Karen McKinnon has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER award for her research on heat extremes. She studies extreme heat and climate change as an assistant professor with both the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the department of statistics and data science.
This award, administered by the NSF’s Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences division, provides McKinnon with more than $944,000 over a five-year period. It recognizes her innovative approach to quantifying the rate at which the hottest days are warming compared to average temperatures, a critical factor in understanding the increasing severity of heat waves.
McKinnon’s proposal, “Understanding Changes in Summertime Continental Temperature Extremes,” addresses the escalating threat of heat waves in a warming world. The NSF award will support her efforts to advance our understanding of heat waves in the face of climate change.
