A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.
NSF Update
Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.
Now by Directorate...
1/11
☹️ Takes ~5 days for the system to recover after a storm like that. Hopefully you’re able to get moving soon!
Something to consider as disagreement over Federal funding for rail infrastructure remains a live issue.
We argue that public investment in rail upgrades can address this—elsewhere, upgrades have improved safety, which has its own merits, but also reduce the need for railroads to change their operations in response to weather, relieving congestion.
A two-panel chart plotting rail delays against daily average temperature (°C). The top panel shows "Cumulative minutes of delay" categorized by spatial lag (0=purple, 10=teal, 20=yellow). Delays spike significantly in extreme cold (<-20°C) for higher cumulative lags, with the 20-lag series reaching ~150 minutes and the 10-lag series ~100 minutes. Between 0°C and 30°C, delays are near zero. Extreme heat (>30°C) shows a minor increase (under 30 minutes). The bottom histogram displays temperature frequency, showing that most station-days occur between 5°C and 25°C, making extreme temperatures rare.
But it's not just that. Due to the fixed, network nature of railways, efforts to manage weather risk actually result in a congestion externality—propagating delays—with most delay coming from decisions at nearby stations. Here, that's "spatial lag" > 0:
A coefficient plot with error bars showing the "Change in speed of Amtrak trains" (y-axis) across different bins of "Daily average temperature (°C)" (x-axis). Extreme Cold: There is a significant reduction in train speed during extreme cold. At temperatures below -20°C, the speed change drops to approximately -2.2 miles per hour. Moderate Temperatures: As temperatures rise from -20°C, the speed deficit gradually shrinks, reaching a baseline of 0 mph in the 15–20°C range. Heat: In the 20–30°C range, there is again a decrease in speed (around -0.5 to -0.8 mph). However, for temperatures above 30°C, the data points show a positive change, indicating an increase in speed relative to the baseline. Uncertainty: Error bars indicate the confidence intervals for each temperature bin, which are widest at the extremes (<-20°C and 30+°C).
But there's good news: we also find that railroads are adapted to their local climate, might be learning from prior accidents, and change train speed and throughput (cancellations!) in response to weather. Sorry for the delay, it's because they care.
A two-panel vertical chart sharing a horizontal axis labeled "Daily average temperature (°C)," divided into bins ranging from <-20°C to 30+°C. Top Panel: A plot showing the "Percent change" in rail accidents compared to a baseline (10–15°C). Two data series are plotted with error bars: Red (All rail accidents): Shows a sharp increase as temperatures drop, peaking at a 75% increase when temperatures are <-20°C. In hot weather (>30°C), the increase is smaller (below 10%). Blue (Rail accidents with 1+ casualties): Rising to 65% at <-20°C. However, it shows a larger 25% increase at temperatures above 30°C. Bottom Panel: A gray histogram showing the "Percent of county-days" for the corresponding temperature bins. The distribution indicates that extreme cold (<-10°C) and extreme heat (>30°C) are rare. Most county-days fall between 5°C and 25°C, a peak at 20–25°C.
Unsurprisingly, we find that exposure to extreme cold, heat, and rain increase accidents. But the magnitude surprised us: while rail is very safe overall, weather is responsible for 8–10% of accidents and related casualties—and railroads vastly underreport it as a cause.
A screenshot of the first page of the linked published article from the Journal of Public Economics.
Was your train delayed or cancelled this weekend? Mine was. Do you crave research that speaks to this particular experience? Look no further. In a new paper,
@xinmingdu.bsky.social and I quantify how much rail safety and operations are affected by the weather.
This is figure 2, which shows temperature–mortality relationship across Europe.
A study in Nature Climate Change quantifies the potential for extreme heat events in Europe to generate mass mortality and projects tens of thousands of excess deaths. go.nature.com/483zJc3 🧪
For those who want a figure! "... before 2003, sequencing a hot day after another hot day can nearly double the mortality effect of that hot day ... the compounding model yields an [Aug. 2003] death toll that is closer to the total ... than the standard model ..."
