Makoto Kelp

Our new preprint proposes a framework for predicting summertime temperature jumps on 1-5 year timescales.

eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

Excellent coverage of our study out today on climate impacts on wildfire smoke and related health impacts.

Environmental Hazard Adaptation Atlas | ECHO Lab | Stanford University Studying the impacts of environmental change on human health and well-being

We are excited to announce the release of the Environmental Hazard Adaptation Atlas, an effort to map ongoing and future environmental hazards and their impacts on society, and to provide up to date evidence on what policies and interventions work to reduce impacts: adaptationatlas.org. Quick thread

Interested candidates should review the group’s research page and complete the Google Form on the website (makotokelp.com/openings/) before applying. I will reach out to applicants to set up a Zoom call for admissions. Ideal backgrounds include atmos sci, CS, env science & engineering, data science

🚨I’m recruiting 1-2 PhD students for my Air Quality Data Science 🌐 group @utah.edu (start Fall ’26), working on multimodal machine learning applications for atmospheric chemistry (wildfires, ozone, dust). How to apply below. Please repost & ping me with recommendations!

What if companies disclosed climate risk the same way insurers analyze it: with event-based probabilistic models that show what could happen, when, and with what likelihood?

Check out our new paper in Environmental Research: Climate to learn more!
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Starting today I am an assistant professor at Indiana University in the School of Public & Environmental Affairs. Reach out if you want to work together, especially if you are a prospective PhD student or postdoc!

smoke impacts of prescribed burning — ECHO: Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab | Stanford University Yes, it almost certainly does, but benefits in terms of net smoke reductions take a few years to be realized.   By: Marshall Burke Wildfire smoke is a rapidly growing environmental health haz...

Does prescribed burning reduce overall smoke from wildfire? We have 2 new papers that try to quantify. Answer: each acre Rx burned yields ≥3x more reduction in future wildfire smoke than is emitted in the Rx burn. But can take years to realize benefits.
www.stanfordecholab.com/blog/prescri...

The Secretary of Commerce's new policy requiring his personal review of all NOAA contracts over $100,000 is directly harming American science. 🧪

How do I know? Because this morning, twelve of America's rising leaders in climate science (including myself) were furloughed.

Where There’s Fire, There’s Smoke New app estimates health impacts of breathing smoke from wildfires

New @harvard.edu research, along w/ Dr. @tinaliu.bsky.social, launches an online platform to help identify areas in need of controlled burns or other #wildfire management strategies, to increase safety and reduce smoke exposure. 🔥

More: seas.harvard.edu/news/2025/06...

@soa-mazing.bsky.social

Managing Smoke Risk from Wildland Fires: Northern California as a Case Study Smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from increasing wildfires in the western United States threatens public health. While land managers often prioritize reducing wildfire risk in the wildland-urban ...

🔥 Fighting fire with data

Better-targeted land management in just 3.5% of Northern California could have cut wildfire smoke exposure by 17.6% in 2020.

Researchers have now built a smoke risk index to guide future decisions.

🔗 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

#SciComm #Wildfires #AirQuality 🧪

Happy to announce that Karina Chung's paper on wildfires, smoke risk, and land management in the western US is now published in ES&T! Karina started working on the project with us as a freshman at Harvard!

Paper: doi.org/10.1021/acs....
(Additional links in comments)

Study shows controlled burns can reduce wildfire intensity and smoke pollution A new Stanford-led study finds that controlled, low-intensity fires known as prescribed burns can slash wildfire intensity and dangerous smoke pollution across the western United States.

Prescribed burns can reduce wildfire severity by 16% and smoke pollution by 14%, a Stanford study finds.

“The smoke is a silent and far-reaching hazard, and prescribed fire may be one of the few tools that actually reduces total smoke exposure.” - senior fellow Marshall Burke

🔗 bit.ly/4nlf1v9

That’s a cost-benefits trade off that we are actively researching. But in terms of the effectiveness of prescribed fire, we see that it overall saves smoke emissions into the air

Thanks to a great team of coauthors!
@marshallburke.bsky.social @minghaoqiu.bsky.social @ivanhigueram.com @tinaliu.bsky.social and @noahdiffenbaugh!

