Dr. Michael Notaro and collaborator, Dr. Michael Schummer, presented initial results from their Northeast Climate Science Center project and related projects in a webinar on March 12, 2015, which was co-sponsored by the Northeast Climate Science Center and Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Dr. Schummer's talk was on the topic of "A Weather Severity Index for estimating influences on climatic variability on waterfowl populations, waterfowl habitat, and hunter opportunity demographics." Dr. Notaro's talk was on the topic of "Application of dynamical downscaling to generate projections of winter severity, with implications for waterfowl migration and deer survival." The webinar had 125 participants.

On March 5th and 6th, CCR hosted the first UW Climate Change Symposium, featuring speakers from various campus departments and keynote lectures by Professor Steve Long of the University of Illinois. The symposium included a panel discussion on climate change and agriculture, as well as a student poster session showcasing UW undergraduate and graduate climate research. Approximately 200 visitors attended the symposium, which was co-sponsored by seven other departments and centers across campus.

As the ramifications of climate change broaden, The Why Files set out to learn more about the scientists who study the causes and effects of climate change.

To sample the range of scientific approaches, the website profiled a number of UW-Madison faculty and researchers studying climate change, many of them affiliates of the Nelson Institute.

Congratulations to CCR Scientist Feng He, who was selected to receive the Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship from the NOAA Climate Program Office. The overarching purpose of the NOAA C&GC fellowship program is to help create and train the next generation of leading researchers needed for climate studies. The fellowship will enable Dr. He to collaborate with Prof. Peter Clark of the Oregon State University to investigate the relationship between climate forcing and responses through paleoclimate modeling.

The research of Drs. Michael Notaro, Steve Vavrus, and Yafang Zhong on the mechanism for the observed rapid warming of the Laurentian Great Lakes, as presented at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in December 2014, was summarized by a radio piece from the German Public Radio science program, Forschung Aktuell.

A press release by the Department of the Interior and news story on the UW-Madison Nelson Institute website have announced new grants from the Northeast Climate Science Center, including one by Dr. Michael Notaro to develop projections of snow and winter severity for the Great Lakes region and impacts on wildlife.