Research
Research
Climate intervention
Climate intervention is the study of potential methods to intervene in the Earth system to reduce the risks of climate change alongside actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I study stratospheric aerosol injection: a proposal to place reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, cooling the planet by blocking a small portion of incoming sunlight. I use output from Earth system modeling experiments to identify potential risks and benefits of this approach.
COMMUNICATION
I led a project to create a set of four short animated videos describing climate intervention for a general audience, focused on the work done by the Barnes, Hurrell, and Keys groups and our collaborators. Check these videos out at the link here!
I was interviewed about research in climate intervention in June 2026 by the Charles University Faculty of Mathematics and Physics during a visit to their institution: English link, Czech link.
PUBLICATIONS
Kounta, Lala, Lifeng Luo, Gouri Anil, Daniel M. Hueholt, Cheryl Shannon Harrison, Daniele Visioni, Mari Rachel Tye, Tyler Felgenhauer, Amadou T. Gaye, and Phoebe L. Zarnetske. (2026) "Climate Intervention through Stratospheric Aerosol Injection may partially mitigate marine heatwaves." Environmental Research: Climate. doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/ae7b74
Morrison, Ariel. L., Elizabeth A. Barnes, James W. Hurrell & Daniel M. Hueholt, 2025: “Macroclimate growing conditions for luxury crops after stratospheric aerosol injection.” Environmental Research Letters, 20(11) doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/adfbff
Hueholt, Daniel M., Elizabeth A. Barnes, James W. Hurrell, and Ariel L. Morrison, 2024: Speed of environmental change frames relative ecological risk in climate change and climate intervention scenarios. Nature Communications, 15(3332) doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47656-z *Featured as Editors' Highlight at Nature Communications April 2024
Hueholt, Daniel M., Elizabeth A. Barnes, James W. Hurrell, Jadwiga H. Richter, Lantao Sun, 2023: Assessing Outcomes in Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Scenarios Shortly After Deployment. Earth’s Future, 11(5). doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003488
SELECTED CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
Hueholt, D.M., E.A. Barnes, J.W. Hurrell, & A.L. Morrison. Upcoming Poster June 2026. “Potential Distribution of a Top Arctic Predator Under Multiple Climate Futures.” 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Climate Engineering.
Chevalier, E., C.J. Connolly, D.M. Hueholt, E.A. Barnes. "Investigating the Short-Term Climate Responses to Stratospheric Aerosol Injection." Oral Presentation January 2025 at the American Meteorological Society 17th Symposium on Aerosol-Cloud-Climate Interactions at 105th Annual Meeting. First author Evanna Chevalier was advised by myself, Charlotte Connolly, and Elizabeth Barnes during her summer REU internship at CSU in 2024.
Hueholt, Daniel M., E.A. Barnes, J.W. Hurrell, A.L. Morrison. “Climate speeds help frame relative ecological risk in future climate change and stratospheric aerosol injection scenarios.” Oral Presentation January 2024 at the American Meteorological Society 37th Conference on Climate Variability and Change at 104th Annual Meeting
Hueholt, Daniel M., E.A. Barnes, J.W. Hurrell, A.L. Morrison. “Ecological risks from rapid cooling with stratospheric aerosol injection.” Oral Presentation June 2023 at the Community Earth System Model Workshop 2023
Hueholt, Daniel M., E.A. Barnes, J.W. Hurrell, J.H. Richter, L. Sun. "Assessing Outcomes in Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Scenarios Shortly After Deployment." Oral presentation January 2023 at the American Meteorological Society 36th Conference on Climate Variability and Change at 103rd Annual Meeting
TEACHING
Instructor of Record: EV320 "Advanced Topics in Environmental Science: Climate Intervention: Science & Society" at Colorado College (co-designed with Sandra Yuter, North Carolina State University as MEA593 "Geoengineering and Weather Modification")
Atmospheric ice growth
Ice habit diagrams display the shapes of ice as a function of thermodynamic conditions. Many diagrams in the scientific literature and in educational materials do not reflect the most recent science. In my undergraduate research, I created a new ice diagram based on up-to-date research. This diagram was specifically designed to be useful for students and non-ice microphysics experts, and to facilitate meteorological data visualization.