🚨The Moore Lab at UC Davis is hiring!🚨
Post-doc for a project with @adamsobel.bsky.social on the valuation of climate information for adaptation
Could be a good fit for an environmental economist or a climate scientist - flexible start date and location
Apply by Dec 1st: recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07346
Mercifully averted @ivanhigueram.com's hypothetical LinkedIn version of this (... “Some look at the world as it is and ask why. We looked at environmental hazards and said… why not us?” 🌟 #ProudMoment #ChangeMakers #Humbled #ClimateWarriors #Innovation #Leadership #AtlasDrop). Check out the site!
Hsiang & Burke NYT op-ed on climate change (incl. citations]: "We predict that workers will become less productive, less happy & more prone to safety errors. Demands on public services will increase while the cost of servicing new debt will probably rise." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...
it is true, you have discovered my side gig
Topically, OSHA is currently holding hearings about a proposed workplace heat exposure rule (www.osha.gov/heat-exposur...). Final rule will be out too late to protect people this summer, but weeks like this would be safer with a Federal backstop in the 43 states that don’t have their own standards.
NEW: The Trump administration proposes nearly $1.7 billion in cuts to NOAA that, if passed, could decimate weather and climate research, including funding to nine California institutions.
The @sfchronicle.com has obtained a White House document detailing the proposed budget cuts. Read it here:
🚨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...
Reupping this trade model run on 25% MEX, 25% CAN, and 10% PRC cross sector import tariffs.
Because…they’re back!!!
thousands of excess deaths resulting from extreme heat conditions at increasing levels of global temperature
NEW: Mass heat mortality events are coming. In our new preprint, we project tens of thousands of deaths per week in Europe, if the weather patterns that produced heat waves historically happen again at future -- or even current -- global temperatures.
eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
Wildfire smoke routinely exceeds national air quality stds. Officials can seek exemptions for smoke events, but thats getting more complicated as smoke becomes more commonplace. They can also make steeper cuts to other sources of pollution — but that may not work if smoke events continue to ⬆️.
New paper characterizing trends in wildfire smoke PM2.5 in the US, incl. updated daily dataset and implications for air quality regulation. Below is animation of 2023.
Paper: eartharxiv.org/repository/v...
Data (BETA version): www.stanfordecholab.com/wildfire_smoke
Quick thread:
Thanks, Judy!
Photo from the inside of a city bus looking out, focused on the narrow windowsill, in which a label has been pasted reading “THIS MORTAL COIL” in all-caps. The label is red with raised white letters, like would be made from an old style label-maker one might have found at an elementary school in the 80s.
I was halfway home from the airport when this guerrilla poetry caught my eye on the M60 this evening. Fitting label for a city bus.
My chapter together with @ajsw.info
on "Forecasting the Macroeconomic Effects of Physical Climate Risk" has now been published in the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Macroeconomic Forecasting
* Please Share *
We are hiring a full-time two-year RA! (or pre-doc?). Very excited about this position because you could be paired to work with many awesome economists at Batten (Ben Castleman, Andrew Simon, Derek Wu, Tim Layton) and myself!
More info down here 👇
jobs.virginia.edu/us/en/job/R0...
Infographic of The World's Deadliest Animals showing Number of people killed by animals per year. Mosquito is first at 725,000, followed by human at 475,000. Then it's snake (50,000), dog (25,000), and then a bunch of animals at 10,000 or below: tsetse fly, assassin bug, freshwater snail, ascaris roundworm, tapeworm, crocodile, hippo, elephant, lion, wolf, shark.
Even if they weren't so deadly, climate change increasing the habitable area for mosquitoes is terrible because they are extremely annoying.
The Environmental Inequality Lab is hiring 2 new pre-docs to join our team! We do research in environmental economics but those with interests in labor/public/urban/spatial/development economics should def apply. Apply here: tinyurl.com/EIL-pre-doc
@AereOrg
Adjusting energy assistance programs to cover heat-protective spending as well as cold-protective spending is a no-brainer adaptation strategy
To all economics PhD applicants, we would like to draw your attention to the PhD in Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
The PhD is for economists and scientists interested in issues related to the environment, climate change, energy, development, poverty, health, transport, inequality..
120 CEA alumni urge congressional action to support the Current Population Survey.
Grateful to Bernanke, Boskin, Furman, Heckman, Hubbard, Stiglitz & so many others for speaking up.
📉📈 #️⃣#️⃣
www.friendsofbls.org/updates/2024...
