Rossbypalooza 2024: A Student-led Summer School on Climate and Extreme Events Conference; Chicago, Illinois; July 22-August 2, 2024

This award supports a two-week workshop to be held in summer 2024 in the Geophysical Sciences Department at the University of Chicago. The workshop is named in honor of Carl-Gustaf Rossby, an early pioneer of atmospheric science and department chair at the university. The event is expected to draw a group of 30 to 40 graduate students and early-career scientists who will attend a series of lectures and participate in hackathon-style research projects performed in small groups. As in previous years the workshop is organized and run by graduate students and postdocs at the university with minimal input by Chicago faculty. The theme of this year's Rossbypalooza is the relationship between climate and extreme events, motivated by increases in the frequency and severity of heat waves, torrential rain, wildfires, and other extreme events brought on by the warming of Earth's climate. The workshop addresses multiple challenges faced by researchers attempting to understand and quantify the impact of climate change on extreme events. One challenge is to accurately quantify the effect of climate change on extreme events given that extreme events are, by definition, rare and thus undersampled. The workshop also addresses the theoretical basis for climate-extreme event connections and considers the application of emerging techniques such as machine learning for understanding and anticipating climate-induced extreme event change. Funds provided here support travel for 25 participants selected through a competitive process. The award also covers breakfast and lunch for all participants along with travel support for four guest speakers. The topic of the workshop is of both societal and scientific interest as the dependence of weather extremes on global temperature is poorly understood scientifically and also important for efforts to adapt to climate change. The work also has broader impacts through its effort to train the next generation of climate scientists. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.