The Stuecker Climate Dynamics lab is working on various aspects of climate variability and change in the past, present, and future. These range from regional to global scales, from the tropics to the poles. Much of our work is centered on the climate of the Pacific, the largest ocean and home to Hawaiʻi and our University.

Our tools include statistical analysis of observations and paleo records as well as hierarchies of climate model simulations, ranging from very idealized low-order models to state-of-the-art high-resolution coupled climate models and large ensemble simulations. High resolution models allow us to gain a better understanding of regional processes whereas large ensembles provide a powerful tool to study changes in climate variability and extreme events (such as marine heatwaves or heavy rainfall).

Furthermore, we are interested in the practical applications to seasonal forecasting and society as a whole based on insights gained from studying fundamental climate dynamics. For instance, we  developed a new statistical-dynamical forecast systems for ENSO as well as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). These systems exhibits superior skill compared to previous and current operational prediction systems.

Please contact me regarding potential opportunities to join the group as a student/postdoc. I encourage prospective students and postdocs to apply to several fellowships available in our field (listed under the potential opportunities link).


Biosketch

 Dr. Stuecker is an associate professor in the Department of Oceanography and Director of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa (USA). Prior to joining the UH faculty as an assistant professor in 2020, he was an assistant project leader and research professor at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) in Busan (South Korea), a NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA), and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at UH Mānoa. He received a Diplom in Marine Environmental Sciences from the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg (Germany) in 2009 and a Ph.D. in Meteorology from UH Mānoa in 2015.

Dr. Stuecker is involved in various national and international research community activities. He is a member of the US National Committee for Geodesy and Geophysics (USNC/IUGG) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) (2024-Present). Dr. Stuecker is currently in the core leadership group of the CLIVAR working group "TROpical PacIfiC SST Warming PatternS" (TROPICS) and member of four more CLIVAR groups, on the topic of "Tropical Basin Interaction", on "ENSO Conceptual Models", on "Tropical Pacific Decadal Variability", and on "Pacific Atmospheric Teleconnections in a Warming Climate". He is also a member of multiple NOAA Task Forces and was a contributing author to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC. He contributed to several large coordinated climate model experiments, including the CESM2 Large Ensemble and the CESM1 Ultra-high-resolution simulations.

Dr. Stuecker received in 2024 the American Geophysical Union (AGU) James B. Macelwane Medal, became an AGU fellow, and received the University of Hawaiʻi Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research. In addition, he received the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) Early Career Scientist Medal in Physical Oceanography in 2023, an NSF CAREER award in 2022, the Kamide Lecture Award from the Atmospheric Sciences section of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) in 2020, and the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Climate: Past, Present & Future (CL) division of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in 2016. In 2018, Dr. Stuecker was a Future Leaders Program Fellow of the Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum in Kyoto, Japan.


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Dr. Malte F. Stuecker

Associate Professor

Department of Oceanography & International Pacific Research Center (IPRC)

School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST)

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa



   



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