International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8th, kicked off OAR’s 2023 Women’s History Month Campaign. Supported by CPO’s CEE Division, this month’s series of profiles will celebrate accomplished women at NOAA working under the umbrella of climate resilience—their expertise ranging from science to adaptation planning to communication and education, and everything in between.
Raised skiing in the Colorado mountains and camping in the woods, Victoria Breeze has always had an appreciation for the environment. She earned her bachelor’s degree from University of Colorado, Boulder, triple-majoring in Environmental Studies, Chinese Language and Civilization, and International Affairs. She then went on to obtain a PhD in Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences from the University of Michigan.
Victoria started working at NOAA in March 2020, as a Communications Specialist for the Earth System Science and Modeling (ESSM) Division. Last year, she was promoted to Program Manager for Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB), a program within ESSM. In her current role, Victoria oversees projects that investigate natural and human activities that might alter the reflectivity of our atmosphere to help decision makers address knowledge gaps and guide future research on near-term climate risk. Her program synthesizes science to better equip our nation for a future where current global emission reduction goals have not been met. Victoria’s work with ERB looks to the future, giving NOAA’s Climate Ready Nation Initiative a resilience roadmap detailing, using different scenarios, what exactly it might need to be ready for.
In this interview, she discusses her circuitous career path, strong female role models in her life, and the groundbreaking work her program is working on to support climate resilience through advanced atmospheric modeling.
For more information, contact Melissa DeFrancesco.
Image credit: Victoria Breeze
