Team Research

Georgia faces an increasing array of challenges from extreme weather events, including hurricanes, coastal flooding, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and severe storms. These hazards threaten public health, agricultural output, infrastructure reliability, and the state’s ecosystems, and are com-pounded by shifts in population, long-term climate trends, land use, and land cover. Several extreme events highlight this vulnerability. The southeastern United States drought of 2016 was the driest year on record and the second driest since 1894 [5]. These ideal conditions produced an outbreak of wildfires that stretched firefighting resources dangerously thin [2]. In stark contrast, Hurricane Helene threatened power distribution resources that could have left Atlanta without electricity for up to three weeks [4]. 

To protect Georgia’s economy, infrastructure, and population from escalating climate risks, high-resolution, state-of-the-science forecasts are needed. Developing such forecasts requires both a strong physical understanding of the drivers that make extreme events in the Southeast more likely, and the integration of advanced data-driven methods such as machine learning and deep learning. Meanwhile, it is paramount that advanced forecasts are paired with delivery mechanisms that provide actionable information for varying timescales — from enabling rapid emergency response to long-term infrastructure planning. A key challenge to developing these tools lies in uniting expertise across disciplines by connecting experts in climatology and forecasting with those who disseminate and implement forecasts to manage natural hazards posed by climate extremes. We propose a series of half-day workshops to bring together experts in these fields to explore the needs for improved climate forecasting. 

Through these workshops we seek to develop a comprehensive, high-resolution forecasting and warning system to strengthen Georgia’s resilience against extreme climate events. The system will implement advanced numerical weather prediction by leveraging the University of Georgia’s Weather Research and Forecasting Club simulations [6]. These forecasts will be calibrated with under-utilized data from the UGA Weather Network and refined through classical statistical cor-rection techniques and novel AI-driven approaches. 

However, our goal is not only to generate advanced forecasts but to ensure they translate into actionable, practical benefits for communities, agencies, and decision-makers. For instance, engi-neers designing large-scale infrastructure systems benefit from improved climate forecasting, which improves the accuracy in the design loads, avoiding under- or over-designing infrastructure [3]. It can also help enable engineers to create more adaptive designs, such as modular systems that could accommodate a changing environment [1]. Likewise, early warning systems and impact-based forecasts can save lives by providing communities and emergency managers with timely, targeted information about imminent hazards. Such effective forecast implementation requires collaboration among agencies, targeted outreach, and strategies for embedding resilience education into public and institutional decision-making, for which our interdisciplinary team is well suited. We plan to target each of these needs, beginning by presenting our forecasts in stakeholder-friendly formats. These goals align closely with current federal funding priorities and we have identified grant oppor-tunities to support this work, including the NSF Growing Convergence Research (GCR), NASA INNOVATE, and NOAA Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicitations. Our multidisciplinary team uniquely positions us to develop the tools to prepare for growing climate hazards and provide these tools in a useful format to those charged with protecting Georgia’s economic, agricultural, and natural resources. 

Team Lead

Hu, Weiming
weiming@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Department of Geography

Team Members

Fastovich, David
fastovich@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Department of Geography

Knox, Pam
pknox@uga.edu
College: College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences
Department: Department of Crop & Soil Sciences

Ritchie, Michelle
michelle.ritchie@uga.edu
College: College of Public Health
Department: Institute for Disaster Management

Helmrich, Alysha
ah06984@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural & Mechanical Engineering

Nelson, Don
dnelson@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Department of Anthropology

Shannon, Jerry
jshannon@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Department of Geography 

Anderson, Kayla
Kayla.Anderson@uga.edu
College: Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Department of Geography