Dr. Nils Weitzel

Department of Geosciences, University of Tübingen
Geo- and Environmental Research Center
Schnarrenbergstr. 94/96
72076 Tübingen
Room: 5R22
Email

Nils is a Postdoc in the STACY project and PI of the NFDI4Earth Pilot Propagating complex uncertainties in data cubes. After studying mathematics and geography, he wrote his PhD thesis in meteorology at the University of Bonn. The topic of his thesis was the reconstruction of climate fields from vegetation proxies using Bayesian hierarchical models. He joined the group in 2019 to work on statistical analyses of paleoclimate proxies and model-data comparison. The goals of his research are to improve our understanding of climate variability and to deduce statistical constraints from past climate that can improve future projections of the Earth system.

Research interests

  • Temporal and spatial structure of climate variability

  • Glacial-interglacial climate and vegetation variability

  • Abrupt climate change

  • Statistical climate reconstructions from pollen records

  • Climate field reconstructions with Bayesian hierarchical models

Publications and software

2024

  • Baudouin, J.-P., Weitzel, N., May, M., Jonkers, L., Dolman, A. M., and Rehfeld, K.: Testing the reliability of global surface temperature reconstructions of the last glacial cycle, preprint (under review in Clim. Past), doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1387, 2024.

  • Braschoss, L., Weitzel, N., Baudouin, J.-P., and Rehfeld, K.: State-dependency of dynamic and thermodynamic contributions to effective precipitation changes, preprint (submitted to Journal of Climate), doi.org/10.31223/X51X35, 2024.

  • Weitzel, N., Andres, H., Baudouin, J.-P., Kapsch, M.-L., Mikolajewicz, U., Jonkers, L., Bothe, O., Ziegler, E., Kleinen, T., Paul, A., and Rehfeld, K.: Towards spatio-temporal comparison of simulated and reconstructed sea surface temperatures for the last deglaciation, Clim. Past, 20, 865–890, doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-865-2024, 2024.

  • Ziegler, E., Weitzel, N., Baudouin, J.-P., Kapsch, M.-L., Mikolajewicz, U., Gregoire, L., Ivanovic, R., Valdes, P. J., Wirths, C., and Rehfeld, K.: Patterns of changing surface climate variability from the Last Glacial Maximum to present in transient model simulations, preprint (under review in Clim. Past), doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1396, 2024.

2023

  • Chevalier, M., Dallmeyer, A., Weitzel, N., Li, C., Baudouin, J.-P., Herzschuh, U., Cao, X., and Hense, A.: Refining data–data and data–model vegetation comparisons using the Earth mover’s distance (EMD), Clim. Past, 19, 1043–1060, doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1043-2023, 2023.

  • Endo, K., Monahan, A. H., Bessac, J., Christensen, H. M., and Weitzel, N.: Robustness of the Stochastic Parameterization of Subgrid-Scale Wind Variability in Sea Surface Fluxes, Monthly Weather Review, 151, 2587–2607, doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-22-0319.1, 2023.

  • Fohlmeister, J., Sekhon, N., Columbu, A., Vettoretti, G., Weitzel, N., Rehfeld, K., Veiga-Pires, C., Ben-Yami, M., Marwan, N., and Boers, N.: Global reorganization of atmospheric circulation during Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, e2302283120, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2302283120, 2023.

  • Laepple, T., Ziegler, E., Weitzel, N., Hébert, R., Ellerhoff, B., Schoch, P., Martrat, B., Bothe, O., Moreno-Chamarro, E., Chevalier, M., Herbert, A., and Rehfeld, K.: Regional but not global temperature variability underestimated by climate models at supradecadal timescales, Nat. Geosci., 16, 958–966, doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01299-9, 2023.

  • Malmierca-Vallet, I., Sime, L. C., and the D–O community members [incl. Weitzel, N.]: Dansgaard–Oeschger events in climate models: review and baseline Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3) protocol, Clim. Past, 19, 915–942, doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-915-2023, 2023.

  • Wider, J., Kruse, J., Weitzel, N., Bühler, J. C., Köthe, U., and Rehfeld, K.: Towards learned emulation of interannual water isotopologue variations in General Circulation Models, Environ. Data Science, 2, e35, doi.org/10.1017/eds.2023.29, 2023.

