About
Much of the weather in the midlatitudes, including heavy rain, windstorms and prolonged cold or warm spells, is caused by large weather systems such as cyclones. Together, these systems also carry heat and moisture towards the poles and shape the jet stream. How they will respond to a warmer climate remains uncertain, which limits our ability to project regional climate change.
I study the physics of these weather systems and how they shape the circulation of the atmosphere as a whole. A focus of my research is the heat released when water vapour condenses in rising air, and how it strengthens storms and alters the jet stream. I use observation-based datasets and model simulations to identify the processes involved and how they may change with warming.
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, working with Talia Tamarin-Brodsky. I received my PhD from ETH Zurich. Previously, I worked in the energy sector on weather-related risk.
Storm tracks · Diabatic heating · Extreme weather · Predictability
Research
Moisture and the midlatitude storm tracks
Latent heat release in ascending moist air intensifies extratropical cyclones and modifies the upper-level flow, including Rossby wave propagation and breaking. This coupling between moisture and dynamics is a source of uncertainty in numerical weather prediction and contributes to the spread among climate models in projected storm track changes.
At MIT, together with Talia Tamarin-Brodsky, I study how the storm tracks supply moisture to warm conveyor belt ascent and how the resulting latent heating shapes the observed circulation. A further aim is to understand how these relationships arise and how they may change in a warmer climate.
- Diabatic heating and Rossby wave breaking
- Moisture sources of latent heat release in the storm tracks
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Weather and Climate Dynamics · in review
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npj Climate and Atmospheric Science · 2026
Atmospheric energy cycle
The general circulation is maintained by the conversion of available potential energy (APE) into kinetic energy. In the midlatitudes, a large part of this conversion takes place within individual baroclinic eddies rather than as a smooth, zonal-mean process.
During my PhD at ETH Zurich, I used a local formulation of APE to study these conversions over the life cycle of extratropical cyclones. In ERA5, this perspective shows that hemispheric APE can decrease by up to 10% within a few days, driven by intense baroclinic conversion in a single storm track. Such events are relevant for storm track variability, extreme cyclones and subseasonal predictability.
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Geophysical Research Letters · 2026
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Weather and Climate Dynamics · 2025
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Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences · 2024
Extreme weather and predictability
Persistent blocking, cyclone clustering and heavy precipitation have large societal impacts and remain difficult to predict and to represent in climate models. My interest here is in the underlying dynamics, including the role of air–sea interaction and the response of these events to warming.
I contributed to studies of the February 2019 European blocking episode and its link to air–sea interaction over the Gulf Stream, and of Storm Boris (September 2024) in the current and a future climate. I have also worked in the private sector on weather-related risk in energy and commodity markets.
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Weather and Climate Dynamics · 2026
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Weather and Climate Dynamics · 2024
CV
I work with Talia Tamarin-Brodsky at MIT, funded by a Postdoc.Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. I obtained my PhD at ETH Zurich with Lukas Papritz, Michael Sprenger and Heini Wernli.