Elisa researches climate variability in Earth's past, present and future and its relationship to extremes and other climate impacts. She analyzes the dependence of variability on factors such as background state, temporal and spatial scales and forcings. Her research uses ensembles of climate models of varying complexity from comprehensive Earth System Models to intermediate complexity and conceptual models and contrasts them to observational data. In her master's thesis, she examined the components of the Earth's energy balance and the feedbacks at work in the climate system using an energy balance model, which she extended to enable transient simulations. In particular she explores how knowledge of past climate variability can inform expectations of future climate.
She is a member of the Fresh Eyes in CMIP initiative as part of the infrastructure and technical subgroup and on the steering committee of CVAS Phase 3. Her work contributes to the Palmod project.
