Steve Warren
6847 36th Ave NE
Seattle  WA  98115
206-372-1135

sgw@uw.edu

Update 2013-2023:

I’m no longer teaching, but this winter I did help out with a course on scientific writing. I still occasionally think of things to write about snow and ice, and I’m advising one graduate student working on Snowball Earth. Travel now is mostly for its own sake, not for work. I joined two supported bicycle tours: Russia-Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan, and Morocco to Western Sahara (on both trips I was the slowest rider). Other additions to my country list are Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Jordan, Djibouti, Panama, Ireland, Portugal, Turkmenistan, Palau, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Baltics. Last month I took a car-camping trip in southern Arizona with my wife Phoebe, sister Jinny, and brother Bill. Here’s a picture of me and Phoebe in Oregon, waiting for the solar eclipse of 2017.

Update June, 2013

Update since 2008:  I've announced my retirement for June 2014; thereafter I'll teach at most one course per year instead of three.  I've stopped taking on new graduate students.  But they typically take 6-7 years to get a Ph.D., so the three I'm advising now will keep me involved at the University for a few more years.

My business travels over the past five years involved analyzing snow samples for dust and soot on trips of 1-2 months each, in Siberia, Canada, China, Greenland, and the U.S.  I also took three trips to Antarctica, for research on glacier ice and sea ice.  I took vacation trips with my wife Phoebe, my brother Bill, my sister Jinny and her husband Ernie, to Australia, South Africa, Mongolia, and Iceland.

Typing these words reminds me how useful it has been that I took Henry Paloncy's typing class in 1962!

Posted 2008

Steve

OK; here goes!  I studied chemistry and biochemistry at Cornell and Harvard.  Then I was a wandering scholar for nine years (Heidelberg, Boston, Boulder), meanwhile changing careers to atmospheric physics.  In 1982 I moved to Seattle, where I’m a professor of earth science and atmospheric science at the University of Washington.  I teach courses on climate, solar radiation, and glaciology, and do research on snow, clouds, and sea ice.  I’ve had the same office for 26 years.  However, I’m not always in that office:  I worked one year at the South Pole Station (1992), and spent two sabbaticals in Australia.  Pictures of me getting dressed at the South Pole are at www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/endurance/dress01.html

First wife was Donna Feuquay, 1970-1987.  She was a scientist, then became a physician, delivering babies.  She died in 2004.  Second wife is Phoebe Caner, a native of Seattle, a mechanical engineer working on energy conservation for the electric utility.  I met her on a blind date in 1993; we married in 2001.  No children from either marriage.  My father (Fred) died in 1999; mother (Ann) in 2008.  I often take vacation trips with my sister Jinny and my brother Bill.

I’ve had two near-death experiences:  anaphylactic shock from peanut-allergy in 1988, and hypothermia in a drowning accident in 1997 (body temperature dropped to 84 F).  In both cases hospitals saved my life, and there’s apparently no lasting damage.  One of the stories is at www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/endurance/stories/story02.html

Since our last class-reunion (2003), here’s a summary of my activities.

University: 
Four graduate students completed their Ph.D.s.  Now I have only one continuing student, but several long-term research-coworkers.  More information is at www.atmos.washington.edu/~sgwgroup

Research trips: 
to Dome-C with the French Antarctic Expedition, 2003-4; Northeast Greenland with Danish Polar Center, 2006; Svalbard with Norwegian Polar Institute, 2007; West Greenland 2007; Northeast Siberia 2008.

Vacations: 
2003.  Three-week canoeing trip down the Nigu and Colville Rivers in Alaska, 400 miles from the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean.
2004.  A month in the outback of Western Australia (Great Sandy Desert).  A week in Arabia (Oman and UAE), which was a stopover on a business trip; walked into the Empty Quarter and camped in the dunes.
2005.  Ten days in Russia with Phoebe’s parents (November).
2006.  Four weeks in Argentina (Patagonia).  Phoebe and I located South America’s lowest point. [National Geographic was off by 700 miles; they’ve changed their map accordingly.]
2007.  Two weeks in Chile over Christmas break (to see peculiar snow spikes in desert mountains of the Atacama).
   And every year I managed to spend about a week in my favorite part of the world, the canyons of southern Utah.  One trip was by canoe on the Green River with some of Phoebe’s relatives.
   
I really enjoy our class reunions; I’ve been to every one of the last five.  Unfortunately I’m going to miss this one, so that I can watch the snow melt in Greenland.  I probably made the wrong choice!