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
Find the Extremes Team at AGU this year!
Tanner Johnson will present on quantifying the climatic drivers of wildfire severity in the western U.S.
Fletcher Hozven will present his work on drought recovery under climate change
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
December 2025: Julia Miller's paper "Compounding preconditions of wildfires vary in time and space within Europe" was published in Communications Earth and Environment! Read the news article about it here!
December 2025: The Extremes Team will be at AGU this year! Tanner Johnson will present on quantifying the climatic drivers of wildfire severity in the western U.S. and Fletcher Hozven will present his work on drought recovery under climate change. If you're going to AGU, I encourage you to attend their presentations!
November 2025: Danielle was hosted at Texas A&M by Dr. Kelly Nunez Ocasio. In addition to her seminar, she met with multiple scientists and stayed on for another half day to work on a collaborative proposal on African climate under climate intervention with Dr. Ocasio's group!
November 2025: Dr. Chen Xing is the new UTIG Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, and will be working with Dr. Danielle Touma and Dr. Yuko Okumura on the anthropogenic impact on the climate mean state, variability, and extremes, with a focus on internal climate mechanisms and the role of model biases. Welcome, Dr. Xing!
August 2025: Danielle shared research and insight about impact of climate change and climate intervention on wildfire risk as a panelist in SRM360's Live Discussion: Making sense of wildfires and solar geoengineering.
August 2025: Our paper "Projections of Lightning-Ignited Wildfire Risk in the Western United States" led by Dr. Dmitri Kalashnikov was published in Earth's Future. You can read it here!
August 2025: Fletcher Hozven joined the Touma Extremes Team as a PhD student! Fletcher will be looking at hydroclimate extremes in climate model projections and observations with a focus on drought recovery. He is co-advised by Dr. Geeta Persad. Welcome Fletcher!
August 2025: Our paper "The spatial extent of heat waves has changed over the past four decades" led by Dr. Chris Skinner was published in Communications Earth and Environment. You can read it here!
July 2025: Tanner won best poster presentation at the Contemporary Advances in Statistics of Extremes (CASE) Workshop Program, hosted by the University of Missouri. He shared his work on using statistics and machine learning methods to predict the drivers of wildfire severity in the western United States. Congratulations, Tanner!
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!