This week, we take a deep dive into how climate change is exacerbating extreme droughts and accelerating wildfires with bioclimatologist Park Williams. Dr. Williams is an associate professor at UCLA's Department of Geography. His particular expertise in the causes and consequences of drought guides us through a wide-ranging conversation on the transformative changes we are seeing in the American West as temperatures rise and how we should adapt to a future of more frequent droughts and dangerous wildfires. Dr. Williams is the recent co-author of the paper, "Uncertainties, Limits, and Benefits of Climate Change Mitigation for Soil Moisture Drought in Southwestern North America," and he explains the biggest findings of the research, how bad drought has been over the past two decades, and how this compares to historic megadroughts.  You can learn more about Dr. Williams and his research at his website here. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/ As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!