M.Sc. ICSS Student Profiles

Karina (Panama): Catastrophe modelling and climate risk assessment

BSc. in Environmental Engineering

Specialization:

• Climate change and society
• Climate scenarios
• Watershed and Coastal risk assessment
• Resilience and adaptation to climate change impacts
• Research administration

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Climate Policy: Actors, Institutions, Instruments
• Introduction to social Sciences and Climate communication
• Climate and Society: Security and Sustainability
• Climate Dynamics
• Weather and Climate Risk

Preliminary thesis title:

"Using catastrophe modeling to assess risks from Hydro-climatological events in Central America"

Björn (Germany): Climate Predictions

BSc in Physics

Specialization:

Climate Modelling and Climate Predictions

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Physics of the Climate System
• Atmospheric Circulation Systems 1 and 2
• Predictions and Predictability of the Climate System
• Climate Modelling
• Climate Dynamics
• Paleoclimatology

My research focus:

I am interested in climate predictions on seasonal to decadal timescales, aiming at closing the gap between traditional weather forecasts and long term climate projections

Thesis title:

"Signal to Noise Paradox in Seasonal to Decadal Climate Predictions". I investigate if our ensemble forecasts are able to accurately represent the predictable Signals in the chaotic climate system.

Comfort (Ghana): Atmospheric Circulation

BSc. Meteorology and Climate change

Specialization:

Weather, Climate and Atmosphere circulation Structures

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Atmospheric Circulation Systems
• Weather and Climate Risk
• Physics of the Climate Systems
• Advanced Numerical modelling
• Climate and Society- Human –Environment interactions and Conflict
• Urban Climatology

My research focus:

Observation of wind systems and their annual and seasonal variations, to determine the distribution of various transition and climatic zones.

Thesis title:

“Seasonal precipitation and atmospheric circulation structures in West Africa”. I investigate low and upper level convergence fields and its connection to seasonal rainfall and its distribution in West Africa.

My affiliation:

Department of Physics, KNUST, Ghana.

Shubhankar (India): Paleoclimatology

BSc in Physical Sciences

Specialization:

Paleoclimatology

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Earth System Science - Paleoclimatology
• Physics of the Climate System
• Predictions and predictability of Climate
• Global Biogeochemical Cycles and the Climate System
• Conceptual Models of Complex Systems

Thesis title:

"The relative effect of Saharan lakes and vegetation cover on Holocene dust transport"

Spyridon (Greece): Permafrost and methane emissions

BSc in Physics

Specialization:

Biogeochemistry

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Global Biogeochemical Cycles and Climate System
• Soil, water, and vegetation processes and their coupling to the atmosphere
• Field Course on Soil-Atmosphere Coupling
• Terrestrial Ecosystem Processes within Earth System Modelling
• Using the eddy covariance approach for analyzing land-atmosphere fluxes of energy and matter

Thesis title:

“Cold Season CH4 Emissions from Polygonal Tundra in the Lena River Delta, Russia.”

Maike (Germany): Marine Ecosystem Modelling

BSc in Geology/Geophysics

Specialization:

Biogeochemistry/ Biological Oceanography

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Introduction to Social Sciences
• Scales in the Climate System
• The IPCC Process
• Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems
• Marine Biogeochemical and Ecosystem Modeling

Thesis title:

“The influence of Cyanobacteria Blooms on the Ecosystem Functioning of the Baltic Sea Ecosystem”

Zoé (Germany): Sea Ice cover

B.Sc. in Physics at RWTH Aachen with a Bachelor thesis focusing on seismology

Specialization:

• Carbon Cycle
• Land-atmosphere interaction
• Climate modelling

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Conceptual Models of Complex Systems: Development, Application and Analysis
• Field Course on Soil-Atmosphere Coupling
• Soil, water and vegetation processes and their coupling to the atmosphere
• Terrestrial Ecosystem Processes within Earth System Modelling

Thesis title:

“Links between sea-ice cover in the Laptev Sea and climatic conditions in a regional climate model“. Special attention to climatic conditions over adjacent landmasses

Joana (Germany): Climate Change Communication

BSc. in Oceanography at the University of Southampton, with a focus on Biological Oceanography.

Specialization:

Climate change communication and discussion in the public sphere.

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Introduction to Social Sciences’ Methods
• Introduction to Social Sciences and Climate Communication
• Climate Communication Research
• Climate Policy: Actors, Institutions, Instruments
• Uncertain 2 Degrees

Thesis idea:

For my Master Thesis I plan to compare and contrast how a British and a German Science Media Center report about climate change topics.

Mustafa (Pakistan): Remote Sensing

BSc in Space Science from the Department of Space Science at the Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

Specialization:

I am more inclined towards the research-oriented fields such as Atmospheric Science, Meteorology and Remote Sensing.

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Physics of the climate system
• Atmospheric circulation systems
• Aerosols
• Climate dynamics
• Weather and climate risk
• Energy landscape and climate policy
• Geographic information systems and science
• Urban climatology

MSc Thesis title:

Remote sensing-based analysis and detection of lake level changes in Astore basin (Western Himalaya)

Adrian (Germany): Integrated Assessment Modelling

B.Sc. Physics and B.Sc. Economics

Specialisation:

• Energy/Climate Economics
• Integrated Assessment Modelling

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Integrated Climate-Economic Modelling
• Integrated Assessment Modelling of Global Change
• Decision under Uncertainty in the Integrated Assessment of the Energy-Climate Problem
• Energy Landscapes and Climate Policy
• Estimating Sustainability
• Introduction to GAMS
• MATLAB in Earth System Sciences: An introduction

Jihye (South Korea): Climate adaptation policies

BSc in Atmospheric Sciences

Specialization:

Climate economics and sustainability

Courses that sparked my research interest:

• Climate policy
• Weather and climate risks
• Estimating sustainability
• Energy landscapes and climate policy

Thesis title:

“Nutrition of school children in Namibia under climate change and adaptation policy”