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Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics

Sebastian Schemm (Heisenberg Fellow)

Research interests

Sebastian Schemm is a member of the Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics group at DAMTP. His research interests are in the field of atmospheric sciences. In particular, the physics and dynamics of weather and climate in the extratropics across spatio-temporal scales from turbulence to synoptic- and to planetary scales. A second interest is in high resolution atmospheric modelling and some machine learning. This involves modeling at different complexity, the use of observations, basic theory and the development of diagnostic tools.

In recent years, research has focused on the life cycle of extratropical cyclones, the dynamics of the jet stream and the storm tracks, Rossby waves and teleconnection patterns. Beyond these topics, ongoing research is on parameter estimations using data assimilation in LES simulations, diabatic modification of the atmospheric circulation, data-driven parameterisations and km-scale global models.

He received an ERC Starting Grant (2020–2024), the European Meteorological Society's Young Researcher Medaille (2019), is co-editor of the EGU journal Weather and Climate Dynamics and of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. In 2025, he received the DFG Heisenberg Fellowship.

Selected publications

Jet stream dynamics from a potential vorticity gradient perspective: The method and its application to a kilometre‐scale simulation
Bukenberger, M., S. Rüdisühli, and S. Schemm Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 149(755), 2409–2432, (2023).
doi: 10.1002/qj.4513
Toward eliminating the decades-old “too zonal and too equatorward” storm-track bias in climate models
Schemm, S. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 15, e2022MS003482, (2023).
Editor Highlight, Top 10 most-cited papers in JAMES in 2023, doi: 10.1029/2022MS003482
When during their life cycle are extratropical cyclones attended by fronts?
Schemm, S., M. Sprenger, and H. Wernli, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 99, 149-165, (2018).
Cover Highlight, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0261.1

 

See ORCID for a complete list or below at the bottom of this page.

Career

At DAMTP, I am a Heisenberg Fellow, which is regarded similar to a non-permanent associated professor. Previously, I led an ERC Starting Grant-funded research group at ETH Zurich as an assistant professor and was as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire de météorologie dynamique (LMD), l'École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Paris, and the University of Bergen, Norway.

  • 2025               Heisenberg Fellow, DAMTP, University of Cambrige, UK.
  • 2020 – 2024   ERC StG-funded Assistant Professor (without tenure track), ETH Zurich.
  • 2019 – 2020   Researcher at ETH Zurich and Visiting Professor at University of Vienna.
  • 2017 – 2018   Postdoctoral researcher LMD, ENS, Paris (SNSF funded).
  • 2014 – 2017   Postdoctoral researcher University of Bergen, Norway.
  • 2010 – 2013   PhD at ETH Zurich, CH.

PhD students

DAMTP (ongoing)

  • Pritthijit Nath (main supervisor Mark Webb, UK MetOffice): Incorporating reinforcement learning into subgrid-scale parametrisations.

ETH (ongoing)

  • Nora Zilibotti (co-supervisor Heini Wernli): A fresh look at the jet-storm track relationship.
  • Jan Zibell: On the role of midlatitude eddies in shaping the hemispheric-wide energy cycle. 
  • Simon Adamov (co-supervisor Oliver Fuhrer, MeteoSwiss): Machine learning-based high-resolution ensemble weather forecasting.
  • Dana Grund (co-supersior Mishra Siddhartha): Estimating unknown model parameters in LES simulations using Bayesian inversion.

