News

Jan 15th 2025

The Extreme Weather and Urban Sustainability Lab (TExUS Lab) is excited to have attended the American Meteorological Society 2025 annual meeting in New Orleans. We had speakers present various topics, ranging from AI, UrbanRainfall, ExtremePrecipitation, AppliedClimate, UTCityClimateCoLab, and much more!

September 09th 2024

Urbanization has accelerated dramatically across the world over the past decades. Urban influence on surface temperatures is now being considered as a correction term in climatological datasets. Although prior research has investigated urban influences on precipitation for specific cities or selected thunderstorm cases, no study to date has comprehensively revealed the urban precipitation anomalies on a global scale. This research is the first global analysis of urban precipitation anomalies for over one thousand cities worldwide. We find that more than 60% of the global cities and their downwind regions are receiving more precipitation than the surrounding rural areas. Moreover, the magnitude of these urban wet islands has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Urban precipitation anomalies exhibit variations across different continents and climates, with cities in Africa, for example, exhibiting the largest urban annual and extreme precipitation anomalies. Cities are more prone to substantial urban precipitation anomalies under warm and humid climates compared to cold and dry climates. Cities with larger populations, pronounced urban heat island effects, and higher aerosol loads also show noticeable precipitation enhancements. This research maps global urban rainfall hotspots, establishing a foundation for the consideration of urban rainfall corrections in climatology datasets. This advancement holds promise for projecting extreme precipitation and fostering the development of more resilient cities in the future.

June 4th 2024

The City of Austin held a press conference Monday morning to share important health and safety information during excessive heat conditions. The CoLab produced projections, the seasonal outlook, and playbook so the community could have access to readily available information on how to stay cool during this summer! The projections include the Austin Future Climate Report, which contains information about the increasing trend of higher summer temperatures, heatwaves, and what we should expect for the precipitation levels and amount of cold nights. These outcomes were analyzed using two different scenarios, the “high-emissions scenario” and the “business-as-usual emissions scenario”. The Austin Summer Outlook shows data about the temperatures and precipitation for the season, and the playbook from the City of Austin which has information about heat resilience and strategies to curb the heat. The Co-Lab has also been interviewed by KXAN last week and some insight has been shared on what we do at the lab! We had Allysa, Alexia, and Manmeet talk about the work that they do and how UT Austin works in collaboration with the City of Austin to help fight climate change!

June 4th 2024

Koorosh just started his Postdoctoral Fellowship at UT Austin and is the newest addition to the CoLab! His research spans various interdisciplinary aspects of water and environmental systems, including climate risk assessment, decision-making processes, coupled human-natural systems, policy analysis, sustainability, and mitigation and adaptation strategies. He is focused on understanding the dynamic interactions between various components of socio-environmental systems, especially in the context of urban water management. His work involves investigating the impacts of diverse climatic risks on urban water systems and communities, advancing the theory of coupled systems, translating this theory into actionable models, and applying these models to support infrastructure planning and policy analysis. His aim is to foster more sustainable and resilient practices in response to future climate risk challenges, with a high emphasis on equity and justice.

May 9th 2024

April 26th 2024

We had the good opportunity to present the #UTCityClimateCoLab ideas, progress, and plans to the City's Joint Sustainability Council and seek their ideas and advice. Our CoLab team highlighted the uniqueness of the partnership taking a co production approach for tools, and datasets that are aligned with city departments and community needs and priorities. This integrative framework, I am getting more and more convinced, is critically needed by all cities as we take on the topics of climate smart investments, carbon neutral goals, and investments within the community and city services with a long view. We have conversations with #UNESCO about building further on this and would be a good template for the #IPCC City Climate Special Report to consider. Topics such as, how do we prioritize projects we take on, how to sustain support and the network through local and federal funding, how to develop impactful educational experiences and research projects for students, and shorten the research ideas to community impact timeline, came up in the discussions. Excited and grateful for this amazing team and everyone's support to the #CityClimateCoLab!

April 10th 2024

"Who is Charney?", "How many of you know von Neumann and Ed Lorenz, and what they did"? "What is predictability"? to "How do you formulate a research problem, and start your research"? "Should you trust a model"? These and more were the questions that got the students and the group pumped up with the visit of Jagadish Shukla from George Mason University and COLA. It was a treat to have Prof. Shukla spend an entire day interacting with the students, and the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin climate community, discussing how the new climate science curriculum can be built further, the role of models and observations and partnerships in building climate initiatives. It was fascinating to hear of his first meeting with Charney and Manabe and the topics of convection, as well as anecdotes like what we know of Lorenz butterfly effect could have been called a seagull effect of Texas and was changed to butterfly effect by the host, and see the discussions build around the role of physics-based and AI/ML modeling approaches for improving climate predictions. Limits of predictability, and the topic of my interest - cities and climate, as well as how do we not stop asking the questions - why did the model behave the way it did - why did it give the right result - should it have given that type of result -- what would be a better or worse model- should we have more models or lesser models? It was wonderful to see the students engage and discuss ideas and Prof. Shukla spend evenings in a casual setting at a food truck park to complete the Austin experience! We even managed a hail storm, and rain burst to just make things more fun!

