A group of scientists mostly from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) studied the representation of tropical precipitation by models participating in the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Projects (CMIP). Their analysis of output from models spanning twenty years of development over three CMIP phases, found little general improvement…

A new study in Climate Dynamics by Andreas Lang and Uwe Mikolajewicz from the Department "The Ocean in the Earth System" at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) shows that the intensity of extreme storm surges on the German North Sea coast is projected to increase under rising greenhouse gas emissions. With the help of numerical…

Researchers around the globe are using numerical climate models in an attempt to find answers to the question: How would global warming change our world? Earth’s climate is extremely complex and difficult to model. Each climate model has its specific strengths and weaknesses. In order to estimate the bandwidth of possible future climate…

Dres Maria Rugenstein and Jeremy Caves Rugenstein came to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) as Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellows in early 2019. Now they will take on professorships at Colorado State University, USA. Maria Rugenstein will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science, and Jeremy Caves…

Scientists at the Universität Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) are measuring a weather phenomenon that we all know well, especially these days: thunderstorms. The weather is warm and nice, and suddenly a thunderstorm pops in the sky and produces extreme downpours for a brief instant. During such events, the air…

The International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling (IMPRS-ESM) is a PhD programme jointly run by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and Universität Hamburg since 2002. Recently Prof Martin Claussen, Director and Head of the PhD programme at MPI-M, and Dr Antje Weitz, Coordinator of the IMPRS-ESM, celebrated the…

A new study in Nature Climate Change, led by Paul Keil of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, uses climate model simulations to identify additional drivers of the so-called North Atlantic warming hole.

A new study by Dr Nicola Maher, Dr Flavio Lehner and Prof Jochem Marotzke demonstrates that in the coming 15 years any individual point on the globe in climate models could observe a cooling (or lack of warming) trend even under increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

In two new publications, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) studied the current and future development of extreme heat events. They identified major risk hotspots for different forms of extreme heat under different global warming levels, and disentangled the drivers of increasingly intense European heat extremes.

In a new study Aaron Spring and Dr. Tatiana Ilyina, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), were able to show that the atmospheric CO₂ concentration is predictable for three years in advance [Fig. 1 c] and that the land carbon cycle limits longer predictability.