Sebastian Sippel

Address

Dr. Sebastian Sippel
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science
CHN N 16.1
Universitätstrasse 16
8092 Zürich
Switzerland

sebastian.sippel@env.ethz.ch

Research Interests

I'm a Senior Scientist and Lecturer in the Climate Physics Group with a key research interest in improving our understanding of climate variability, extremes and their changes at global and regional scales. My research interests also include the implications of global climate changes for impact-relevant variables such as the hydrological cycle at regional scale, ecosystem water-carbon cycling, and society at large. The bulk of my research is closely linked to climate change detection and attribution. I use modern empirical-quantitative statistical and machine learning methods to address these broad research questions, integrating various climate and Earth science data streams such as gridded climate observations and climate model simulations.

Recently, I have been working on DASH - "DAta Science-informed attribution of changes in the Hydrologic cycle". The main research idea is to improve our understanding of the water cycle, and hence the detection and attribution of water cycle variables, by using data science methods guided by physical understanding. DASH is a joint project between the Climate Physics Group at IAC (Prof. Reto Knutti), the Seminar of Statistics (Prof. Nicolai Meinshausen) and the Swiss Data Science Centre. The project idea is summarized in a blog post here.

A very brief summary of my research interests:

Detection and attribution of forced climate change and climate variability at global and regional scale
Water & carbon cycling and interactions under climate variability and extremes
Data Science and Statistical Learning for Earth System Science and Climate Science
Climate extremes, ecosystem impacts and societal risk
Data diagnostics and model evaluation

Teaching

Statistical Learning for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences (with L. Gudmundsson)

M. Sc. Lecture, Thu 10-12, CHN F42, Autumn Semester 2022/23. Link to Course.

M. Sc. Lecture, Tue 08-10, CHN G42, Autumn Semester 2021/22. Link to Course.

M. Sc. Lecture, Tue 08-10, Autumn Semester 2020/21. Link to Course.

Introduction to Statistical Learning for Atmospheric and Climate Sciences (28.-29.08.2018, with L. Gudmundsson):

Publications

In Review & In Print

Brunner, L., and Sippel, S. (2022) Separation of climate models and observations based on daily output using machine learning. EarthArXiv, 1-14, doi:10.31223/X53M0J.
de Vries, I., Sippel, S., Pendergrass, A.G., and Knutti, R. (2022) Robust global detection of forced changes in mean and extreme precipitation despite observational disagreement on the magnitude of change. EGUsphere, 1-23, doi:10.5194/egusphere-2022-568.

2022

Egli, M., Sippel, S., Pendergrass, A.G., de Vries, I., and Knutti, R. (2022) Reconstruction of zonal precipitation from sparse historical observations using climate model information and statistical learning, Geophysical Research Letters, 49(23), doi:10.1029/2022GL099826.
Li, N., Sippel, S., Winkler, A., Mahecha, M. D., Reichstein, M., and Bastos, A. (2022) Inter–annual global carbon cycle variations linked to atmospheric circulation variability. Earth System Dynamics, 1-36, doi:10.5194/egusphere-2022-96.
Cortés-Andrés, J., Camps-Valls, G., Sippel, S., Székely, E., Sejdinovic, D., Diaz, E., Pérez-Suay, A., Li, Z., Mahecha, M. D., and Reichstein, M. (2022) Physics-aware nonparametric regression models for Earth data analysis. Environmental Research Letters, 17(5), 054034, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac6762.
Joswig, J. S., Wirth, C., Schuman, M. C., Kattge, J., Reu, B., Wright, I. J., Sippel, S., Rüger, N., Richter, R., Schaepman, M. E., van Bodegom, P. M., Cornelissen, J. H. C., Díaz, S., Hattingh, W. N., Kramer, K., Lens, F., Niinemets, Ü., Reich, P. B., Reichstein, M., Römermann, C., Schrodt, F., Anand, M., Bahn, M., Byun, C., Campetella, G., Cerabolini, B. E. L., Craine, J. M., Gonzalez-Melo, A., Gutiérrez, A. G., He, T., Higuchi, P., Jactel, H., Kraft, N. J. B., Minden, V., Onipchenko, V., Peñuelas, J., Pillar, V. D., Sosinski, E., Soudzilovskaia, N. A., Weiher, E., and Mahecha, M. D. (2022) Climatic and soil factors explain the two-dimensional spectrum of global plant trait variation, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6, 36-50, doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01616-8.