Selected projects (ongoing)

Publications

Enhanced Blocking Frequencies in Very-High Resolution Idealized Climate Model Simulations
P De Luca, B Jiménez-Esteve, L Degenhardt, S Schemm, S Pfahl
– Geophysical Research Letters
(2024)
51,
(doi: 10.1029/2024GL111016)
A Dynamical Interpretation of the Intensification of the Winter North Atlantic Jet Stream in Reanalysis
A Hermoso, G Rivière, B Harvey, J Methven, S Schemm
– Journal of Climate
(2024)
37,
5853
(doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0757.1)
A climatological characterisation of North Atlantic winter jet streaks and their extremes
M Bukenberger, L Fasnacht, S Rüdisühli, S Schemm
(2024)
(doi: 10.5194/egusphere-2024-1789)
Disentangling Forced Trends in the North Atlantic Jet From Natural Variability Using Deep Learning
A Hermoso, S Schemm
– Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
(2024)
129,
(doi: 10.1029/2023jd040638)
Impacts of North American forest cover changes on the North Atlantic ocean circulation
V Bauer, S Schemm, R Portmann, J Zhang, GK Eirund, SJ De Hertog, J Zibell
(2024)
(doi: 10.5194/egusphere-2024-2087)
Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)
B Stevens, S Adami, T Ali, H Anzt, Z Aslan, S Attinger, J Bäck, J Baehr, P Bauer, N Bernier, B Bishop, H Bockelmann, S Bony, G Brasseur, DN Bresch, S Breyer, G Brunet, PL Buttigieg, J Cao, C Castet, Y Cheng, A Dey Choudhury, D Coen, S Crewell, A Dabholkar, Q Dai, F Doblas-Reyes, D Durran, A El Gaidi, C Ewen, E Exarchou, V Eyring, F Falkinhoff, D Farrell, PM Forster, A Frassoni, C Frauen, O Fuhrer, S Gani, E Gerber, D Goldfarb, J Grieger, N Gruber, W Hazeleger, R Herken, C Hewitt, T Hoefler, HH Hsu, D Jacob, A Jahn, C Jakob, T Jung, C Kadow, IS Kang, S Kang, K Kashinath, K Kleinen-Von Königslöw, D Klocke, U Kloenne, M Klöwer, C Kodama, S Kollet, T Kölling, J Kontkanen, S Kopp, M Koran, M Kulmala, H Lappalainen, F Latifi, B Lawrence, JY Lee, Q Lejeun, C Lessig, C Li, T Lippert, J Luterbacher, P Manninen, J Marotzke, S Matsouoka, C Merchant, P Messmer, G Michel, K Michielsen, T Miyakawa, J Müller, R Munir, S Narayanasetti, O Ndiaye, C Nobre, A Oberg, R Oki, T Özkan-Haller, T Palmer, S Posey, A Prein, O Primus, M Pritchard, J Pullen, D Putrasahan, J Quaas
– Earth System Science Data
(2024)
16,
2113
(doi: 10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024)
Revisiting Machine Learning Approaches for Short- and Longwave Radiation Inference in Weather and Climate Models, Part II: Online Performance
G Bertoli, S Mohebi, F Ozdemir, J Jucker, S Rüdisühli, F Perez-Cruz, S Schemm
(2024)
(doi: 10.22541/essoar.171172078.80794514/v2)
Revisiting Machine Learning Approaches for Short- and Longwave Radiation Inference in Weather and Climate Models, Part I: Offline Performance
G Bertoli, F Ozdemir, S Schemm, F Perez-Cruz
(2024)
(doi: 10.22541/essoar.171172075.57288251/v1)
Effects of idealized land cover and land management changes on the atmospheric water cycle
SJ De Hertog, CE Lopez-Fabara, R Van Der Ent, J Keune, DG Miralles, R Portmann, S Schemm, F Havermann, S Guo, F Luo, I Manola, Q Lejeune, J Pongratz, CF Schleussner, SI Seneviratne, W Thiery
– Earth System Dynamics
(2024)
15,
265
(doi: 10.5194/esd-15-265-2024)
Aquaplanet simulations with winter and summer hemispheres: model setup and circulation response to warming
S Schemm, M Röthlisberger
– Weather and Climate Dynamics
(2024)
5,
43
(doi: 10.5194/wcd-5-43-2024)
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Email

ss3299@cam.ac.uk

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