Large-Scale Circulation and Climate Variability

The Junior Research Group focuses on providing insight into the internal and external drivers of climate variability, including the potential for long-term forecasting on decadal timescales. As climate change accelerates, our work explores how we can improve our understanding of extreme events such as heat waves and understand how these events impact society. With the Baltic Sea region being one of the most socioeconomically sensitive areas, our research aims to enhance predictive capabilities to better adapt to this unpredictable future.

Key Research Areas:

• Understanding Climate Variability:
  We aim to explore the mechanisms behind decadal and multi-decadal climate variability, with a focus on how these dynamics manifest in the Baltic Sea region. The interaction of overlapping climate signals makes Northern Europe unique in terms of its climate response.

• Extreme Events:
  One of the key challenges in climate change is not just average temperature shifts, but extreme weather events like heatwaves, cold spells, and storm surges. We seek to better understand how these events deviate from normal climate variability and predict their future occurrences.

• Global and Regional Models:
  We use a combination of high-resolution regional models and global climate models to enhance our understanding of the climate system. Pacemaker experiments will be employed to simulate future climate states, providing valuable insights into decadal predictability.