Team Members
The Climate Advanced Forecasting of sub-seasonal Extremes is a project made possible by the cooperation between a multidisciplinary team of researchers from institutions and organizations based in Spain, Germany, France, United Kingdom and Uruguay.
This research group are focused on improving the forecasting of climate extremes such as heat waves, drought, extreme precipitation or cold surges, on the sub-seasonal time scale (from 10 days to about 3 months). Such events have huge social and economic impacts that are expected to increase with climate change, and their forecasting is very challenging due to the poor understanding of phenomena that may increase predictability at this time scale, such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, planetary waves and atmospheric blockings.
Reliable sub-seasonal climate information is of great importance, allowing for early warnings and adequate mitigation strategies.
Principal researchers
Prof. Marcelo Barreiro
Universidad de la República
Marcelo Barreiro is Full Professor at the Institute of Physics (IF), School of Sciences, Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay. At IF he is Head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department. Barreiro has a PhD in Physical Oceanography from Texas A&M University, USA. His research focuses on the understanding of climate variability and predictability from sub-seasonal to decadal time scales, and the role of the oceans in present and future climate. He is currently serving in the Climate Dynamics Panel of CLIVAR/WRCP and is lead author of the WG1 IPCC AR6 report.
Prof. Cristina Masoller
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Cristina Masoller is Professor of physics at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. She has more than 30 years of research and teaching experience, and has supervised 8 PhD thesis. Her expertise is in nonlinear dynamics, complex systems and data analysis. Specific research interests include novel methods for the analysis of climatological time series and measures for the classification and characterization of complex images. She has received various recognitions, including two ICREA Academia prizes (in 2009 and in 2015), awarded by the Catalan Institution of Research and Advanced Studies in recognition of excellence in research.
Dr. Álvaro Corral
Centre de Recerca Matemàtica
Álvaro Corral is a researcher at the Centre de Recerca Matematica (Barcelona), where he leads the Complex-Systems Group. He is also a member of the Barcelona Graduate School of Mathematics and the network complexitat.cat, and is associated to the Mathematics Department of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The research of Álvaro and co-authors has been addressed to describe, model, and try to predict the behavior of complex systems, paying special attention to natural hazards (earthquakes, hurricanes, rainfall, etc.) and communication systems (human language, music, etc.), as well as to the necessary statistical tools. The results of this research have been published in physics, geophysics, geology, and multidisciplinary-science journals, and have been communicated to society through newspapers, radio, TV, and the Internet Álvaro is also very interested in the training of young researchers, having organized several summer schools and other events in recent years.
Prof. Emilio Hernández-García
Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Emilio Hernández-García is CSIC Research Professor at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC), a joint center of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) in Mallorca, Spain.
A physics graduate from the University of Barcelona, he got a PhD from UIB (1990). Previous positions as research associate at McGill University, Montreal and associate professor at UIB. His research covers many aspects of complex systems, statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics including ocean modelling and transport and network techniques in geosciences and climate. He is co-author of the book Networks in Climate (Cambridge, 2019).
Prof. Jörg Matschullat
Technische Universitaet Bergakademie Freiberg
Jörg Matschullat, born 1957, MSc in Geology 1983 from Tübingen University. PhD 1989 in Geology and Geochemistry from Göttingen University with stay at Dorset Research Centre, Ontario, Canada. Assistant and Associate Professor at the universities of Clausthal and Heidelberg (1990–1999). Full professor of geochemistry and geoecology at TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany, since April 1999. Affiliation: Director of Interdisciplinary Environmental Research Centre; former Dean of the Faculty of Geosciences, Geoengineering and Mining. Main interests / research areas: Environmental (Bio)Geochemistry, Regional Climate Change, Air Quality issues. Publications: 102 in refereed journals, 20 books and 55 book contributions, 342 conference abstracts and non-refereed contributions. Visiting professor (lecturer): Brazil (1996—present), Czech Republic (2000—2005). Sabbaticals in Australia and Japan.
Dr. Hervé Douville
Météo-France
Hervé Douville is chief engineer of bridges, waters and forests, graduated from the National School of Meteorology and the National Agronomic Institute Paris-Grignon. He holds a thesis from the Paul Sabatier University and an authorization to supervise research at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse. Since 1995, he has been a researcher at the National Center for Meteorological Research (Toulouse) where he heads the Variability-detection-feedback team within the Climate group. He is the author or co-author of nearly 100 articles, most of them in peer-reviewed journals.
Prof. Holger Kantz
Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems
Holger Kantz is head of the research group “Nonlinear Dynamics and Time Series Analysis”, an international team of about 10 scientists, at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. His main scientific interest is to gain a fundamental understanding of temporal fluctuations in complex classical systems. This includes the study of physical mechanisms causing fluctuations, the study of simple but paradigmatic models, the development of methods for the statistical characterization of fluctuations, and the development and comparison of forecasting strategies. Atmospheric phenomena constitute the main field of testing and applying all this, with emphasis on extreme events and climate change.
Dr. Eberhard Faust
Munich Re
Eberhard Faust is head of risk research on climate risks and natural hazards within the Corporate Underwriting division of Munich Re. The hazards and associated risk he is monitoring comprise foremost weather-related hazards which can be influenced by natural variability and anthropogenic change of the climate. He has (co-)authored numerous articles and papers, and served as a lead author for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He holds a diploma (M.Sc.) of Environmental Sciences (meteorology) from the University of Bayreuth, and also a doctorate (Ph.D.) of Humanities from the University of Heidelberg.
