exaggerations of the past and current impacts of climate change in the news media, including the attribution of individual extreme weather events to global warming.^[12][13][14]

Mass has expressed concern that when media and environmental organizations make exaggerated claims about the current impacts of climate change, or cite climate change as the cause of specific weather events, it can create unnecessary public panic, distract public and governmental attention from more immediate environmental concerns, and stifle opportunities for effective bipartisan policymaking to slow climate change and mitigate its effects.^[15]

His past statements on the severity and progression of anthropogenic global warming have elicited condemnation from local news media such as The Stranger^[16] as well as members of environmental organizations^[17] due to concerns that Mass's scientific approach to understanding and communicating the risks associated with global warming could result in public apathy or be used by climate change deniers to bolster their claims.

References

External links

• Cliff Mass Weather Blog
• Faculty profile at the University of Washington
• The Weather of the Pacific Northwest (2008) University of Washington Press. ISBN 9780295988474