Effect of Recent Prescribed Burning and Land Management on Wildfire Burn Severity and Smoke Emissions in the Western United States Prescribed fires changed 2020 wildfire burn severity by −16% in the western US and smoke emissions by −101 kg per acre in California Fire treatments in the wildland-urban interface were less effe...

Full article can be found here:
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Our new paper shows how recent prescribed (Rx) burns in the western US impacted later wildfires. We find that Rx fires reduced wildfire severity + net smoke emissions, even when factoring in smoke from Rx fires. But, we find that these Rx fires were less effective in the wildland-urban interface.

What happens to science under autocracy? The rise of the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany provides an (admittedly extreme) example. Prior to the early 1930s, scientists at German institutions won a third of Nobels. 10 years later, that number was 5%, and has never recovered.

An informative new tool to make risks from natural hazards visible and accessible - not just for scientists, but also for planners, emergency managers, and other professionals across disciplines.
Tool: experience.arcgis.com/experience/1...
Background story: news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/04/22/a...

🚨Reminder: Due at the end of this month! Please apply and forward to graduating PhD students and early-career postdocs. We expect to give partial funding support for all accepted participants, and they are automatically enrolled in the Atmospheric Chemistry GRC, thanks!

Identifying a Pattern of Predictable Decadal North Pacific SST Variability in Historical Observations A pattern of predictable sea surface temperature variability in the North Pacific Ocean is identified by a neural network trained on CMIP6 models The neural network skillfully predicts the same p...

New paper by me and Noah Diffenbaugh on identifying predictable Pacific variability in the observational record 1/6 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

YouTube video by Karina Chung Technical Demo - SMRT-Flames Tool

Accompanying the paper, Karina also created a YouTube video demoing the Earth Engine tool, very cool!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_yD...

This project was co-led by @tinaliu.bsky.social and myself

🚨Preprint alert: Led by Karina Chung (an undergrad!), we develop a wildfire smoke risk index that accounts for historical burned area, fuel consumption, and customized land management in Google Earth Engine 🌎 A useful tool to weigh risk-outcome scenarios 🔥

eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

This year's atmospheric chemistry GRC will be preceded by the first-ever atmospheric chemistry GRS for early-career scientists! I hope you (or your early career colleagues) will consider joining us in Maine this summer. Policies and application instructions here: www.grc.org/atmospheric-...

Atmospheric Chemistry colleagues! consider applying to attend this year's Atmospheric Chemistry GRC to join us in Maine and hear about the exciting advances in our field! See the link for more details: www.grc.org/atmospheric-...

Improved daily PM2.5 estimates in India reveal inequalities in recent enhancement of air quality Developed PM2.5 estimates unveiled inequalities in PM2.5 exposure, emphasizing need for equitable air quality control policies.

Need high resolution daily air pollution data for India? We've got you. Great new work led by Ayako Kawano developing satellite+ML-based measures of PM2.5 going back decades, and using it to evaluate recent progress in improving air quality. www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Setting fire to a million acres of California could cut smoke by half As California expands its prescribed burning efforts, a study of more than 180 such projects suggests they are an effective way to reduce a blaze's intensity and smoke

Prescribed burning can reduce the severity and amount of smoke from wildfires that burn those areas later on, even when accounting for smoke from the prescribed burns themselves, according to new analysis of California’s record-breaking 2020 fire season from @soa-mazing.bsky.social etal. 🧪

This article highlights some of our work over the last few years on NW India's agricultural fires, a seasonal and episodic source of regional air pollution. It was great to talk to Karishma Mehrotra at WaPo, and these anecdotes from farmers are especially important. #fires 🔥 #AirPollution 💨 #India

Here's the atmospheric chemistry starter pack! Let me know if you'd like to join! Looking forward to hearing about everyone's fun science on bluesky!
go.bsky.app/GgmWgSo