Climate Dynamics Group
Understand the Climate System
Advance climate science through interdisciplinary research.
Leverage Computational Tools
Harness advances in computing to model the climate system and produce high-quality public code.
Use Observational Data
Learn from observational data to constrain predictions of Earth’s future.
Climate Dynamics
An Introduction
Caltech’s Climate Dynamics Group comprises physicists, engineers, applied mathematicians, and software engineers, united in advancing climate science and modeling.
Our mission is twofold: to uncover fundamental insights into the drivers of climate change and variability, and to translate these discoveries into advances in modeling and prediction. We specialize in advancing theories related to clouds, convection, and extreme events. Leveraging diverse datasets, including high-resolution simulations and Earth observations, we develop state-of-the-art, physics-based and data-driven models. As a member of the Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA), we shape the future of climate modeling for the 21st century.
Recent Publications
Mendonça, J.M., Schneider, T., Liu, J., Lian, Y., 2025: Reconciling Jupiter’s vertical motions with the observed cloud structure in
the upper troposphere. Icarus, 443, 116766.
[PDF] [Official version]
Lima, M., Deck, K., Dunbar, O.R.A., Schneider, T., 2025: Toward routing river water in land surface models with recurrent neural networks. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 29, 3145-3164.
[PDF] [Official version]
Charbonneau, A., Deck, K., Schneider, T., 2025: A physics-constrained neural differential equation framework for data-driven snowpack simulation. Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems, 4, 240040.
[PDF] [Official version]
Wang, Y., Braghiere, R.K., Fischer, W.W., Yao, Y., Shen, Z., Schneider, T., Bloom, A.A., Schimel, D., Croft, H., Winkler, A.J., Reichstein, M., Frankenberg, C., 2025: Impacts of leaf traits on vegetation optical properties in Earth system modeling. Nature Communications, 16, 4968.
[Free read-only version] [Official version]
Bonan, D., Thompson, A., Schneider, T., Zanna, L., Armour, K.C., Sun, S., 2025: Observational constraints imply limited future Atlantic meridional overturning circulation weakening. Nature Geoscience, 2025.
[PDF] [Official version] [Press release]