Dr. Laura Ferranti
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Laura Ferranti is a principal scientist in the European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecast. She studied physics in Bologna and holds a PhD in meteorology from the University of Reading. She studied the predictability of seasonal and sub-seasonal variations. She is the leading author of one of the early studies discussing the link between the MJO and the variability of midlatitudes patterns associated with internal dynamics. Currently she works on the operational aspects of the ensemble forecasts developing products and diagnostics. She contributes to the Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction Project focusing on predictions of extremes. Laura is currently a member of the WMO Working Group on Subseasonal to Interdecadal Prediction and member of the joint CBS/CCl Expert Team on Operational Predictions from Sub-seasonal to Longer-time Scales.
Prof. Jürgen Kurths
Potsdam Institut fuer Klimafolgenforschung
Kurths studied mathematics at the University of Rostock and was awarded his PhD in 1983 at the GDR Academy of Sciences, followed by his installation in 1991 in theoretical physics at the University of Rostock. In 1991, in a special program of the Max-Planck-Society, he was selected as one of a few scientists from East Germany to become a director of a new working group and he has formed an internationally well-known group on nonlinear dynamics. In 1994 he got a full-chair on theoretical physics/nonlinear dynamics at the University of Potsdam. There he was also Dean of the Science Faculty (1996–1999), and established as the founding director the Interdisciplinary Centre for Dynamics of Complex Systems (1994–2008). He was the founding director of the Leibniz-Kolleg Potsdam. In 2008, he was called to re-create the research domain Transdisciplinary Concepts at PIK and to bring complex systems perspectives into Earth system research and has become a Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at the Institute of Physics at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and in 2009 a 6th-century chair for Complex Systems Biology at the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology at Kings College, Aberdeen University.
Dr. Florian Pappenberger
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Florian Pappenberger leads the Forecast Department at the European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The Forecast Department at ECMWF has a strong customer focus. He is responsible for the 24/7 production of weather forecasts, forecast quality control (verification and diagnostics), development of novel forecast products, applications of weather forecasts such as flood, drought, fire and health forecasts, numerical weather prediction relevant software development, data sales and outreach and training. Florian has a background in the forecasting of weather driven natural hazards including floods, droughts, windstorms, forest fires and impacts on human health. He has over 10 years of expertise in operational probabilistic forecasting, extreme value statistics and numerical model system development at ECMWF. He was responsible for the development and implementation of the operational centre of the Copernicus Emergency Service – Early Warning Systems (floods). Florian is the author of over 150 scientific publications and has won several scientific awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society and a member of several other professional bodies including HEPEX, British Hydrological Society, EGU, AGU, EMS, AMS. He is on the editorial board of several international journals and regularly advises on international committees including WMO and world bank.
Dr. Linus Magnusson
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Linus Magnusson is a senior scientistic in the Evaluation Section at ECMWF. He obtained his PhD from Stockholm University in 2009 and joined ECMWF shortly after. He started his work on ocean initialisation and ENSO forecasting in the Seasonal forecasting section where he later also worked on sea-ice modelling. In 2011 he moved to the Ensemble forecasting section working on diagnostics and has now a similar job the Evaluation section. His research interests includes model climate and variability diagnostics, forecast error propagation, processes in the Arctic and severe weather such as tropical cyclones. Linus is a member of the predictability task team in the WMO/Hiweather project.
Dr. Pascal Yiou
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives
Pascal Yiou received his PhD in in 1994 (applied mathematics, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris) and his Habilitation in 2003 (earth sciences). He has been at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ) since 1994. He was a visiting professor at UCLA (1996, USA) and the University of Tokyo (2010, Japan). He has been an associate Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics since 2012. He is an expert in statistical climatology, and has made many contributions to the connections of the theory of dynamical systems, statistics and climate extremes. He has published over 120 papers in peer reviewed journals and his h-factor is 48. He has coordinated projects from the French ANR (4), FP6 (1), Swedish Research Council (1) and ERC (1).
Dr. Céline Déandreis
ARIA Technologies
Dr. Antonio Turiel
Institut de Ciències del Mar - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Antonio Turiel received the B.Sc. degree in physics, the B.Sc. degree in mathematics, and the Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1993, 1994, and 1998, respectively. He is currently with the Department of Physical Oceanography, Institut de Ciències del Mar, Barcelona. His research interests include signal and image processing applied to remote sensing of the oceans, marine turbulence at mesoscale, and ocean circulation at different scales. He has authored 77 papers in SCI-indexed journals, participated in more than 20 research projects and advised 5 PhD thesis.
Dr. Reik Donner
Potsdam Institut fuer Klimafolgenforschung
Reik Donner studied Physics and Mathematics at University of Potsdam and received his PhD degree in Theoretical Physics/Nonlinear Dynamics in 2007. In the following years, he has held postdoctoral positions at the Dresden University of Technology, Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems (Dresden), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Jena). During this period, he has been awarded a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2007), a Guest Professorship at Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Japan (2009) and a Division Young Scientist Award for Nonlinear Processes (NP) of the European Geosciences Union (EGU, 2011). From 2014-2019, he was leading a research group on “Complex Systems Methods for Understanding Causes and Consequences of Past, Present, and Future Climate Change” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, where he is still working as a guest scientist. Since September 2018, he holds a professorship for Mathematics, especially Data Science and Stochastic Modeling, at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, Magdeburg, Gernany. He serves as editorial board member of several international journals (Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography; Climate; Quaternary; Entropy) and has co-edited one book and several special issues in different journals. Besides having co-authored more than 110 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and edited books, he has been responsible for coordinating the Time Series Analysis and Big Data activities of the EGU NP division since 2012.