Archives West Finding Aid

The Department can trace its roots to the hiring of Philemon Edwards Church (known universally as Phil Church or P.E. Church) in 1935, who had earned an M.A. at Clark University was appointed to the Geography faculty to teach Climatology. While teaching Physical and Regional Climatology from 1935 to 1941 he was active in observational research and became one of the faculty members affiliated with the Oceanographic Laboratories. Other faculty members included Director of the Laboratories, Thomas G. Thompson, Professor of Chemistry; Clyde (?) Utterbach, Professory of Physics; Arthur Martin, Professor of Zoology; Rex Robinson, Professor of Chemistry. They used a small research vessel, the Catalyst, in a variety of research projects based in Puget Sound. Church carried out measurements of air-sea differences in temperature and humidity that led to papers given at national meetings and a number of published papers. He taught a summer course in Oceanographic Meteorology at Friday Harbor for several years. He also made systematic observations of snow depth and density at sites in the Cascades over a number of years. These several activities can be recognized as forming the base of later Departmental programs in air-sea interaction, boundary layer processes, and glaciology.

Church’s research emphasis on physical observations tended to separate him for the rest of the Geography Department and especially from its Executive Officer. In 1947 Church gained the support of Dean Lauer and President Sieg in creating a new Department of Meteorology and Climatology.

The Department forms one of the core units of the College of the Environment.

Source: https://atmos.uw.edu/about/history/, Robert G. Fleagle