Noah S. Diffenbaugh Research Group

Stanford University

What climate phenomena most directly drive impacts on people and ecosystems at regional scales? The group quantifies how fine-scale climate processes and extreme events drive impacts on water resources, agriculture, health and poverty vulnerability using numerical modeling and data analysis. Researchers combine high-resolution climate modeling, machine learning attribution, and statistical downscaling to detect and attribute recent extreme heat, precipitation, and wildfire-smoke changes. They develop integrated frameworks linking climate-driven hazards to economic and health outcomes to estimate mortality and monetized damages from wildfire smoke and extreme heat. The lab evaluates adaptation and mitigation scenarios to predict timing and probabilities of regional warming thresholds and future extremes.