Apr 7, 2025
Modeling extreme heat waves
Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.
In this episode, Kai Kornhuber explains how and why climate models struggle to reproduce extreme heat wave trends.
In this episode, we cover:
•[00:00] Introduction
•[00:53] Extreme weather climatologist Kai Kornhuber explains why
modeling heat waves is important.
•[01:38] He talks about how the study modeled hotspots of anomalous
heat wave activity.
•[03:01] Kornhuber tells where the hotspots are located.
•[04:17] He explains how well climate models reproduce these
trends.
•[06:43] He talks about ways climate modelers can improve model
representation of heat waves.
•[07:48] Kornhuber describes the caveats and limitations of the
study.
•[09:08] He enumerates the key takeaways.
•[10:18] Conclusion.
About Our Guest:
Kai Kornhuber
Senior Research Scholar
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2411258121
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