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James Doss-Gollin

@jdossgollin.bsky.social

1.9K followers 700 following 170 posts

Assistant prof @ Rice CEVE. New Haven kid in Houston, husband, dad, romanista, albirrojo. I study and simulate hydroclimate risks to enable adaptive, efficient, and resilient infrastructure. https://dossgollin-lab.github.io https://ai4climaterrr.rice.edu

dossgollin-lab.github.io

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · 9d

I literally only use this app to grumble

Man taking a stand in a town hall meeting saying "resiliency is not a real word"

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · 19d

I knew having kids would change my life, but I wasn’t ready for Spotify to pack my recommendations with 98% white noise and nature sounds

Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

IOPP Environment and Energy @iopp-environment.bsky.social · 27d

📊New research published in #ERCL - in the 'Focus on #ClimateChange Informed Catastrophe Modeling to Support #ClimateRisk Management'

🌧️Bayesian spatiotemporal nonstationary model quantifies robust increases in daily extreme rainfall across the Western Gulf Coast: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · 29d

Broke: I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing

Woke: I want AI to fill out when2meet / doodle / calendly polls so that I can complain about bad papers on social media

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Sep 8

Controversial take: every statistical analysis you do doesn’t need to be an R package.

Packages should be infrastructure and set a very high bar of software engineering for them. To disseminate your analysis, just make some well documented templates and tutorials

Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · Aug 1

What a clear, concise summary of the state and potential of renewable energy technologies. I particularly like how @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social includes the fact that nearly two-thirds of primary energy gets wasted today. Burning fossil fuels is a very inefficient way to provide useful services.

Screenshot of a paragraph about fossil fuels and wasted energy:

"As the Rocky Mountain Institute explains it: “Today, most energy is wasted along the way. Out of the 606 EJ [exajoules] of primary energy that entered the global energy system in 2019, some 33% (196 EJ) was lost on the supply side due to energy production and transportation losses before it ever reached a consumer. Another 30% (183 EJ) was lost on the demand side turning final energy into useful energy. That means that of the 606 EJ we put into our energy system per annum, only 227 EJ ended up providing useful energy, like heating a home or moving a truck. That is only 37% efficient overall.” That’s the old system, and it’s dirty, toxic to human health and the environment – and our politics – as well as the main driver of climate chaos. And wasteful."

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 29

How exciting is research according to...

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 25

Grumpy take: you cannot just write in your methods section "we used X software", you should cite and note the software but you still need to explain what the software is doing and why it's a good choice

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Talk about a profoundly shredded moral fabric

Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Aaron Weiss @aweiss.bsky.social · Jul 13

This country won't get serious about climate change until we're honest about flood and fire risk and insurance to match.

Imagine if Camp Mystic had been required to carry liability insurance in the event that its campers were flood victims. Those cabins would have been moved years ago.

Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.

FEMA exempted buildings at old and new sites

In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood.

After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood.

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 10

Nice! Can't make this one but would like to join in the future, is there a mailing list?

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 10

I understand everyone wants to cover the tragedy, but I would MUCH PREFER to be part of a public discussion of flood warning systems and safety BEFORE the next horrific disaster happens than AFTER.

As long we remain uncomfortable with proactive safety measures, people will keep dying.

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 8

Yeah I only work on floods where you assume the land surface is fixed, but places that have steep slopes, rich soils, and extreme rainfall tend to have major erosion (yes, not a geomorphologist but maybe why there's no dirt left?) if not deadly landslides

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Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Lawrence Vulis @lvulis.bsky.social · Jul 8

Early warning systems work. Early warning systems are crucial. This camp lost no one. See next skeet for quote. apnews.com/article/texa...

Quick action by one Texas summer camp leads to timely evacuations ahead of deadly flood

One local summer camp in the path of the disastrous flooding in central Texas was able to avoid any loss of life by closely monitoring weather reports.

apnews.com

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Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · Jul 5

But this does illustrate a few tragic and uncomfortable truths. The first is that even quite good weather forecasts do not automatically translate into life-saving predictions--there's a lot of other work that has to take place to contextualize the forecast and ensure it gets to right people.

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 8

Yeah I am primed for this because of Harvey -- Houston *is* a sprawling concrete mess! But drop 40" of rain on a huge flat area and it's going to flood, even without the sprawl.
Hard to imagine the soil type such that 15" of rapid rain on slopes doesn't cause flash flooding

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 8

(a) this is an answerable question, so we shouldn't _need_ to rely on my limited intuition
(b) I can hear the geomorphologists saying "there's a reason why you have a thin soil layer there" which is fair, but this is a thought experiment

James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 8

#Flood modelers: lots of chatter RE soil profiles in "flash flood alley". Do we really think floods would have been meaningfully different if you dropped that much rain on those hills, but they had more/deeper topsoils? Of course the effect is not zero, but not convinced it's big.

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 6

Also, taking the probability estimates at face value (which I don’t) it matters what variable you analyze. It can be a .2% event of X hour rainfall at one gauge without being a .2% discharge at every gauge

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 6

Is the problem that forecasters don’t have a crystal ball out that some responders think they can only react to crystal ball forecasts

Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Matt Lanza @mattlanza.bsky.social · Jul 5

Based on some of the reactions and comments I am absorbing by average people and elected officials, I think there needs to be a serious explanation and lesson on what the limits of predictability are for floods like the one in Texas.

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 5

Imagine being a forecaster who saw who was coming, issued the forecast and warning, was ignored, and then blamed

Reposted by James Doss-Gollin

Adam Pollack @crispapoll.bsky.social · Jul 5

And don’t remove observational capacities and cut funding to weather forecasting agencies and then blame them for “faulty” forecasts!

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 5

... (1) build less in areas known to be high risk, (2) stop over-relying on the "100 year flood", the disconnect between how it's communicated vs actually estimated is incredible, (3) dramatically improve early warning (starting with weather!), (4) create safe places to retreat to during floods

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James Doss-Gollin @jdossgollin.bsky.social · Jul 5

Horrific things are happening along the Guadalupe River right now. Absolutely devastating for the families of everyone missing.

I'm skeptical that we're going to build our way out of experiencing major flooding with 15+" rain on hilly terrain. Instead, we need...

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