iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

I had a career first this week - I was on the news! I talked about the extreme rain event in St. Louis in July 2022 and how my recent publication estimates that it is about twice as likely as we previously thought. YouTube link to the interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ7n...

youtube.com

Weather Extra: St. Louis' historic 2022 flooding

YouTube video by FOX 2 St. Louis

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

-"So, like, remember that crazy St. Louis flood back in July 2022? TBH, it was wild. Everyone was saying it was a “1-in-1,000-year” event. Can’t even imagine dealing with that. But hold up, fam. Turns out, maybe it wasn’t that extra."

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

-"It’s not just random chance, fam. Climate change is the ultimate puppeteer, pulling the strings on our weather patterns, and the results are, well, not cute."

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Here are some of my favorite highlights: -"The data’s just not thicc enough." -"If we’re building for a “1-in-1,000-year” storm when it could be more frequent, that’s a major vibe check fail." -"Sparse data is a major vibe kill."

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

A new twist to science communication: AI-generated articles trained on science press releases. One of these was written about my recently published study on extreme precipitation in the Central US. The training prompt must have been, um, interesting...

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I love this synopsis of our paper 😆

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

The paper can be found here: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

journals.ametsoc.org

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Finally, this project from my postdoc facilitated a pivot in terms of my research interests that culminated in me landing my current job at CIRES/CU Boulder working with NOAA PSL on high-resolution modeling for modernizing estimates of probable maximum precipitation! (end)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

This new approach also included enough historical and modern/future data to estimate that the rainfall amount from this extreme event is about 2-4 times more likely to occur now and in the future compared to the preceding ~1,000 years. (5/6)

Return period estimate for the July 2022 rainfall event: red boxplot indicates the event will happen more frequently in the future (2022-2100) relative to other historical periods (black, blue, orange boxplots).

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

This new “blended dataset” allowed me to refine the estimate of the storm’s rainfall over St. Louis and Kentucky to a ~1-in-530-year and ~1-in-280-year event, respectively, and reduced the uncertainty bars in this calculation by ~24-94% (4/6)

Top two rows show the NOAA Atlas 14 width of 90% confidence interval in designating a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event at individual rain gauges. Bottom five rows show more precise estimates based on this study’s various methods.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I sought to improve the assessment of this storm by developing a new method that combined over a century of rainfall observations from dozens of rain gauges with 1,250 years of climate model simulations spanning 850 to 2100 CE, thus greatly lengthening the data record. (3/6)

Blended dataset for St. Louis (STL) and eastern Kentucky (EKY) includes over a century of observation data and 1,250 years of climate model ensemble data.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

This event was declared a 1-in-1,000-year event and caused quite a stir in the media, but a deeper look into the historical rainfall data revealed HUGE uncertainty bars on making such a declaration - mainly because it was made using only a few decades of observations (2/6)

Estimates of 24-hr precipitation depth constituting events of differing frequencies. Red and green lines show 90% confidence interval, which spans more than 7 inches at the 1-in-1,000-year event level.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

🌧️ Science Alert 🌧️ I am pleased to share newly published work that blends precipitation from both observations and climate models to more precisely assess an extreme precipitation event that took place in July 2022 and caused major flooding across St. Louis, MO and eastern Kentucky (1/6)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Let me know if you'd like to see the same report for a different location

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Year-end report for 2024 daily high temperature from the station at Boulder's NOAA lab: days warmer than the historical mean (1893-2023) outnumbered colder days by ~2.3 to 1

Daily high temperature in Boulder, CO for 2024 compared to the historical range of daily high temperatures between 1893 and 2023

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

In the lead up to the #PalisadesFire and #EatonFire (using data from a nearby station at UCLA), Southern California experienced one of its wettest periods on record during Jan-Apr 2024 and has not had meaningful rainfall since 🤯 Mindblowingly favorable meteorological conditions for large wildfires

Cumulative daily rainfall for 2024 from a precipitation station at UCLA. Data is shown for each year (individual lines) between 1938 and 2024. Older lines are blue and more recent lines are red.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

The last ClimateDataVisualizer example for AGU is the August 20, 2023 rainfall event in Death Valley NP from remnants of Hurricane Hilary. This event was the single highest recorded day since 1912 and accounted for an entire year's worth of 🌧️ in a single day

Annual cycle of rainfall from Death Valley National Park overlaying 2023 daily rainfall onto the five wettest calendar days for the period 1912-2022.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

Today’s ClimateDataVisualizer example for AGU is annual rainfall for Western Maui in the years preceding 2023’s devastating wildfire. Some of the lowest annual rainfall totals since 1920 occurred in the last few years, drying out the region and priming it for a severe wildfire.