2022

  • Adam, M., Ellerhoff, B., Baudouin, J.-P., and Weitzel, N.: PTBoxProxydata: The Proxy Data Manager for a consistent, efficient and reusable data workflow for (paleo) time series within the PaleoToolBox (PTBox), R package version 0.2.2, github.com/paleovar/ptboxproxytools, 2022.

  • Axen, S. D., Gessner, A., Sommer, C., Weitzel, N., and Tejero-Cantero, Á.: Spatiotemporal modeling of European paleoclimate using doubly sparse Gaussian processes, 2022 NeurIPS Workshop on Gaussian Processes, Spatiotemporal Modeling, and Decision-making Systems, doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2211.08160, 2022.

  • Dallmeyer, A., Kleinen, T., Claussen, M., Weitzel, N., Cao, X., and Herzschuh, U.: The deglacial forest conundrum, Nat Commun, 13, 6035, doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33646-6, 2022.

  • Weitzel, N., Ellerhoff, B., and Adam, M.: PTBoxProxytools: PTBox proxy tools for time series processing and analysis, R package version 0.1.1, github.com/paleovar/ptboxproxydata, 2022.

  • Weitzel, N., Hense, A., Herzschuh, U., Böhmer, T., Cao, X., and Rehfeld, K.: A state estimate of Siberian summer temperature and moisture availability during the Last Glacial Maximum combining pollen records and climate simulations, preprint, doi.org/10.31223/X59P9H, 2022.

2021

  • Adam, M., Weitzel, N., and Rehfeld, K.: Identifying Global‐Scale Patterns of Vegetation Change During the Last Deglaciation From Paleoclimate Networks, Paleoceanog and Paleoclimatol, 36, e2021PA004265, doi.org/10.1029/2021PA004265, 2021.

  • Bessac, J., Christensen, H. M., Endo, K., Monahan, A. H., and Weitzel, N.: Scale‐Aware Space‐Time Stochastic Parameterization of Subgrid‐Scale Velocity Enhancement of Sea Surface Fluxes, J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., 13, doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002367, 2021.

  • Weitzel, N., Brierley, C., Bühler, J., Chevalier, M., Ellerhoff, B., Skiba, V., and Rehfeld, K.: Beyond paleoclimate ping pong, PAGES Mag, 29, 107–107, doi.org/10.22498/pages.29.2.107, 2021.

2020

  • Weitzel, N.: Climate field reconstructions from pollen and macrofossil syntheses using Bayesian hierarchical models. Bonn, Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-56875, 2020.

2019

  • Bessac, J., Monahan, A. H., Christensen, H. M., and Weitzel, N.: Stochastic Parameterization of Subgrid-Scale Velocity Enhancement of Sea Surface Fluxes, Monthly Weather Review, 147, 1447–1469, doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-18-0384.1, 2019.

  • Khider, D., Emile‐Geay, J., McKay, N.P., Gil, Y., Garijo, D., Ratnakar, V., ... Weitzel, N., ...: PaCTS 1.0: A Crowdsourced Reporting Standard for Paleoclimate Data. Paleoceanog and Paleoclimatol, 34, 1570-1596, doi.org/10.1029/2019PA003632, 2019.

  • Lu, F., Weitzel, N., and Monahan, A. H.: Joint state-parameter estimation of a nonlinear stochastic energy balance model from sparse noisy data, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 26, 227–250, doi.org/10.5194/npg-26-227-2019, 2019.

  • Weitzel, N., Hense, A., and Ohlwein, C.: Combining a pollen and macrofossil synthesis with climate simulations for spatial reconstructions of European climate using Bayesian filtering, Clim. Past, 15, 1275–1301, doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1275-2019, 2019.

  • Weitzel, N., Wagner, S., Sjolte, J., Klockmann, M., Bothe, O., Andres, H., Tarasov, L., Rehfeld, K., Zorita, E., Widmann, M., Sommer, P., Schädler, G., Ludwig, P., Kapp, F., Jonkers, L., García-Pintado, J., Fuhrmann, F., Dolman, A., Dallmeyer, A., and Brücher, T.: Diving into the Past: A Paleo Data–Model Comparison Workshop on the Late Glacial and Holocene, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100, ES1–ES4, doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0169.1, 2019.

2018

  • Andres, H., Bothe, O., Rehfeld, K., Wagner, S., Weitzel, N., and Zorita, E.: An integrated proxy and simulation data initiative for the Holocene and the last deglaciation, PAGES Mag, 26, 85–85, doi.org/10.22498/pages.26.2.85, 2018.