Xavier Rodó

Institut Català de Ciències del Clima (IC3)

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

Xavier Rodó (Terrassa, 1965). Head of the Climate & Health Program at ISGlobal. Founding director of the Cat. Inst. Clim. Sci. (IC3) and former head of the Clim. Res. Lab. at the PCB. MSc in engineering, completed his PhD in 1997 (UB) on the simulation of extreme systems under climate forcing. Visiting fellow at Princeton U. and afiliated scientist at COLA, US. Taught ecology, advanced statistics and sustainability (Unesco Chair). RyC researcher at the Dep. Met. & Astr. UB. In 2003 he edited the book `Global Climate: Current Research and Uncertainties in the Climate System, Springer-Verlag'. He was co-chair of CLIVAR-Spain (-2007) and SSC of the MEDCLIVAR-ESF. CA and ER of the AR4-WGII (IPCC2007). SCM of the Drought Integration Group (DIG) of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). Editorial Board Member of Nature Scientific Reports `Earth & Environmental Sciences'. Member of the OPCC to monitor climate change in the Pyrenees.


Research interests

Mediterranean climate; tropical teleconnections; ENSO origin&dynamics; role of climate variability on the global carbon cycle; simulation of climate impacts (health, water, extremes). In the former I am particularly involved in trying to disentangle the origin of El Niño, the ways ENSO, the tropical Atlantic and the Atlantic tripole interact to modulate SW Mediterranean climate and the role that the monsoon plays modulating this interplay with both statistical and dynamical models. In the latter, I focus essentially on infectious diseases driven by climate (ABM, ODE), and on the impacts of climate on the hydrological cycle. The development of statistical techniques for improving climate diagnostics is another of my historical interests. Last but not least, I am also involved in the study of the interactions between climate and biogeochemistry of the global carbon cycle. To this end we implemented a network of EGE gases observatories in the Iberian Peninsula.

Selected publications

– Ballester J, Rodó X, Robine JM & Herrmann FR 2016, ‘European seasonal mortality and influenza incidence due to winter temperature variability’, Nature Climate Change 6, 927-930 — Highlighted in the Issue Cover —

– Lowe R & Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘Evaluating probabilistic dengue risk forecasts from a prototype early warning system for Brazil’, eLife 5, e11285.

– Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘Revisiting the role of environmental and climate factors on the epidemiology of Kawasaki disease’,  Ann. New York Acad. Sci., 1382, 84-98.

– Ballester J, Petrova D, Bordoni S & Rodó X 2016, ‘Sensitivity of El Niño intensity and timing to preceding subsurface heat magnitude’, Nat. Sci. Rep., 6: 36344.

– Ballester J, Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘Heat advection processes leading to El Nino events as depicted by an ensemble of ocean assimilation products’, J. Geophys. Res.-Oceans, 121,6,3710-3729.

– Grossi C, Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘Analysis of ground-based Rn-222 measurements over Spain: Filling the gap in southwestern Europe’, J. Geophys. Res.-Atm. 121,18,11021-11037.

– Bouma MJ, Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘El Nino-based malaria epidemic warning for Oromia, Ethiopia, from August 2016 to July 2017’, Trop. Med. Int. Health, 2,1,1481-1488.

– Lowe R, Rodó X et al. 2016, ‘Evaluation of an early-warning system for heat wave-related mortality in Europe: implications for sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting and climate services’,  Int. J. of Env. Res. Pub. Health, 13(2): 206.


Selected research activities

-Member of the Editorial Board ‘Nature Scientific Reports’.

-Steering Committee Member of the ‘Observatoire Pyrénéen du Changement Climatique’

-Editor of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Special Issue: Human Health in the Face of Climate Change.

-Invited scientist at the Istituto Politecnico de Milano, July 2016.

-Keynote Speaker at the International Conference on Climate Science and Climate Services, MetOffice, Exeter, UK, Oct. 2016.