submitted my first dissertation paper 🥳

Crowdfunding for "The Sky is the Limit," a documentary about a crown jewel of American science, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the peril it faces.

A total of 13 states have tied or set all-time March heat records over the period Mar. 18-21, and one or more stations in Arizona and California have tied or broken the previous all-time U.S. heat record of 108°F each of those four days. This heatwave is in a class of its own historically!

"Gloria" shared this pic of herself picking strawberries in CAs Central Coast. "The water was up to my knees making it very hard to push my cart. My feet were so wet and cold, I couldn’t feel them. Growers have us harvest despite the flooding to avoid losing product." #WeFeedYou

UNC Chancellor Scraps Secret Recording Policy https://bit.ly/4aMlew6

EPA claims repeal will be "de minimis." Based on our forthcoming work on wildfire smoke (below) and a back-of-the-envelope calculation from Table 1 in the final rule, I estimate this action will kill over *200,000 Americans* over the 21st century. De minimis indeed! www.nber.org/papers/w33829

While others are stepping back on climate, Project Drawdown is stepping up! We’re proud to announce the Climate Science Serving America Fellowship to support U.S.-based Ph.D.-level scientists & engineers focused on climate solutions for the public good. drawdown.org/news/project...

Want to know how many disaster declarations are being made under the 2nd Trump Administration, and how long they are taking? I made a simple dashboard to help: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/a-dashboar...

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

SUPER excited to see this live in the world. In particular hugely admire this team's dedication to openness and transparency about methodology, code, assumptions. Every tool has strengths and weaknesses, but sharing openly is how the whole community can improve. Big kudos @carbonplan.org

"Our main conclusion ... is that several well-cited messaging strategies reliably influence pro-environmental attitudes and behavioural intentions in the United States ... We found little evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects between Democrats and Republicans..."

"The study’s findings are also in line with previous research: A 2021 study suggested that PM2.5 from wildfires is up to 10 times more harmful than PM2.5 from other sources, such as ambient pollution."

New data show that business concentration has increased persistently in many countries over the past century by sales, net income, and capital, but not by employment, from Yueran Ma, Mengdi Zhang, and Kaspar Zimmermann www.nber.org/papers/w34711

NSF just posted their Dear Colleague Letter regarding the restructuring of NCAR. www.nsf.gov/funding/info...

@nws.noaa.gov's experimental probabilistic precip forecast shows the chance of snow, ice, and total accumulations through Monday

New work from our team: we mapped water table depth at 30-meter resolution across the entire continental US. That's ~8 billion grid cells, trained on over 1 million well observations. Highest-resolution estimate to date.

rabbit hole OTD "I consider the role of animals in gentrification processes ... how the materialities of horse bodies are embodied in specific landscape changes: qualities of pasture, styles of fencing and stables ... and lead to the territorialisation and contestation of broader rural landscapes."

Neptune Flood (subsidiary of NYSE:NP) is actively working to privatize the NFIP. Company leadership has communicated their work and this goal, in line with Project 2025, to the White House. Privatization would have big implications for flood-prone communities. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/c...

Caveat here being that 5cm hail is listed as being where damage to buildings starts... but based on an EU study where much more of the building stock is tile roof. Asphalt shingles, obviously much more common in US, take damage and need replacement at much smaller hail sizes.

Have you ever heard of the black-white mortality crossover? Before about 82, black men have higher age-specific probabilities of dying than white men. Between roughly 82–86, the gap closes. After 86, the pattern actually reverses: white men become more likely to die at each age than black men.

After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

County officials told KQED on Monday the exact damage estimates aren’t yet known, but that hundreds of structures were impacted by the flooding brought on by stronger-than-expected rainfall and king tides, the highest tides of the year. (via @kqednews.kqed.org)

"Nutrition is a central determinant of human health, yet the direct impacts of climate on dietary intake remain poorly understood ... [we] show that both extreme heat and cold trigger a shift toward energy-dense diets, adding a previously overlooked behavioral channel to the climate–health nexus."

Researchers recently asked Americans what income level other people need in order to live a good life. A whopping 86% of Americans reported income levels well below what others say they themselves need. Fascinating!

