In my inaugural "Climate Change Conversations" segment, I have a (lightly edited) discussion with Drs. Sam Bartusek, Kai Kornhuber, and Mingfang Ting (all of Columbia University) on their recent paper on the extraordinary and record-shattering U.S. Pacific Northwest/Southwest Canadian heatwave of June 2021 (published in Nature Climate Change in November 2022).

In this segment, we explore not only the role of climate change in amplifying the specific 2021 event, as well as the non-linear vicious cycle feedbacks that substantially contributed to its severity, but also the scientific methods and philosophies surrounding the study of "extreme extremes" (i.e., true outliers or "grey swan" events) amid a rapidly changing climate and Earth system.

Paper reference: Bartusek, S., Kornhuber, K. & Ting, M. 2021 North American heatwave amplified by climate change-driven nonlinear interactions. Nature Climate Change (2022).