Dr Kai Kornhuber
Senior Scientist
Email
Kai Kornhuber is a Senior Scientist and leader of the Group Climate Extremes and Climate Modelling at Climate Analytics. He is also an adjunct Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Lecturer at the Columbia Climate School in New York and a Senior Fellow on Climate Risks at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
His research is dedicated to physical drivers of extreme weather and climate events and associated societal impacts under current and future climatic conditions.
He is Founding Member of the EarthNetwork on Sustainable and Resilient Living in an Era of Increasing Disasters at Columbia’s Climate School, Co-Chair of the Compound Events Working Group at Risk-Kan and a Co-Pi of the Project PERSEVERE within the BMBF Consortium ClimXtreme. At Climate Analytics he is leading the efforts on quantifying Physical and Acute Risks within the NGFS network.
Blog posts
- El Niño is contributing to the hottest temperatures ever recorded – what does this mean for the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit? Kai Kornhuber, Peter Pfleiderer, Bill Hare, 25 July 2023
- Climate models underestimate food security risk from ‘compound’ extreme weather Kai Kornhuber, 05 July 2023
- Hot, dry or flooded - more weather extremes beyond 1.5°C warming Quentin Lejeune, Fahad Saeed, Kai Kornhuber, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, 27 August 2018
Publications
- Peer reviewed
- Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections Kai Kornhuber, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Peter Pfleiderer, Nature Communications, (2023)
- 2021 North American heatwave amplified by climate change-driven nonlinear interactions Samuel Bartusek, Kai Kornhuber & Mingfang Ting (2022)
- Amplification of phase-locked circumglobal waves forced by localized topography drive heat extremes in an idealized model simulation B. Jiménez-Esteve, Kai Kornhuber, D. I. V. Domeisen (2022)
- Recurrent Rossby waves during Southeast Australian heatwaves and links to quasi-resonant amplification and atmospheric blocks S. Mubashshir Ali, Matthias Röthlisberger, Tess Parker, Kai Kornhuber, and Olivia Martius (2022)
- Summertime circumglobal Rossby waves in climate models: small biases in upper-level circulation create substantial biases in surface imprint Fei Luo, Frank Selten, Kathrin Wehrli, Kai Kornhuber, Philippe Le Sager, Wilhelm May, Thomas Reerink, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Hideo Shiogama, Daisuke Tokuda, Hyungjun Kim, and Dim Coumou (2022)
- Effective net-zero transition plans must anticipate growing climate disruptions Corey Lesk and Kai Kornhuber (2022)
- Accelerated western European heatwave trends linked to more-persistent double jets over Eurasia. Efi Rousi, Kai Kornhuber, Goratz Beobide-Arsuaga, Fei Luo & Dim Coumou (2022)
- Increased adaptation efforts needed to counter rising extreme rainfall risks for urban sustainability programs in a warming climate Mona Hemmati, Kai Kornhuber & Andrew Kruczkiewicz (2022)
- Increasing spatiotemporal proximity of heat and precipitation extremes in a warming world quantified by a large model ensemble Colin Raymond, Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Kai Kornhuber, Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell, Jana Sillmann and Duane E Waliser (2022)
- Drivers behind the recurrent atmospheric wave train leading to the summer 2010 Russian heat wave and Pakistan flooding G. Di Capua, S. Sparrow, Kai Kornhuber, E. Rousi, S. Osprey, D. Wallom, B. van den Hurk & D. Coumou (2021)
- Recent increases in exposure to extreme humid-heat events disproportionately affect populated regions Cassandra D. W. Rogers, Mingfang Ting, Cuihua Li, Kai Kornhuber, Ethan D. Coffel, Radley M. Horton, Colin Raymond, Deepti Singh (2021)
- Compound Climate Events and Extremes in the Midlatitudes: Dynamics, Simulation, and Statistical Characterization Gabriele Messori, Emanuele Bevacqua, Rodrigo Caballero, Dim Coumou, Paolo De Luca, Davide Faranda, Kai Kornhuber, Olivia Martius, Flavio Pons, Colin Raymond, Kunhui Ye, Pascal Yiou, and Jakob Zscheischler (2021)
- From Atmospheric Waves to Heatwaves: A Waveguide Perspective for Understanding and Predicting Concurrent, Persistent and Extreme Extratropical Weather Rachel H. White, Kai Kornhuber, Olivia Martius, and Volkmar Wirth (2021)
- Six-fold increase in historical Northern Hemisphere concurrent large heatwaves driven by warming and changing atmospheric circulations Cassandra D. W. Rogers, Kai Kornhuber, Sarah E. Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Paul C. Loikith, and Deepti Singh (2021)
- Future changes in Northern Hemisphere summer weather persistence linked to projected Arctic warming Kai Kornhuber, Talia Tamarin-Brodsky (2021)
- Understanding and managing connected extreme events Colin Raymond, Radley M. Horton, Jakob Zscheischler, Olivia Martius, Amir AghaKouchak, Jennifer Balch, Steven G. Bowen, Suzana J. Camargo, Jeremy Hess, Kai Kornhuber, Michael Oppenheimer, Alex C. Ruane, Thomas Wahl & Kathleen White (2020)
- Circumglobal Rossby waves enhance risk of simultaneous heat extremes in major breadbasket regions Kai Kornhuber, Dim Coumou, Elisabeth Vogel, Corey Lesk, Jonathan F. Donges, Jascha Lehmann & Radley M. Horton (2019)
- Disentangling dynamic contributions to summer 2018 anomalous weather over Europe Marie Drouard, Kai Kornhuber, Tim Woollings (2019)
- Projections and Hazards of Future Extreme Heat Colin Raymond, Dim Coumou, Tim Foreman, Andrew King, Kai Kornhuber, Corey Lesk, Camilo Mora, Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Simone Russo, Sem Vijverberg (2019)
- Boreal summer weather becomes more persistent in a warmer world Peter Pfleiderer, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Kai Kornhuber & Dim Coumou, Nature Climate Change, (2019)
- Extreme weather events in early Summer 2018 connected by a recurrent hemispheric wave-7 pattern Kai Kornhuber, Scott Osprey, Dim Coumou, Stefan Petri, Vladimir Petoukhov, Stefan Rahmstorf and Lesley Gray (2019)
- Projected changes in persistent extreme summer weather events: The role of quasi-resonant amplification M. E. Mann, S. Rahmstorf, Kai Kornhuber, B. A. Steinman, S. K. Miller, S. Petri and D. Coumou (2018)
- Summertime Planetary Wave Resonance in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres Kai Kornhuber, V. Petoukhov, D. Karoly, S. Petri, S. Rahmstorf, and D. Coumou (2017)
- Influence of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Planetary Wave Resonance and Extreme Weather Events Michael E. Mann, Stefan Rahmstorf, Kai Kornhuber, Byron A. Steinman, Sonya K. Miller & Dim Coumou (2017)
- Evidence for wave resonance as a key mechanism for generating high-amplitude quasi-stationary waves in boreal summer Kai Kornhuber, V. Petoukhov, S. Petri, S. Rahmstorf & D. Coumou (2016)
- Reports
- Briefing note on systemic risk J. Sillmann, S. Hochrainer-Stigler, T. Huang-Lachmann, S. Juhola, Kai Kornhuber, M. Mahecha, R. Mechler, M. Reichstein, A. Ruane, P.-J. Schweizer, S. Williams (2022)