'respondents with multiple flood experience are more likely to perceive social norms supporting individual protective behavior, ascribe more responsibility to public authorities and less to their community' nhess.copernicus.org/articles/25/...

What would it cost to end extreme poverty? "We estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% ... would cost $170B nominal per year." "The results correspond to a cost of (approximately) ending extreme poverty of roughly 0.3% of global GDP."

Where rivers have flooded in 2025, using data from USGS and @nws.noaa.gov #StateOfFlood

@ucs.org has released a letter you can write to your Congressperson to save @ncar-ucar.bsky.social Share your voice on the significant value of this bedrock climate and weather insitution. Your story matters! secure.ucs.org/a/2025-prote...

America First, at America’s first public university.

"under-the-radar trends showcased how countries with aging populations and shrinking birthrates are seeking to fill labor market and skills gaps"

You know those dropsondes that get dropped into hurricanes and improve the forecasts by up to 20%? Those are developed by NCAR and manufactured in Colorado by Vaisala. Without NCAR developing the dropsonde, the algorithms, and software that operate it, hurricane forecasting takes a huge step back.

Time to repurpose #AGU25 as a mass mobilization in support of NCAR, NSF, NOAA, NASA, USGS, DOE BER, and the Congressional power of the purse.

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

It’s been observed that tropical cyclones have been migrating poleward in recent years, and climate change was suspected as a cause. But this study found SST patterns caused it, “and that future changes may differ markedly from the recent multi-decadal trends.” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“...destruction rates were linked to a shift in exposure from interface WUI to low-density wildlands ... Lower-density areas may face greater destruction likelihood as a result of lower suppression efforts, as they may have limited accessibility for firefighters or may be a lower priority...”

Nursing home effort fluctuates with the inspection cycle, affecting patient survival. Unpredictable inspection schedules may boost effort and save lives, from Ashvin Gandhi, Andrew Olenski, and Maggie Shi www.nber.org/papers/w34491

Folks on Washington state community Facebook groups are arguing about whether images of local flood damage are real or not. Generative AI is making it so much harder for people to get the reliable information they need to make decisions during disasters.

An analysis of 700,000+ climate change papers found that the five most climate-vulnerable countries produced 0.04% of them. US, China, Uk, Germany, Australia, meanwhile, account for 52%.

Major env demography study finds rainfall caused >8% of deaths in Mumbai 2006-2015. The effect lasted over several weeks and was greater among young children, women, and low-elevation slum residents. Sea-level rise likely exacerbates this threat by overwhelming drainage systems.

During heatwaves, young people with ADHD made more visits to the emergency room for depression and suicidal thoughts, according to new research led by NCICS's Jennifer Runkle and Charlie Reed. Read more: ncics.org/cics-news/yo...

Really interesting. 311 / nonemergency / local gov service request systems are probably underused infrastructure for mapping floods, especially pluvial and historical extents. What if we gathered presence/absence data for modeling by pushing microsurveys to residents during heavy rains?

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Most businesses want to do something about climate change, but few are doing it fast enough, or in ways that match the scale of the challenge. At the same time, fear of being accused of greenwashing has led to greenhushing - companies going quiet about their efforts altogether.

“In 2024, hail damage in the US cost more than damage from hurricanes and floods put together … more people are moving to hail-prone areas of the US.” “there is significant uncertainty as to what climate change means for hail”

Phillips has called himself a “vocal opponent of FEMA” and now leads arguably its most important division. He once wrote on LinkedIn that FEMA has “failed to deliver a comprehensive and detailed plan for working with the faith community,” and touted responders “with a Christ centered approach.”

The Bay took over the highway during this morning's #KingTides in Marin.

Climate change is killing workers. The fix is simple. Water. Shade. Rest Breaks. Our new Health Affairs study: California's heat standard was associated with a 33% drop in heat-related deaths among outdoor workers. Now it's time for OSHA to adopt a federal heat standard. tinyurl.com/4wejjhkd

Interesting paper highlight that binning can be misspecified in panel settings - this drives misinterpretation of extreme temperature shocks. #linkoftheday www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1ya6z...