Discipline Climate & Weather
In this discipline, you will study physical phenomena in the earth system that vary from weather time scales to climate time scales. You will be trained to analyse the complex processes, such as:
- How do winds and temperature vary in time and over different land surfaces?
- How do clouds develop into (extreme) rainfall?
- What influences the melting of ice sheets?
- What influences extratropical and tropical storm tracks?
- What is the role of the ocean in regional sea level rise and global warming?
You will use modelling and observational techniques to analyze and quantify these processes, and apply those techniques to monitor, understand and predict phenomena that have a strong impact on daily life (storms, rainfall and flooding, droughts and heat waves). With the knowledge and skills acquired during this discipline, you will contribute to solving one of the largest challenges faced by our society: the prediction, mitigation and adaptation to extreme weather and climate change.
What you will learn
In this track we focus on:
➨ Studying physical processes in the atmosphere such as storms, (extreme) rainfall, droughts and heatwaves
➨ Developing and use advance observation and modelling techniques to be able to predict, mitigate and adapt to extreme weather and climate change effects
Research examples
Up in the clouds
They are a beautiful sight, those cumulus clouds drifting by slowly high above our heads. But what is propelling them? And how do they affect the wind? To find out Louise Nuijens spent a few days with her head in the clouds. Literally.
A golden age for earth observation
Earth observation is experiencing a golden age: satellites are providing us with an unprecedented wealth of data. Climate researcher Stef Lhermitte is making good use of this, because however effective our models may be, they still contain plenty of uncertainties.
