Heat Experts

Heat and environmental justice, heat and global health, heat warning systems development, heat action plans evaluation, monitoring and measuring extreme heat and micro-heat islands, compounded impacts of heat and other climate hazards

California climate, climate change connections to wildfire and drought, shifts in nature in response to climate change

Heat waves, the relationship between weather extremes and large-scale climate change, precipitation and drought, the relationship between climate and society, extreme weather and climate impacts on wildfire, energy, ecosystems, water resources and public health

Regional and global climate variability and change, including improving predictions of precipitation extremes in California, off-season heat waves and their impact on snowpack and water resources, and heat related health impacts on populations in California

Research focuses on understanding interactions between the hydroclimate, water systems, and environmental and human health, leads the ecohydrology group in the SoCal Heat Hub at Scripps, which aims to understand how vegetation and water can correspond to health-impact relevant change in temperature

Environmental health and climate change, health impacts of climate change, water-energy-food-health nexus

Mortality and morbidity trends in heath, health effects of wildfire smoke, clean energy

Climate-sensitive diseases, mortality and morbidity trends in heat, impact of heat on exercise, transportation, infant mortality, heat and disease

Mental health impacts of climate change; mindfulness and resilience training in context of climate related disasters

Impact of heat on mail-delivered medications for diabetes, which can inactivate the medication; in San Diego this can be an issue for east county areas which reach higher temperatures than the coast

Dehydration, physiological impacts of heat, heat stroke, inpatient geriatric care, delirium, health-issues related to heat in vulnerable populations like seniors

Urban heat’s disproportionate impact on low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations, urban planning and how trees/greenery planted as well as changing building materials to pale colors could offset urban heat

Regional power system integration and the increasing challenges of west-wide extreme weather events

Developing soft materials, such as hydrogels, that can be mixed into soil to retain water, aiding small farms that have less water available for irrigation due to climate change

Wearable cooling technology; fundamentals of heat transfer; and materials for storing thermal energy and converting it to electrical energy

Lithium-ion batteries that perform well in extreme heat and cold

Heat’s impact on developing countries/impacts to productivity, cognitive abilities, time use and how India is one of the countries most impacted by heat

High temperatures’ effects on cognitive abilities/ test scores, economic impact of labor loss during heat waves for workers in exposed climates, by 2100, the U.S. will lose 1.8 billion labor hours every year, equal to $170 billion in lost wages

How to integrate renewable energy on the power grid, what happens when extreme heat overloads the grid. Impact of grid outages on communities

Principal investigator of DERConnect, an NSF-funded testbed to integrate renewables into the grid, expert on solar forecasting, how extreme heat impacts the power grid and efforts to decarbonize it

Hotter temperatures being associated with more murders in Mexico, how warmer and wetter weather due to climate change leads impacts health with more cases of hookworm and mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika

Responses by the electric power system, impacts on demand for electricity and interactions between electric grids and wildfires