The weather whisperer: UCLA’s Daniel Swain
November 14, 2023 •
When climate catastrophe looms, reporters and legislators call up UCLA’s Daniel Swain to explain what’s happening and why.
From his post at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, Daniel Swain researches the extent to which climate change is fueling floods, droughts and wildfires. On Weather West, the blog he started as a high schooler in 2006, his posts plumb the connections between global atmospheric conditions and broad weather trends across California, and his real-time commentary reaches 40 million people a year on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. He’s testified about his research in California’s legislature and routinely briefs state and federal lawmakers.
As climate change has wrought noticeably weirder weather in California and across the country, Swain has become a go-to source for journalists looking to make sense of climate catastrophes past and future. He fields close to two hundred calls from the press every year and is one of the most quoted experts at UCLA.
Read more about Daniel’s life as a “scientist communicator” at the UC Newsroom
Tags: climate science, Daniel Swain, UCLA
