Climate adviser to 6 presidents

Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan. George H. W. Bush. Bill Clinton. George W. Bush. Barack Obama.

You’ve heard of each of those presidents, but you probably haven’t heard of Warren Washington, the scientist who advised all of them on Earth’s climate. It’s no wonder; he also helped develop one of the first climate models.

Washington was a pioneer in more than just weather and climate. He was just the second African American to get a doctorate in meteorology, earning his PhD from Penn State in 1964.

To put that in perspective, a report from the American Institute of Physics says that only 14 out of the 740 students to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science as recently as 2015 were African American.

From the 1960s onward, Washington studied the Earth’s climate system, building simulations that got more detailed as computers became more powerful. Early climate models were crude and slow.

“We weren’t able to go faster than the actual weather. We actually plouwed on because what happened was computers got faster and faster,” he told NASA in a 2016 interview.

But, as computers got faster, Washington and his colleagues added more detail into the climate models.

Washington used those computer models to experiment with various scenarios, tweaking the amount of carbon dioxide and other gasses to see what the different outcomes would be.

This is routine today. Scientists want to know what to expect if we do nothing to limit greenhouse gas emissions or suddenly stop all of it or something in between.

Washington earned many accolades and awards for his decades of work. In 2010, the country awarded him the National Medal of Science, the U.S. government’s highest scientific honor. He’s also been recognized for his efforts to increase diversity in atmospheric sciences.