2021

Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Székely, E., Fischer, E., Pendergrass, A. G., Lehner, F., and Knutti, R. (2021) Robust detection of forced warming in the presence of potentially large climate variability, Science Advances, 7, eabh4429, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abh4429.
Fischer, E., Sippel, S., and Knutti, R. (2021) Increasing probability of record-shattering climate extremes, Nature Climate Change 11, 689-695, doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01092-9.
Heinze-Deml, C., Sippel, S., Pendergrass, A. G., Lehner, F., and Meinshausen, N.: Latent Linear Adjustment Autoencoders v1.0: A novel method for estimating and emulating dynamic precipitation at high resolution. Geoscientific Model Development 14, 4977-4999, doi:10.5194/gmd-2020-275.
Flach, M., Brenning, A., Gans, F., Reichstein, M., Sippel, S., and Mahecha, M. D. (2021) Vegetation modulates the impact of climate extremes on gross primary production, Biogeosciences 18, 39-53, doi:10.5194/bg-18-39-2021.
Matthews, H. D., Tokarska, K. B., Rogelj, J., Forster, P. M., Haustein, K., Smith, C. J., MacDougall, A. H., Mengis, N., Sippel, S., and Knutti, R. (2021) An integrated approach to quantifying uncertainties in the remaining carbon budget. Communications Earth and Environment 2, 7, doi:10.1038/s43247-020-00064-9.

2020

Sippel, S., Fischer, E. M., Scherrer, S., Meinshausen, N., and Knutti, R. (2020) Late 1980s abrupt climatic change in Europe consistent with circulation variability and long-term warming, Environmental Research Letters 15, 094056, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab86f2.
Vignotto, E., Sippel, S., Lehner, F., and Fischer, E. M., (2020) Towards dynamical adjustment of the full temperature distribution. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Climate Informatics, 52-59, doi:10.1145/3429309.3429317.
Wills, R. J., Sippel, S., and Barnes, E. A. (2020) Separating forced and unforced components of cli-mate change: The utility of pattern recognition methods in Large Ensembles and observations. CLIVAR Variations Newsletter 18(2), 1-8, doi:10.5065/0DSY-WH17.
Tokarska, K.B., Stolpe, M.B., Sippel, S., Fischer, E. M., Smith, C.J., Lehner, F. and Knutti, R. (2020). Past warming trend constrains future warming in CMIP6 models. Science Advances 6(12), doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz9549.
Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Fischer, E. M., Szekely, E., and Knutti, R. (2020) Climate change now detectable from any single day of global weather. Nature Climate Change 10, 35-41, doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0666-7.
See also News&Views: doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0670-y.
Andersen, H., Cermak, J., Fuchs, J., Knippertz, P., Gaetani, M., Quinting, J., Sippel, S., and Vogt, R. (2020) Synoptic-scale controls of fog and low-cloud variability in the Namib Desert, Atmos. Chem. Phys. 20, 3415–3438, doi:10.5194/acp-20-3415-2020.

2019

Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Merrifield, A., Lehner, F., Pendergrass, A. G., Fischer, E. M., and Knutti, R. (2019) Uncovering the forced climate response from a single ensemble member using statistical learning. Journal of Climate 32, 5677-5699, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0882.1.
Székely, E., Sippel, S., Knutti, R., Obozinski, G. and Meinshausen, N. (2019) A direct approach to detection and attribution of climate change. In Brajard, J., Charantonis, A., Chen, C., & Runge, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Climate Informatics: CI 2019 (No. NCAR/TN-561+PROC), 119-124, doi:10.5065/y82j-f154. See also arXiv preprint, arXiv:1910.03346.
Merrifield, A. L., Simpson, I. R., McKinnon, K. A., Sippel, S., Xie, S.-P., and Deser, C. (2019) Local and non-local land surface influence in European heatwave initial condition ensembles. Geophysical Research Letters 46, 14082-14092, doi:10.1029/2019GL083945.
Russo, S., Sillmann, J., Sippel, S., Barcikowska, M. J., Ghisetti, C., Smid, M., O’Neill, B. (2019) Half a degree and rapid socioeconomic development matter for heatwave risk. Nature Communications 10(1), 136, doi:10.1038/s41467-018-08070-4.

