from WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, July 31st.

So you could be forgiven if you feel like our weather in the New York area recently has been sort of biblical, right? We were just in

the extreme heat. There were the Canadian wildfires causing air pollution alerts. Today,

it's predicted, we'll have the floods. The frequency of extreme weather events like these

correlates with the 10 hottest years on record being the last 10 years, even as the EPA announced this week that it wants to stop regulating greenhouse gases at all.

We'll get a take now on the interconnectedness between the fires up there, the air quality index here, and the pattern of heat and drenching rains from Radley Horton, Professor of Climate

at Columbia University's Climate School.

Among other things from his bio page, Professor Horton was a convening lead author for the

federal government's third national climate assessment published in 2014, and very relevant

to our local area.

He is currently the principal investigator for the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Climate Adaptation Partnerships, funded

consortium for climate risk in the urban northeast. Professor Horton, thanks for some time today.

Welcome back to WNYC. Hi, Brian. Nice to talk to you again. I crunch some numbers this

morning on a century of temperature change in Central Park. And I think listeners will find it really

interesting. I know you know all this. But before we even get to that, I think our listeners might

be interested in whether that bio of yours that I just read out still applies.

With all the cuts to so much that's climate and weather related, does NOAA, the National

Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, still have a consortium for climate risk in the urban

northeast? Yeah, great question. We still do as of today. But as you know, not all scientists, not all people at this interface between our government-funded research, our government science, and our academic science, a lot have been very seriously affected. And also, of course, the public at large affected as well by these cuts, right?

It's cuts to federal workforce.

It's federal workforce losing access to the buildings they've worked in, access to the data they've used.

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