February 16th 2024

The JacksonSchoolGeosciences annual research symposium was a nice avenue for students - current graduate and undergraduates, - even highschool interns, and prospective/ visiting students to meet and learn about the program and the student experience / work underway. The symposium has become covetted with active faculty participation, and the industry as well as national lab support (e.g. Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Sandia National Laboratories) which provides notable cash awards for best presentations - which has been another important draw for many students to put in their best. This year we had members of the TExUS lab showcase their work from urban rainfall changes, to use of language models for heat advisories, to data fusion products and models, the Austin ThermalScape where we have generated 2m spatial resolution temperature data for the entire city and have visualization overlays, and also the brown ocean/ soil moisture feedback. Such symposia really add to highlighting the spirit of what academia truly is- inspiring, educational, about mentoring, team work, bold, diverse, celebratory, dare to dream attitude builder, and above all supportive, brilliant community. It highlights why some of us, decades after graduating, continue and in the first place aspired to stay back and become academic. Seeing the ideas flourish, dreams emerge, futures written all around with young enthusiastic, energetic students is electric (and renewable!) Kudos to all and wishes to everyone to stay hungry for loving and living life and all that it offers. Happy Sunday! PS: One of the lab members did win a nice prize and in the spirit of 'one-for-all' the festivities, I understand, are getting planned! Congratulations. JSG GSEC (Nicole Czwakiel, Mikayla Pascual), @Melissa Armstrong, Kristen Tucek,Claudia Mora Danny Stockli Anton Caputo Michael Young Courtney Vletas

January 28th 2024

American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting was everything it promised and some more! The buzz and the numerous conversations and meetings that went on through the convention center, the hotel lobbies, and the restaurants near by highlighted the prominent and societally pivotal role AMS and meteorological sciences has in today's world. The buzz around extreme weather, the NOAA Hurricane and extreme weather predictions, NCAR community partnerships, the many large initiatives such as DOE IFLs and ARM program, the serious intent across the community to bridge science with applications, weather with climate, data with knowledge, AI with ethics, and AMS with hope and future...yields a vibrancy that our group and the broader community will find itself propelling into newer topical areas, discoveries and dimensions. Cant wait to see what we will be talking about and sharing in NOLA next year for AMS2025!

December 12th 2023

Dev, Trevor and Harsh participate WWRP Summer Olympics and Paralympics Research Demonstration Project Meeting in Paris involving different operational and academic research partners, looking into the aspect of urban heat waves and urban thunderstorms.

November 9th 2023

We were privileged to host Dr. Atul Jain of The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Dr. Jain discusssed the potential and risks of using Bioethanol as an energy source.

October 14th 2023

The Oct 14 eclipse in Texas backyard -- and an even more dramatic one coming in April 2024 -- provides an amazing opportunity for geoscience education, and understanding the earth system feedbacks. So the UT Extreme weather/climate and Urban Sustainability (TExUS) lab partnered with community groups led by Amol Manduskar (CSM) and a team of about 60 citizen scientists, enthusiasts who travelled 2.5 hours south of Austin to chase the eclipse and its totality. Finding the location with two tropical disturbances offshore earlier in the week, the transition of wind regimes, reviewing the weather forecasts and developing discussions with the team and providing the input to the community was a fun challenge. Even when we reached Bourne, TX there were clouds and the group was getting concerned about viewing conditions. We then had to pull out different satellite imagery, nowcasts, and help find a spot where a cloud free sighting could be experienced. This was bringing the geoscience education to the community especially the middle schoolers and youth that were present-- and sharing the fascinating science in its different facets. This eclipse event comes when our department has been recently named as #EarthPlanetarySciences within the #JacksonSchoolofGeosciences -- and what better way than to see the relation between the Earth and our Planetary System than the Eclipse?! I express kudos to our group (their ownership of such events and activities, the passion with which they do these things, traveling on a weekend, trying to catch a worldcup cricket match on cell phone while driving down, staying cheerful and sharing ideas and working with the community is just endearing and energy pumping!)- and a big thank you to the citizen science groups especially Amol Manduskar (CSM) for his amazing coordination and interfacing with the teams. We could get some fantastic view of the annular solar eclipse with 'Ring of Fire', photography of eclipse and ring of fire, capture the shadow bands and discuss diffraction, surface and air and infra radiation temperature changes in wake of radiation changes. Indeed such events also allow some introspective philosophical insights. Especially the vastness of the universe- and how we are just one tiny minuscule component of that whole part (let alone our day to day aspirations and ups and downs that we let overcome the experience we have in this infinitesimal flash of moment in the galaxy we call our life). Hope we can use such events to cherish where we are and what we do. Thank you everyone for making this life beautiful.and Thank you team for making science and discovery process fun!

October 5th