Climate and weather extremes seminar

Research on climate and weather extremes is a fundamental part of research at PIK and is carried out in different forms in every department. Extreme climate and weather events pose a serious threat to both the environment and society. Every year, heat waves, wild fires, hurricanes, extreme rainfall events, wind storms and droughts affect people in many parts of the world, causing economic damages and endangering human lives. 2022 saw extreme heat in Western Europe, China and Pakistan while Pakistan was hit by extreme monsoon rains and Himalayan glaciers melting which resulted in a country wide flood killing more than 1700 people and causing $15 billion of damage. While extremes would happen also in a stable climate, anthropogenic induced climate change has already increased the severity and frequency of certain specific extreme events, above all, extreme heat waves in the mid-latitudes and subtropical regions.

The scope of this cross-departmental quasi-monthly meeting is to bring together early career and senior scientists that work on extremes research at PIK, and outside PIK.

This seminar covers a broad list of topics, from atmosphere dynamics and the meteorological patterns which cause extreme weather events, to impacts of such extremes on agriculture, infrastructures, economy and society, to newly developed methods to analyze rare and impactful extreme events. The aim of this seminar is not only to reach a PIK wide audience but also to facilitate learning from one another and fostercollaboration across different groups and research departments. To achieve this goal, when feasible, we intend to organise pairs of 20’ presentations thematically linked but presented by researchers from different research department.

The seminar is held online and in presence about one per month. Everyone is invited to attend and the program for each meeting is sent around a week in advance to pikall@pik-potsdam.de. If you would like to present your research or would like to propose an external presenter, please get in touch with Giorgia Di Capua (dicapua@pik-potsdam.de) or Norbert Marwan (marwan@pik-potsdam.de).

Past seminars

29. June 2023

1. Domenico Giaquinto (PhD candidate RD4): "Exploring European meteorological droughts through complex networks"
2. Ze Jiang (guest at GFZ, research assistant at UNSW Sydney): "Implications of spectral transformations in hydro-climatology"

25. Mai 2023

1. Luisa Aviles (soon PhD candidate at BAS – Cambridge): "Causal Drivers Behind Enhanced Rainfall Activity Over Northern India"
2. Felix Strnad (PhD candidate at Uni Tübingen): "Propagation pathways of South Asian rainfall extremes and their connection to the large-scale circulation"

20. April 2023

1. Massoud Rostami (RD1): "A novel theory for the genesis and dynamics of Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO)-like structures"
2. Norbert Marwan and Tobias Braun (RD4): "Power spectrum estimation for extreme events data"

9. February 2023

1. Shraddha Gupta (RD4): "A Complex Network approach to understanding Cyclones"
2. Thomas Vogt (RD3): "Modeling of historic and future impacts from tropical cyclones on a global scale"

8. December 2022

1. Giorgia Di Capua (RD1): "Compound extreme events, tropical – extratropical interactions and causality"
2. Norbert Marwan (RD4): “Methods for Extreme Events Time Series“

Who’s working on extremes related research topics at PIK

RD1

Giorgia Di Capua (causality, monsoon, tropical-extratropical interactions)
Massoud Rostami (Aeolus, MJO, atmospheric dynamics)

RD2

Sabine Undorf (climate extremes, attribution, impacts)
Fred Hattermann (Hydro-climatic extremes,impact, adaptation)

RD3

Thomas Vogt (economic impacts of tropical cyclones)
Maximilian Kotz (economic impacts of extremes / attribution )

RD4

Norbert Marwan (complex methods for extremes)
Jürgen Kurths (complex methods for extremes)
Anja Katzenberger (Indian summer monsoon)
Felix Strnad (extreme rainfall, AMOC, early warning)
Shraddha Gupta (complex networks, tropical cyclones)
Jianxin Zhang (flood events, teleconnections)