Motivation and Objectives

Extreme heat is associated with significant societal and environmental impacts, including increased human mortality (death) and morbidity (ill-health). One previous study found that warming of the United States of America by 5°C by 2100 would be associated with annual welfare losses of $57 billion! largely due to negative human health impacts (Mansur et al. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 55, 175-193).
Because physiological stress and hence excess human mortality and morbidity is maximized under the co-occurrence of elevated air temperature (T) and specific humidity (Q) we are using equivalent potential temperature (θe) as our metric of analysis (it is increased both by air temperature and humidity). Further equivalent temperature is a fundamental metric of the total static energy content of the atmosphere.
The overall objective of this project is to investigate historical variations in equivalent potential temperature with a focus on the relative roles of regional-scale soil moisture, synoptic-scale drivers and global radiative forcing, and to evaluate the use of downscaled AOGCM simulations for understanding possible evolution of these quantities in the 21st century.

Example research products from the Cornell University team:

* denote authors who have been supported by the project during their graduate degrees and supervised by S.C. Pryor.
  • Pryor S.C., Sullivan* R.C. and Schoof J.T. (2017): Modeling the contributions of global air temperature, synoptic-scale phenomena and soil moisture to near-surface static energy variability using artificial neural networks. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 17, 14457-14471, Download it.
    Schoof J.T., Ford T. and Pryor S.C. (2017): Recent changes in United States heat wave characteristics derived from multiple reanalyses. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 56 2621-2636.
    Pryor S.C., Sullivan* R.C. and Wright* T. (2016): Quantifying the roles of changing albedo, emissivity, and energy partitioning in the impact of irrigation on atmospheric heat content. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 55 1699-1706
    Pryor S.C. and Schoof J.T. (2016): Evaluation of near-surface temperature, humidity and equivalent temperature from Regional Climate Models applied in type-II downscaling. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 121 3326-3338

    Useful resources regarding extreme heat

    From the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
    From the US Center for Disease Control (CDC)
    From the US National Weather Service (NWS)

    Past and Present Team Members

  • Professor Sara C. Pryor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University
  • Mr. Ryan Sullivan, (PhD student completed) Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University (now at Argonne National Laboratory)
  • Mr. Tim Wright, (MS student completed) Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University (now at Antorcha LLC)
  • Ms. Verena Joerger, (MS student completed) Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University (now at US EPA)
  • Mr. Mark Belding, (MS student completed) Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University (location unknown!)

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