Markus G. Donat

Markus G. Donat

Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I am a Meteorologist by training, and obtained my PhD in Meteorology and Climatology at the Freie Universität Berlin in June 2010. Between 2011 and 2018 I held postdoctoral positions and fellowships at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where I focused my research on developing a robust understanding of how different types of climatic extremes are changing in observations and climate model simulations. In 2018 I moved to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, where I am co-leading the Climate Prediction Group and have been a Ramón y Cajal Fellow since 2019. I have been appointed as ICREA Research Professor in February 2022. Recognitions of my scientific achievements include being awarded the World Climate Research Program and Global Climate Observing System International Data Prize in 2017, and the AXA Climate Award in 2021.

Research interests

My research aims to understand and predict how different types of climate extremes, such as heatwaves, intense precipitation or storms, are changing in the context of climate variability and long-term climate change related to global warming. This involves studying weather and climate processes that cause or amplify such extreme events, and how they respond to different climate drivers. My work involves the development and analysis of high-quality observational datasets of climate extremes, and different types of climate model simulations aiming to predict climate in the near-term (e.g. next years and decade) and more distant future. A key focus is to reduce the uncertainty related to climate variability in these climate predictions. I also explore the efficacy of land-based approaches to mitigate climate change by removing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and how these mitigation approaches may be put at risk through exposure to extreme weather and climate events.

Selected publications

Donat MG, Mahmood R, Cos P, Ortega P, Doblas-Reyes F, 2024 ‘Improving the forecast quality of near-term climate projections by constraining internal variability based on decadal predictions and observations‘, Environmental Research-Climate, 3, 035013
– Plésiat É, Dunn RJH, Donat MG & Kadow C 2024, ‘Artificial intelligence reveals past climate extremes by reconstructing historical records‘, Nature Communications, 15 – 1 – 9191.
– Petrova IY, Miralles DG, Brient F, Donat MG, Min SK, Kim YH & Bador M 2024, ‘Observation-constrained projections reveal longer-than-expected dry spells‘, Nature, 633 – 8030.
– Cos P, Marcos-Matamoros R, Donat M, Mahmood R & Doblas-Reyes FJ 2024, ‘Near-Term Mediterranean Summer Temperature Climate Projections: A Comparison of Constraining Methods‘, Journal of climate, 37 – 17 – 4367 – 4388.

Selected research activities

I am the scientific coordinator of the Horizon Europe Project EXPECT, which consists of 14 partner institutions and started in 2024. This project aims to develop the capability for an integrated attribution and prediction of regional climate changes and climate extremes.
I have been identified as highly cited researcher by Clarivate.