Climate Extremes Across Scales
Research Group of Dr. Danielle Touma, Research Assistant Professor
UT Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin
Research Group of Dr. Danielle Touma, Research Assistant Professor
UT Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin
Research Questions and Topics
How do extreme climate events, including droughts, wildfire risk, extreme precipitation, and compound extremes, like post-fire debris flows, respond to anthropogenic climate change in historic and future climates?
What are the mechanisms underlying extreme climate and compound events, and how do they change?
How are communities impacted by extreme climate events and how are they adapting?
Can climate intervention limit changes in extreme climate events?
Datasets, Tools, and Methods
Satellite and weather station observations
Earth System Model (ESM) simulations
Spatial statistics, ML, and time series methods
Recent News
February 2025: Our Science Behind the News, "Hydroclimatic Whiplash Can Amplify Wildfire Risk in a Warming Climate", led by Dr. Daniel Swain, was published in Global Change Biology. You can read it here!
January 2025: Our paper "Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth" led by Dr. Daniel Swain, was published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. You can read it here!
December 2024: Our paper "Vegetation Greening Mitigates the Impacts of Increasing Extreme Rainfall on Runoff Events" led by Dr. Darren Ficklin, was published in Earth's Future. You can read it here!
December 2024: The Touma Extremes Team will be presenting their work at AGU this year! Julia will be presenting on Preconditions of wildfire vary within Europe on Monday at 9:15 am in 151A, Danielle will be presenting on Changes in mean climate and climate variability drive substantial increases in extreme fire weather in the western United States on Monday at 4:04 pm in 151B, and Tanner will be presenting his work on Assessing Drivers and Impacts of Wildfire Severity in Western North American Mountain Ranges on Wednesday at 8:30 am in the Poster Hall! Come find us!
December 2024: Danielle is one of the winners of the 2024 Women in Science Incentive Prize awarded by the Story Exchange. She will use her prize money to travel to Northern California and continue to work with the Karuk Tribe on climate risks. You can read more here!
October 2024: Tanner presented work from his undergraduate senior capstone project and plans for future work at the UTIG discussion hour! If you missed it, you can catch it here!
September 2024: Our paper "A shifting climate: New paradigms and challenges for (early career) scientists in extreme weather research", led by Dr. Marlene Kretschmer, was published in Atmospheric Science Letters. Read it here!
August 2024: Tanner Johnson joined the group as a PhD student! Tanner's PhD will focus on understanding post-fire hydrologic hazards in a warming climate. He is co-advised by Dr. Joel Johnson and funded by the Blue Sky Student Fellowship. Welcome Tanner!
July 2024: Julia Miller arrived at UTIG as a visiting scholar who will be working on part of her PhD research with the group! Julia is a PhD Candidate at ETH Zurich and her PhD focuses on understanding drivers of European wildfires in recent and future climates. Julia will be here until December!