I'm very lucky to have been selected as a Residential Faculty Fellow with the University of Minnesota’s Instute for Advanced Study for next academic year. That support, which grants me a semester-long release for teaching, will allow me to get started writing a book on the ‘coming age of megadrought’ with my friend and colleague Toby Ault.
Now is the right time for a general book on megadrought because the global research community have assembled a treasure trove of natural climate records that show exactly when and where these extraordinary decade or multi-decade long droughts have occurred. And because a warmer world is likely to one plagued by longer and more severe droughts, the public needs to understand what exactly climate science is able to say about the risk of such unparalleled droughts happening again in the near future.
Neither Toby or I have ever tackled a full-length book before, so my residence at IAS will give an enormous boost to this project. Now we need to get going for real on this job.
