Marlene Kretschmer

CL Climate: Past, Present & Future

The 2022 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Marlene Kretschmer for outstanding development and the application of statistical methods to the study of causality in climate dynamics.

Marlene Kretschmer received her PhD. in Climate Physics from Potsdam University & Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, in 2018. The thesis entitled “Disentangling the causal pathways of the stratospheric polar vortex – a machine learning approach” set a direction for her research.

Marlene Kretschmer has successfully bridged the gap between climate statistics and climate dynamics by developing and applying statistical methods to study causal links in the climate system. Kretschmer’s research on the effect that Arctic sea-ice loss has on wintertime midlatitude atmospheric circulation was the first to show from observations how Barents-Kara sea-ice loss influenced midlatitude circulation in a manner conducive to cold-air outbreaks. Succeeding analyses have strengthened this result, highlighting the role of the stratosphere and extending the understanding thus gained to climate change simulations. Collectively, Kretschmer’s work has raised the standard of scientific rigour in the controversial topic of Arctic sea-ice midlatitude teleconnections and has provided a new paradigm for physically-based hypothesis testing in the face of model uncertainty.

Marlene Kretschmer is an active and highly valued researcher, participating in international projects and workshops. She represents the best of young researchers and is a worthy recipient of the Climate: Past, Present, and Future Division’s Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award.