Cumulative rainfall history since 1920 overlaid by cumulative rainfall for years 2020-2023 for a region encompassing Western Maui.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

Today’s ClimateDataVisualizer example for AGU is the near-record 2023 cumulative rainfall year in Southern Vermont, which includes an extreme rainfall event on July 10-11. The lines are colored by year and show that as the climate warms, total annual rainfall tends to increase.

Cumulative rainfall history since 1885 overlaid by 2023 cumulative rainfall for a region encompassing Southern Vermont.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 12/12/2023

Today’s ClimateDataVizualizer example for AGU is the 2021 Pacific NW heat dome as shown in Portland, OR. NOAA ACIS observations show daily high temps on June 26-28, 2021 up to 9°F higher than any previous day since 1874. In fact, the Portland-wide avg from 4 stations topped out at 115°F on June 28!

Daily high temperature history from 1874 to 2020 overlaid by 2021 daily high temperature for a region encompassing Portland, OR.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

This storm inspired me to create this web tool and I am also excited to share that I will be presenting a poster at the virtual AGU session in January on a new study of mine that analyzes the historical context of this event's rainfall! Hope to see you there! (6/6)

Daily rainfall history from 1893 to 2021 overlaid by 2022 daily rainfall for a region encompassing St. Louis and St. Charles, MO.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

This week, I'll share a few examples of recent extreme climate events and how you can use the web tool to explore them. First up is the extreme rainfall event on July 26, 2022 in St. Louis. Check out how extreme this event was relative to previous yearly max rain events! (5/6)

History of rx1 day (annual daily max) rainfall in a region encompassing St. Louis and St. Charles, MO.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

A user help guide is available to walk users through the steps of using the tool. I plan on adding new features to the website in the future like daily weather maps of temp and precip from the NOAA ACIS gridded dataset. (4/6)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

I currently have two different types of data visualizations (annual cycle and time series) for four daily climate variables: maximum temp, minimum temp, rainfall, and snowfall. Annual cumulative plots are also available for rainfall and snowfall. (3/6)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

Climate Data Visualizer is designed for users to visualize daily and extreme temp/precip within the context of local climate history. The tool queries data from NOAA ACIS - an amazing database of daily station-based observations going back to the late 1800s. (2/6)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

Although I am attending AGU virtually this year with a newborn at home, I wanted to share a climate data web tool I have been working on over the past several months called Climate Data Visualizer. Give it a try at climate-data-viz.com! A quick 🧵(1/6)

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

This storm inspired me to create this web tool and I am also excited to share that I will be presenting a poster at the virtual #AGU session in January on a new study of mine that analyzes the historical context of this event's rainfall! Hope to see you there!

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 30/09/2023

Here's what yesterday looks like against the entire 70+ year history of rainfall data from JFK

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 30/09/2023

Time series of annual daily max rainfall (rx1 day) from JFK Airport. Yesterday's 24 total of 8.05 inches beat the previous record from 2011 by about 0.25 inches!

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 16/09/2023

I’m not as familiar with similar global station-based networks, but if there are any that can be webscraped with ease, I could add it!

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 16/09/2023

Only US data because the station network I use is operated by NOAA and it is incredibly fast to webscrape via Python. I used this dataset for a research project I am working on looking at extreme rainfall in the US.

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 15/09/2023

I should also mention that the app leverages the use of NOAA ACIS station data, which is a phenomenal public resource! I would love feedback on functionality that should be added to the app and also if any errors are encountered while using it!

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Alex Thompson, PhD @ajtclimate.bsky.social · 15/09/2023

For my first post on 🟦 I want to share a Python-based app I am making that visualizes the complete climate history of any place in the US. It's a work-in-progress, but I plan to make it a standalone website in the near future! The current app can be accessed here: sites.google.com/view/ajtclim...

This is an example of a data visualization for daily high temperature in St. Louis, Missouri

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