Kai Kornhuber

CL Climate: Past, Present & Future

The 2025 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Kai Kornhuber for outstanding research on extreme weather and climate dynamics, including circumglobal patterns in the jet stream, their relation to heatwaves and food security, and representation in climate models.

Kai Kornhuber leads the Extreme Weather and Climate Dynamics research theme at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna/Austria, and is Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, New York, USA. Further, he is Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations where he contributes to the political discourse on adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Highly relevant to society, Kai Kornhuber’s research addresses the increasing vulnerability of human and natural systems to climate variability and change. One of his pivotal scientific contributions includes identifying and explaining circum-global patterns in the Jetstream, and their relationship to concurrent extreme heat waves, risks to global food security as well as other emerging risks from compound events.

Besides publication of around 50 highly cited peer-reviewed articles, partly in highest-impact journals such as Nature Climate Change and others, Kai Kornhuber has written several opinion and perspective articles for academic and general audiences, is actively engaging with policymakers and is frequently consulted as an expert for international media outlets (e.g., New York Times, the Guardian, and others).

Serving the scientific community, he is elected co-chair of the working group on compound events in the Risk-KAN, (WCRP, WWRP, Future Earth) which underscores his role as a thought leader in the field. Additionally, he has expanded the conference audience at EGU and AGU by proposing and convening new, innovative sessions, e.g., on Rossby Wave and Jet-Dynamics, Compound Events, and Climate Risks for Insurance Sectors. He is also co-leading a working group on North Atlantic in the WCRP LEADER project to better understand circulation changes. Kai Kornhuber further is an outstanding mentor and educator. As Adjunct Professor for Climate at Columbia University and Principal Investigator within the CLIMXTREME consortium, he continuously educates the next generation of scientists and practitioners.

In conclusion Kai Kornhuber embodies the qualities of an outstanding Early Career Scientist: intellectual rigor, innovative thinking and a commitment to the scientific community and societal betterment. He strongly deserves the 2025 EGU Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award for the Division on Climate: Past, Present and Future.