PUBLICATIONS
Hueholt, Daniel M., Sandra E. Yuter, Matthew A. Miller, 2022: Revisiting Diagrams of Ice Growth Environments. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0271.1
Open Science Foundation archive: osf.io/g9vzj/
SELECTED CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS
Hueholt, Daniel M., Sandra E. Yuter, Matthew A. Miller. Diagrams of Ice Growth Environments Designed for Educational Use. Poster February 2024 at the American Meteorological Society First Conference on Cloud Physics at 104th Annual Meeting [View poster]
SELECTED EXAMPLES OF THE ICE DIAGRAM IN USE
Moore, Rebecca, Wayne Johnson, Sandra E. Yuter, Matthew A. Miller. Observed Ice Crystal Characteristics and Atmospheric Conditions Near Cloud Top in Northeast U.S. Winter Storms. Poster January 2025 at the American Meteorological Society Student Conference at 106th Annual Meeting [View poster at Environment Analytics]
In textbook S. Lasher-Trapp 2024: Mostly Cloudy: Cloud Physics for Meteorologists, Sundog Publishing
Data-driven methods
Data-driven methods such as machine learning can yield valuable insights on large datasets and nonlinear systems.
As data-driven methods encode biases in data into their future performance and are often difficult to analyze, understanding the datasets we use is critical to ensure trustworthy and reproducible performance. In co-led work with Charlotte Connolly, we adapt best practices from software engineering to transparently document biases and technical aspects of Earth science datasets through an iterative process based on community feedback. Improved dataset curation supports the scientific enterprise in general and lower barriers to entry for the field by making public information that may otherwise be confined to internal networks.
PUBLICATIONS
Connolly, Charlotte J. & Hueholt, Daniel M. (co-led), Melissa A. Burt, 2025: Datasheets for Earth Science Datasets. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-24-0203.1
Datasheet templates hosted at GitHub (last updated January 2025): github.com/dmhuehol/Datasheets-for-Earth-Science-Datasets
In addition, I design educational materials to help practitioners use data-driven methods and understand their limitations.
EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS
ml-workshop-cuni (May 2026): github.com/dmhuehol/ml-workshop-cuni/. Materials from a two-day invited workshop on applying machine learning in environmental data science that I led at the Charles University Department of Atmospheric Physics in Prague, Czechia.
AI Model Index (last updated June 2026): docs.google.com/document/d/1hZ19xsh5K76oYRsTd3Fk8Uy866e7DXbBf7DI35sguWE/edit?usp=sharing. Compiles examples of machine learning-based weather and climate "emulators." Maintained in support of ATS780A8 "Data-driven Forecasting" at Colorado State University.
palmerpenguins-classifiers (last updated September 2024): github.com/dmhuehol/palmerpenguins-classifiers. These notebooks demonstrate classification learning problems using the Palmer Penguins dataset. Used in graduate classes at Colorado State University.
Arcodia, Marybeth, Elizabeth Barnes, Charlotte Connolly, Frances Davenport, Zaibeth Carlo Frontera, Emily Gordon, Daniel Hueholt, Antonios Mamalakis and Elina Valkonen. (2022) “Applied Machine Learning Tutorial for Earth Scientists” doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6686879 Derived from materials used by the Barnes Group for a tutorial at the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 2022. I was involved in the sessions "Decision Trees and Random Forests" and "Ethical Use of AI in Earth Science".
Other research interests: climate change ecology, ethics and philosophy of science, science communication, mesoscale meteorology, atmospheric waves, software development, remote sensing, topology, data visualization
Broader interests: classical music, music history, birds, plants, reading, chess