CMCC Lectures
28 April 2026, 12:00 CEST | Online
To join the Lecture, register here

The limits of current Earth system models in accurately capturing climate oscillations affect both long-range forecasting and our ability to understand how they may evolve under climate change. 

Join the Lecture with Jeffrey Weiss, CMCC Bassi Fellow and Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, to discover how new developments coming from nonequilibrium stochastic thermodynamics can help scientists better describe climate oscillations across different scales and physical mechanisms.

Climate variability on subseasonal to interannual timescales takes the form of modes such as the El-Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). Climate oscillations provide the potential for extended range forecast skill beyond the two-week weather predictability limit. Earth system models, however, struggle to accurately capture climate oscillations, limiting their utility in forecasting and hindering our ability to project how they evolve under climate change.

Different climate oscillations have different timescales and underlying physics, and are studied by different sub-communities of climate science. For example, ENSO is a seasonal to interannual phenomenon involving interacting ocean waves reflecting off continents, upwelling of cold deep ocean waters, and changes in atmospheric circulation, while the MJO is a subseasonal phenomenon involving tropical convection, radiative cooling, and atmospheric winds.

Together with Jeffrey Weiss, CMCC Bassi Fellow and professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, USA we will explore how these oscillations are often studied using data-driven linear inverse models (LIMs) based on multivariate climate indices. The mathematical form of LIMs allows us to apply recent developments in nonequilibrium stochastic thermodynamics to climate oscillations, opening the door to extend the theory in previously unexplored directions. Just as the traditional equilibrium thermodynamics of gases provides a common framework for molecular collision dynamics, nonequilibrium stochastic thermodynamics provides a common framework for climate oscillations across scales with diverse underlying physics.

Join us to explore how this perspective can open new avenues for studying climate variability and its predictability.

Speaker: Jeffrey Weiss, Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Discussant: Andrea Castelletti, CMCC

Moderator: Giovanni Liguori, CMCC 

Jeffrey Weiss is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. He is currently a Bassi Fellow at CMCC. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of California Berkeley, USA, and was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, USA. Weiss’s research interests include geophysical turbulence, vortex and jet dynamics in Earth and planetary atmospheres and oceans, data assimilation, climate modeling, climate variability, and stochastic thermodynamics.

The event is part of the CMCC Lectures webinar series, which presents frontier topics and solutions in climate sciences and action, through the insights of leading experts. The series provides a platform for prominent scientists to showcase their cutting-edge research and engage in dialogue with peers and stakeholders.