Blog Posts

Over at Jupiter, I write regular blog posts. These blog posts cover a variety of topics in weather and climate, including extreme events, climate tipping points, and more general thoughts about weather and cliamte modeling. Some recent posts include:

AMOC Collapse and Coastal Economic Shock. We quantify the effects of a 21st century collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation on coastal flood risk. While a 21st century AMOC collapse is unlikely, this high-consequence tail risk scenario could represent a major physical and financial shock.

The Winter That Never Was: Assessing the Aftermath of Colorado’s Warmest Winter. How extreme were this winter's warm temperatures in Colorado? Dive in with us and find out just how warm this winter was, what future winters could look like in Colorado, and how this year's historically low snowpack could affect agriculture and recreation in the coming months.

Does the Winter Olympics Have a Future in the Alps? While future warming will harm the snowpack in the Alps, especially at low elevations, it's not all doom and gloom. Limiting warming to the 2 C specified by the Paris Agreements as well as investments in adaptation can limit the worst of the damages.

Trillions of Gallons of Rain: Atmospheric Rivers Overwhelm the Pacific Northwest. Atmospheric rivers play a major role in the hydrological cycle on the West Coast. They are also highly destructive, causing 80% of the flood-related damages in the Northwest. A December 2025 atmospheric river event demonstrates how warming temperatures can intensify rainfall and enhance rain-on-snow events that present major flood risks.

Hurricane Melissa: A Glimpse Into the Caribbean's Future. While still recovering from Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Melissa overwhelmed Jamaica and nearby Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas with extreme rainfall and some of the strongest winds ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. While meteorologists are still studying exactly how hurricane frequency and location might change in the future, a warmer Caribbean Sea is likely to strengthen the most powerful hurricanes.

Katrina After 20 Years — What We’ve Learned and How it Could Happen Again. 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, we take a look at how sea level rise has impacted flood risk in New Orleans, and whether the post-Katrina improvements in flood defenses can hold up. We found that in central New Orleans, sea level rise triples the likelihood of a Katrina-level flood event during the 21st century, and that sea level rise could lead a Katrina-scale flood event to overtop the levees as early as 2065.