Research Focus

My research focuses on understanding the causes and predictability of both floods and droughts. I analyze data from observations as well as from multiple climate models, which are complex numerical representations of the climate system. In addition to understanding droughts and floods themselves, I also research how they can act to drive outbreaks of infectious disease.

Current Projects

■ Understanding the origins and future likelihood of the Day Zero Cape Town drought and similar water risks facing major metropolitan regions

■ Understanding the role of El Niño and precipitation extremes in the western United States through the application and analysis of seasonal forecast models

■ Improving predictions of the climate system on timescales of days to weeks through collaboration with NOAA on the Unified Forecast System

■ Improving tools for analyzing Big Data in the Earth Sciences in collaboration with colleagues at CSISS

Select Publications

■ N. J. Burls et al., The Cape Town “Day Zero” drought and Hadley cell expansion. NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science, 2, (27), (2019).

■ B. A. Cash et al., Predictable and unpredictable aspects of US west coast rainfall and El Niño: understanding the 2015/16 event. Journal of Climate, 32(10), 2843-2868 (2019).

■ B. A. Cash et al., Evaluation of NMME temperature and precipitation bias and forecast skill for South Asia. Climate Dynamics, 1-18 (2017).

■ P. P. Martinez et al., Cholera forecast for Dhaka, Bangladesh, with the 2015- 2016 El Niño: lessons learned. PloS One, 12(3), e0172355 (2017).