Weekly Seminar Talk by Hsin I Chang: Historic and Future Extreme Climate Assessments over the Contiguous U.S. and Mexico and Applications for Risk Management

Available in person and via zoom (see email for link)

Abstract

According to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the U.S. has sustained weather and climate-related disasters since 1980 where the overall cost damage per event has reached or exceeded $1 billion. There is an increasing trend in annual aggregate losses that is attributable to a statistically significant increasing trend of about 5% per year in the frequency of billion-dollar disasters. Improving forecast capability across different forecast times can potentially assist disaster risk mitigation and water resource management.

Organized convective activities are one of the leading sources of severe precipitation and flooding events in the contiguous U.S. and Mexico. For the Southwest U.S. and Mexico, the North American monsoon (NAM) is the principal driver of summer precipitation and extreme hazards. Over the Southern Great Plains, Springtime convective activities have led to extreme flooding over Texas. Regional climate model at convective resolving grid spacing (on the kilometer scale) is required to explicitly represent the physical characteristics of these organized convections. The talk will include research results from tracking short-term extreme convective events, and how severe weather is changing in relation to anthropogenic climate change, based on regional climate modeling products produced by Chang’s team and from the North American Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (NA-CORDEX). Also, introduce the Center for Applied Hydroclimate Sciences’ activities in serving as the bridge between climate research and external users in the public and private sectors.

Bio

Hsin-I Chang, Assistant Research Professor at UArizona’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, is also the Director of the Center for Applied Hydroclimate Sciences. Her expertise is in regional climate modeling in the arid and semi-arid regions. Her main research interests include understanding the variability of extremes at weather and climate time scales, the influence of climate change on monsoon variability and large-scale teleconnections. She serves as the climate specialist on multiple consortia for economy, utility, and mining needs. Dr. Chang's climate research outcomes also led to the translation of complex scientific findings for decision-making for the public and private sectors.