Meteorologist Warren Morton Washington was born in Portland, Oregon on August 28, 1936.  He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Oregon State University, and his Ph.D. in meteorology at Pennsylvania State University in 1964.  He began his professional career as a research assistant at Penn State.  From 1968 to 1971 he was an adjunct professor of meteorology and oceanography at the University of Michigan.  In 1972 he began long-term employment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado where in 1987 he became Director of the Climate and Global Dynamics Division of NCAR.  When Washington was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 he was praised as a scientist of international renown who pioneered “the development of coupled climate models, their use on parallel supercomputing architectures, and their interpretation.”  Most significant has been his work in climate modeling that helps measure increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere.  

His expertise recognized, Washington has been appointed to serve on various national commissions concerning global climate change and has been an advisor on such matters to the federal government during the terms of four U.S. Presidents, including extended service on the National Science Board, the governing board of the National Science Foundation, serving a two-year term as its chairman.  Washington is the author of An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Climate Modeling (Mill Valley, CA: University Science Books, 2005).  Among his honors are the 1997 Biological and Environmental Research Program Exceptional Service Award for Atmospheric Science from the U.S. Department of Energy, and the 1999 National Weather Service Modernization Award.