Modeling Climate Change

For her honors thesis, Laura Queen is using computer modeling to predict the impact of climate change on the Columbia River

Many undergraduates face difficulties choosing a major. But few relish every new subject with the kid-in-a-candy-store delight of Queen, a PathwayOregon and Summit scholarship recipient.

Fortunately, the senior mathematics and computer science major zeroed in on a thesis topic—and a life goal—that combines (almost) all her academic interests. After graduating this June, she hopes to work on computer models that predict the impact of climate change and advocate for science-based solutions to global warming.

“Deciding what to study has been hard,” says Queen, who is also in the Clark Honors College. “I’ve always been interested in all the different STEM fields (and also literature and history). Climate modeling is so fun because it puts many things together. You don’t have to be a chemist, biologist, or computer coder to be a climate modeler. But you have to have your fingertips on all of those different subjects.”

Queen has explored many academic diversions along the road to commencement. During her sophomore year, she took her first computer coding class—an experience that began with frustration and ended in sisterhood.

“In this big lecture course, there were hardly any women. It seemed as if there were implicit requirements that I didn’t have. It’s the only class where I thought ‘I cannot do this.’”

So she went home and Skyped her older sister, a computer science major. It didn’t take long to realize that she simply needed to learn the lingo.

“After that one conversation, I excelled,” she says. “What I realized is that we are losing a lot of bright minds to imposter syndrome—the common misconception that you don’t belong here, that the only reason you’ve made it this far is luck. Those feelings are heightened when you are underrepresented.”

After she became a confident coder, the Portland native paid it forward by leading weekly study sessions for the course through the Class Encore program, which offers study groups led by students who know the material. It was the first session ever offered for that computer course, so Queen had to create the curriculum from scratch.

“Not everyone has a big sister they can call,” she says. “I wanted to be that big sister.”

Next there was astronomy. During the summer after her sophomore year, Queen gave a lecture to more than 100 UO seniors about the imminent solar eclipse as part of the Science Literacy Program. She also volunteered at the Pine Mountain Observatory in Bend, giving night-sky tours and helping faculty members with primary research.

Then she discovered climate modeling at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, thanks to an Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scholarship provides tuition support and a paid summer internship.

Working at the same lab where scientists have led much of the world’s research on climate-change models since 1955, Queen used the Columbia River as a case study for testing computer modeling. She presented her research at the 2018 American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in Washington, DC—a big academic deal for an undergraduate.

For her thesis, Queen is continuing her research of the Columbia River. Instead of the global climate model she used during her internship, she’s shifted to hydrologic models—different tools for asking the same questions.

“The hydrologic model is regional,” says Queen. “That means it can capture the physics and the topography of the Pacific Northwest much better. With the model we used at Princeton, you’re running the entire globe just to look at one region. In a mountainous river basin like the Columbia River, the low resolution in the global model does not capture it.” However, both models are important, she says.

“It’s kind of like the theory of a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the planet and having an effect on us,” she says. “The river interacts with the world, and the world interacts with the river. This work is fun for me, but it’s also so important. This is the biggest global issue humanity is facing.

“I’m so grateful to be here, particularly now that I’m putting all of my energy into the climate science and my senior thesis. This research is important, and I’m focusing on the Pacific Northwest. I feel like it’s giving back to where I was raised. I would like to say thank you for the scholarships.”

After graduating, Queen plans to take time off before graduate school and a career in climate science. That could mean an internship with New Zealand’s equivalent of the NOAA. Or maybe a stint in software engineering. Knowing Laura, either choice—or both—will lead to success.