The Emergent Climate Risk Lab (ECRL) is a place for learning, doing and teaching climate science. We collaborate across disciplines, institutions and industries to characterize future risks of persistent droughts, deadly heat waves and unprecedented extreme events that will become more likely in the future. At the same time, we are committed to building partnerships with educators and local community members who want to help improve climate change literacy across generations.
This year (2024), we are focused on four interrelated lines of inquiry: (1) How far in advance can Northeast droughts be predicted? (2) What observations and model improvements do we require for improving Northeast drought forecasts? And, (3) How likely are heat waves, water shortages and air quality disasters from wildfires in the Northeast? And, (4) How can we partner with educators and community organizations to increase the number of soil moisture measurements we are making to further improve our drought forecasts?
Addressing these questions requires us to use a blend of machine learning, AI and statistical techniques alongside more conventional numerical weather and climate modeling applications. Whenever possible, we try to use historical and paleoclimate data to constrain variations in the past and evaluate how the pace and magnitude of climate change occurring today compares to changes in bygone decades.
Our work on drought has made national headlines, been covered by major news outlets in both English and Spanish, and been featured by scientific and public media outlets such as Physics Today and The Atlantic, New York Times, National Public Radio, and others.