Unprecedented summer warmth and flooding, destructive hurricanes, forest fires, drought and torrential rain — extreme weather events are occurring more and more often. Penn State experts look at the causes behind extreme weather, how we can better prepare for these events and the impact on the world around us.
Engineering & Technology
The recent arrival of El Nino could lead to new record temperatures and an increased risk for heavy rainfall and drought in certain locations around the world, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. On top of El Nino, data show that the past eight years have been the warmest in modern history, leading to an increase in extreme weather events. From hurricanes to catastrophic flooding, weather disasters cost the U.S. more than $165 billion in 2022, according to NOAA.
Professor of Meteorology,
Director for the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Contact Jenni Evans with questions about: The impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones, statistical methodologies for forecasts of tropical cyclones, the relationships between organized convection and tropical cyclone intensity with sea surface temperature, and the implications of these relationships in a warming climate
Distinguished Professor of Geography,
Director of the Center for Landscape Dynamics,
Associate Director of the Institutes of Energy and the Environment
Contact Erica Smithwick with questions about: The impact of climate change on people and environments, and how to address forest sustainability under climate variability.
Professor of Meteorology
Contact Yvette Richardson with questions about: The impacts of climate change on the formation and evolution of severe storms, tornadogenesis, radar observations of tornadic thunderstorms, convective initiation, and numerical modeling.
Director of Vegetation Dynamics Lab
Contact Alan Taylor with questions about: landscape ecology, fire ecology, disturbance and climate effects on vegetation and wildfires, biogeography, biological conservation, environmental management and paleoecology.
Contact Alfonso Mejia with questions about: water resource management, impact of climate change on droughts and floods
Penn State expertise spans far beyond those that we have currently featured on the site. Call us at 814-865-7517 or contact a member of the media relations staff
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