Join us for a discussion about urban wildfires in the context of a changing climate.
Relevant Resources:
About the Event
The recent wildfires in the greater Los Angeles area call attention to the risks to people and property in urban areas. We hosted a Climate Conversation to highlight the lessons learned and opportunities for science to support impacted communities, drawing on experience from other major urban fires in the last few years. The event unpacked the range of factors that are contributing to urban wildfire risk, and explored the impacts on health, infrastructure, and other human systems, as well as discussed how communities can prepare and move forward in the aftermath of a disaster.
Climate Conversations: Pathways to Action is a monthly webinar series from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that aims to convene high-level, cross-cutting, nonpartisan conversations about issues relevant to policy action on climate change.
Participant Bios
Michael Méndez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine and Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (through a National Science Foundation Early Faculty Career Award). His first book “Climate Change from the Streets,” published through Yale University Press (2020) was the winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, given to the best book in the field of international environmental studies and politics. In 2021, he received the National Academies of Sciences' Henry and Bryna David Endowment Award for his wildfire and migrant research. He was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2022, and the William R. and June Dale Scholar Prize in 2023. His current research focuses on climate-induced disasters and social vulnerability.
Christine Wiedinmyer is the Associate Director for Science at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. A former scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Dr. Wiedinmyer holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Wiedinmyer’s research focuses on the identification and quantification of various emission sources, including wildfires and fires in the wildland-urban interface, and modeling the transport and fate of emitted pollutants in the atmosphere.
Joshua Weil is an Emergency Physician from Santa Rosa, CA with almost 30 years of experience in the field. He has done disaster relief work nationally and internationally, and in 2017 lived a disaster directly when the Tubbs Fire in Northern California destroyed his home while he was responsible for directing the evacuation of Kaiser Hospital Santa Rosa.
