Research

Environmental Research: Climate

Attributing daily ocean temperatures to anthropogenic climate change (May 2024)

Ocean temperatures are rising and hit record levels around the world in 2023. We present an operational system to estimate the impact of human-caused climate change on daily sea surface temperatures anywhere in the ocean.

Nature Climate Change

Improving public understanding of climate change by supporting weathercasters (July 2022)

Effectively communicating the risks of climate change is essential for advancing the adaptation and mitigation measures required for human and planetary health. Building and supporting trusted communicators can be an important means to reach that end.

Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography

A multi-method framework for global real-time climate attribution (June 2022)

This study introduces a new framework to enable the production and communication of global real-time estimates of how human-driven climate change has changed the likelihood of daily weather events. The framework's multi-method approach implements one model-based and two observation-based methods to provide ensemble attribution estimates with accompanying confidence levels.

Environmental Research Communications

Resilience of U.S. coastal wetlands to accelerating sea level rise (June 2022)

Coastal wetlands provide a wide array of ecosystem services, valued at trillions of dollars per year globally. Although accelerating sea level rise (SLR) poses the long-term threat of inundation to coastal areas, wetlands may be sustained in two ways: by positive net surface-elevation change (SEC) from sediment and organic matter buildup and by accumulation, or horizontal migration into refugia—low-lying, undeveloped upland areas that become inundated.

Environmental Research Letters

Unprecedented Threats to Cities from Multi-century Sea Level Rise (October 2021)

Using state-of-the-art new global elevation and population data, we show here that, under high emissions scenarios leading to 4○C warming and a median projected 8.9 m of global mean sea level rise within a roughly 200- to 2000-year envelope, 50 major cities, mostly in Asia, would need to defend against globally unprecedented levels of exposure, if feasible, or face partial to near-total extant area losses.

Nature Communications

Economic Damages from Hurricane Sandy Attributable to Sea Level Rise Caused by Anthropogenic Climate Change (May 2021)

Using historical and alternative sea level reconstructions, plus flood simulations to determine how much climate change contributed to damage inflicted by the 2012 storm, this study found that sea level rise caused by carbon emissions accounted for approximately 13% ($8.1 billion) of the $62.7 billion in losses incurred by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from Hurricane Sandy.

Environmental Research Letters

Sea level rise and coastal flooding threaten affordable housing (December 2020)

The frequency of coastal floods around the United States has risen sharply over the last few decades, and rising seas point to further future acceleration. Residents of low-lying affordable housing, who tend to be low-income persons living in old and poor quality structures, are especially vulnerable.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Impact of the Climate Matters Program on Public Understanding of Climate Change (October 2020)

Climate Matters is a localized climate change reporting resources program developed to support television (TV) weathercasters across the United States. Developed as a pilot test in one media market in 2010, it launched nationwide in 2013; in the autumn of 2019 more than 797 weathercasters were participating in the program. In this paper we present evidence of the impact of the Climate Matters program on Americans’ science-based understanding of climate change.

Science of the Total Environment

A method for regional estimation of climate change exposure of coastal infrastructure: Case of USVI and the influence of digital elevation models on assessments (March 2020)

This study tests the impacts of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data on an exposure assessment methodology developed to quantify flooding of coastal infrastructure from storms and sea level rise on a regional scale.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Localized climate reporting by TV weathercasters enhances public understanding of climate change as a local problem: Evidence from a randomized controlled experiment (January 2020)

Providing climate information via trusted communicators in local media is an effective approach to increasing understanding and acceptance of, concern about, and engagement with climate change across the political ideology spectrum.

Transportation Research

Employment accessibility and rising seas (December 2019)

Recent projections suggest worst-case scenarios of more than six ft (1.8 m) of global mean sea-level rise by end of century, progressively making coastal flood events more frequent and more severe. The impact on transportation systems along coastal regions is likely to be substantial.

Nature Climate Change

Meeting the looming policy challenge of sea-level change and human migration (December 2019)

Minimizing the adverse consequences of sea-level change presents a key societal challenge. New modelling is necessary to examine the implications of global policy decisions that determine future greenhouse gas emissions and local policies around coastal risk that influence where and how we live.

Nature Communications

New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding (October 2019

By 2050 sea level rise will push average annual coastal floods higher than land now home to 300 million people.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Reporting on climate change by broadcast meteorologists: A national assessment (October 2019)

Television weathercasters are uniquely situated to inform their audiences about the local impacts of global climate change and a growing number of them are adopting the role of climate change educator.

Environmental Research Letters

Extreme sea level implications of 1.5 °C, 2.0 °C, and 2.5 °C temperature stabilization targets in the 21st and 22nd centuries (March 2019)

Sea-level rise is magnifying the frequency and severity of extreme sea levels that can cause coastal flooding. The rate and amount of global mean sea-level rise is a function of the trajectory of global mean surface temperature. Therefore, temperature stabilization targets have important implications for coastal flood risk.

Remote Sensing of the Environment

CoastalDEM: A global coastal digital elevation model improved from SRTM using a neural network (March 2018)

This paper Introduces an improved global coastal elevation dataset, called CoastalDEM, and the methodology used to develop it.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

TV Weathercasters’ Views of Climate Change Appear to Be Rapidly Evolving (October 2017)

More than 90% of weathercasters indicated that climate change is happening and approximately 80% indicated that human-caused climate change is happening in this survey update.

Earth's Future

Evolving understanding of Antarctic ice-sheet physics and ambiguity in probabilistic sea-level projections (December 2017)

We link a probabilistic framework for sea‐level projections to a small ensemble of Antarctic ice‐sheet (AIS) simulations incorporating these physical processes to explore their influence on global‐mean sea‐level (GMSL) and relative sea‐level (RSL).

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

Most Americans Want to Learn More About Climate Change (June 2017)

American Meteorological Society (AMS) members have long played leading roles in climate science research in the United States and internationally.