Dr. Nils Weitzel

Nils was 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. Since November 2024, he is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Bristol (United Kingdom).

• 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

• climate variability
• sustainable pathways

• ORCID
• Research Gate

2025

• 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 with pseudo-proxy experiments, Clim. Past, 21, 381–403, doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-381-2025, 2025.
• Braschoss, L., Weitzel, N., Baudouin, J.-P., and Rehfeld, K.: State Dependency of Dynamic and Thermodynamic Contributions to Effective Precipitation Changes, Journal of Climate, 38, 731–748, doi.org/10.1175/jcli-d-24-0355.1, 2025.
• Trombini, I., Weitzel, N., Valdes, P. J., Baudouin, J.-P., Armstrong, E., and Rehfeld, K.: Atmospheric and Oceanic Pathways Drive Separate Modes of Southern Hemisphere Climate in Simulations of Spontaneous Dansgaard-Oeschger-Type Oscillations, Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2024GL111473, doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111473, 2025.
• Weitzel, N., Racky, M., Braschoss, L., and Rehfeld, K.: Towards model-to-measurement data cubes with rigorous uncertainty propagation, NFDI4Earth Community on Zenodo, doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14627370, 2025.
• Weitzel, N., Racky, M., and Braschoss, L.: cupsm v1.0.0: A python package for proxy system modeling with data cubes, zenodo (software), doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14624116, 2025.

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.
• Savytska, Y., Smolii, V., and Weitzel, N.: ESD Ideas: Near real-time preliminary detection of carbon dioxide source and sink areas using a Laplacian filter, preprint (in review, Earth System Dynamics), doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1981, 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 (accepted 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.