May 19, 2023

UArizona experts available to discuss extreme heat

TUCSON, Ariz. — University of Arizona researchers from a variety of disciplines are available to speak about the national and global impact of extreme heat.

The Global Meteorological Organization on Wednesday announced that "global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels" between 2023 and 2027, largely due to greenhouse gas emissions and a naturally occurring El Niño climate pattern in the coming months.

The following UArizona climate scientists and climate policy experts are available to speak about increasingly extreme heat.

Theresa Crimmins is a research professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is the director of the USA National Phenology Network, based at UArizona. Crimmins' team, in partnership with scientists around the world, track when plants and animals undergo seasonal life cycle events throughout the growing season, then use those observations to better understand how the timing of seasonal events like spring bud burst and bloom and animal migration are changing, which can have major implications for human health, agriculture, tourism, wildfires and more.
520-621-8523
theresam@arizona.edu

Zack Guido is an assistant research professor at the Arizona Institute for Resilience and School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Guido's research focuses on climate impacts, socio-environmental determinants of vulnerability and resilience, how people adapt to and cope with environmental stressors, and the role of weather and climate information in decision making. Guido has active research projects in the Southwest, the Caribbean and Africa.
623-826-0084
zguido@arizona.edu

Ladd Keith is an assistant professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and a faculty research associate at the UArizona Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. An urban planner by training, he has over a decade of experience planning for climate change with diverse stakeholders in cities across the U.S. His research explores heat policy and governance to help communities increase their heat resilience. He is the UArizona lead of the Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory, funded by the Department of Energy.
ladd@arizona.edu

Jessica Tierney is an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences who studies paleoclimatology, or past climate change, to learn about how the Earth system works and what's in store for the future. Her research group studies past climates using organic geochemical techniques and statistical climate reconstruction. She was a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.
jesst@arizona.edu

Xubin Zeng is the Agnese N. Haury chair and professor in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Collaborative. His research has focused on land-atmosphere-ocean interface processes, weather and climate modeling, hydrometeorology, and big data analytics. Specifically, he has worked on extreme heat, the projection of current warming, the attribution of extreme events and seasonal hurricane prediction.
520-621-4782
xubin@arizona.edu

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Media contacts:
Kyle Mittan
University Communications
520-626-4407
mittank@arizona.edu

Mikayla Mace Kelley
University Communications
520-621-1878
mikaylamace@arizona.edu

The University of Arizona, a land-grant university with two independently accredited medical schools, is one of the nation's top 50 public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report. Established in 1885, the university is widely recognized as a student-centric university and has been designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. The university ranked in the top 20 in 2021 in research expenditures among all public universities, according to the National Science Foundation, and is a leading Research 1 institution with $770 million in annual research expenditures. The university advances the frontiers of interdisciplinary scholarship and entrepreneurial partnerships as a member of the Association of American Universities, the 66 leading public and private research universities in the U.S. It benefits the state with an estimated economic impact of $4.1 billion annually.

The University of Arizona Land Acknowledgement