Research area
We use a unique observational perspective complemented with climate model data to describe and understand atmospheric variability and climate trends, their drivers, feedbacks, and impacts. We focus on resolving changes in the atmospheric structure and global circulation, detecting and attributing natural and human-induced causes, and analyzing atmospheric extreme events. By linking global atmospheric changes with changes in regional weather patterns we provide important foundations for research on the effects of climate change and its socio-economic impacts.
Research themes
- Monitoring and climate analysis of atmospheric key variables including temperature, water vapor, ozone, in global and regional contexts with a focus on atmospheric observations
- Robust characterization of the atmosphere and its changes over time using high resolution, high quality remote sensing observations, specifically from GNSS radio occultation
- Advancement and intercomparison of atmospheric data sets from different observations (in situ, satellite-based), including uncertainty estimates
- Evaluating the inter-consistency of atmospheric temperature observations
- Comparing observations with reanalyses and climate model simulations
- Advancing our understanding of atmospheric variability and climate change, their drivers, feedbacks and impacts
- Detection and attribution of short-term and long-term climate trends using observations and climate model simulations
- Analyzing natural atmospheric variability (such as ENSO, QBO, MJO), circulation (e.g., BDC), waves and fluxes
- Analyzing atmospheric extremes and their impacts including volcanic eruptions, wildfires, atmospheric blocking, and sudden stratospheric warmings
- Investigating changes in the atmospheric structure and specifically the tropopause region
- Detecting fingerprints of anthropogenic climate change and attribution of natural and human-induced drivers to temperature trends
- Assessing radiative and dynamical contributions to observed and modelled temperature changes
- Evaluating differences in the representation of variability and trends in observations and climate model simulations
- Development and application of machine-learning methods for climate analysis, diagnostics, and predictability
- Providing and improving uncertainty information of climate data records and derived trends
- Development of ML methods specific to climate analysis
- Objective methods for detecting atmospheric features
- Physics-constrained evaluation of models, reanalyses, and observations
Our network
We collaborate with other Wegener Center research groups, other institutes of the University of Graz, as well as national and international partners.
Thematic collaboration includes fundamental contributions to the establishment of climate data records from GNSS radio occultation of the ARSCliSys Research Group, the analysis of atmospheric dynamics with the Regional Climate Research Group, and on impacts with socio-economic groups SoCo and EconClim. Furthermore, we collaborate with the Atmosphere and Climate Physics Research Group at the Institute of Physics as well as with the Climate Change in Mountain Regions Group at the Institute of Geography and Regional Science. We are integrated into the University’s graduate school on climate change and the Field of Excellence Climate Change Graz .
We are active, in leading roles, within the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) including APARC (ATC, LEADER) and the WCRP Lighthouse Explaining and Predicting Earth System Change (EPESC). We serve in
- Lukas Brunner (Climate Extremes Group, University of Hamburg, Germany)
- Bettina C. Lackner (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
- Mastawesha Misganaw Engdaw (International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Nairobi, Kenya)
- Kamilya Yessimbet
- Hallgeir Wilhelmsen (private company, Danmark)
- Martin Kriegl
- Jasmin Pfeifer
- Katarina Rac
- Kateřina Kührová (Eurocities, Brussels, Belgium)
- Melissa Bakic
- Sanela Kecanovic
- Peter Patrick (DLR, Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany)
- Michael Mochart (UBIMET Group, Austria)
- Martin Lenz
- Michael Goger (Dpt of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Vienna)
- Claus Suppan
- Michael Blaschek
- Thomas Schöngassner
(Note: Until 2024 as part of ARSCliSys.)
Workshop: Atmospheric Temperature Changes and their Drivers
In April 2025, 20 international experts came together at Wegener Center in a workshop on Atmospheric Temperature Changes and their Drivers as part of APARC (Amospheric Processes and their Role in Climate), a core project of World Climate Research Programme.
| +43 316 380 - 8432 https://homepage.uni-graz.at/andi.steiner/ |
| +43 316 380 - 8435 |
Sebastian Scher BSc MSc PhD | +43 316 380 - 8433 |
| +43 316 380 - 8436 |
Viola Kaser | |
Armin Kienbacher | |
Anna Payer | |
Sabine Tschürtz | +43 316 380 - 8418 |