2018

Sippel, S., Reichstein, M., Ma, X., Mahecha, M. D., Lange, H., Flach, M., and Frank, D. (2018) Drought, Heat, and the Carbon Cycle: a Review, Current Climate Change Reports 4(3), 266-286, doi:10.1007/s40641-018-0103-4.
Flach, M., Sippel, S., Gans, F., Bastos, A., Brenning, A., Reichstein, M., and Mahecha, M. D. (2018) Contrasting biosphere responses to hydrometeorological extremes: revisiting the 2010 western Russian Heatwave, Biogeosciences 16, 6067-6085, doi:10.5194/bg-15-6067-2018.
Sillmann, J., S. Russo, S. Sippel, and K. Alnes (2018) From hazard to risk. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 99(8), 1689-1693, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0327.1.
von Buttlar, J., J. Zscheischler, A. Rammig, S. Sippel, M. Reichstein, A. Knohl, M. Jung, O. Menzer, M. A. Arain, N. Buchmann, A. Cescatti, D. Gianelle, G. Kieley, B. E. Law, V. Magliulo, H. Margolis, H. McCaughey, L. Merbold, M. Migliavacca, L. Montagnani, W. Oechel, M. Pavelka, M. Peichl, S. Rambal, A. Raschi, R. L. Scott, F. P. Vaccari, E. van Gorsel, A. Varlagin, G. Wohlfahrt, and M. D. Mahecha (2018) Impacts of droughts and extreme temperature events on gross primary production and ecosystem respiration: a systematic assessment across ecosystems and climate zones. Biogeosciences 15, 1293-1318, doi:10.5194/bg-15-1293-2018.
Mitchell, D., Heaviside, C., Schaller, N., Allen, M. R., Ebi, K., Fischer, E. M., Gasparrini, A., Harrington, L., Kharin, V. V., Shiogama, H., Sillmann, J., Sippel, S., and Vardoulakis, S. (2018) Extreme heat-related mortality avoided under Paris Agreement goals, Nature Climate Change 8(7), 551, doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0210-1.
Lange, H., Sippel, S., Rosso, O. A. (2018) Nonlinear dynamics of river runoff elucidated by horizontal visibility graphs, Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science 28(7), 075520, doi:doi.org/10.1063/1.5026491.
Sippel, S., El-Madany, T. S., Migliavacca, M., Mahecha, M. D., Carrara, A., Flach, M., Kaminski, T., Otto, F. E. L., Thonicke, K., Vossbeck, M., and Reichstein, M. (2018) Warm winter, wet spring, and an extreme response in ecosystem functioning on the Iberian Peninsula. In Herring, S. C., Christidis, N., Hoell, A., Kossin, J. P., Schreck III, C. J., and Stott, P. A. (Eds.), Explaining Extremes of 2016 from a Climate Perspective. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 99(1), S80–S85. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0135.1.
He, W., Ju, W., Schwalm, C. R. , Sippel, S., Wu, X., He, Q., Song, L., Zhang, C., Li, J., Sitch, S., Viovy, N., Friedlingstein, F., and Jain, A. K. (2018) Large‐Scale Droughts Responsible for Dramatic Reductions of Terrestrial Net Carbon Uptake Over North America in 2011 and 2012, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 123(7), 2053-2071, doi:doi.org/10.1029/2018JG004520.
Wu, D, Ciais, P., Viovy, N., Knapp, A. K., Wilcox, K., Bahn, M., Smith, M. D., Vicca, S., Fatichi, S., Zscheischler, J., He, Y., Li, X., Ito, A., Arneth, A., Harper, A., Ukkola, A., Paschalis, A., Poulter, B., Peng, C., Ricciuto, D., Reinthaler, D., Chen, G., Tian, H., Genet, H., Mao, J., Ingrisch, J., Nabel, J. E. S. M., Pongratz, J., Boysen, L. R., Kautz, M., Schmitt, M., Meir, P., Zhu, Q., Hasibeder, R., Sippel, S., Dangal, S. R. S., Sitch, S., Shi, X., Wang, Y., Luo, Y., Liu, Y., and Piao, S. (2018) Asymmetric responses of primary productivity to altered precipitation simulated by ecosystem models across three long-term grassland sites, Biogeosciences 15, 3421–3437, doi:doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-3421-2018.

2017

Mahecha, M. D., Gans, F., Sippel, S., Donges, J. F., Kaminski, T., Metzger, S., Migliavacca, M., Papale, D., Rammig, A., and Zscheischler, J. (2017) Detecting impacts of extreme events with ecological in-situ monitoring networks. Biogeosciences, 14, 4255-4277. doi:10.5194/bg-14-4255-2017.
Flach, M., Gans, F., Brenning, A., Denzler, J., Reichstein, M., Rodner, E., Bathiany, S., Bodesheim, P., Guanche, Y., Sippel, S., and Mahecha, M. D. (2016) Multivariate Anomaly Detection for Earth Observations: A Comparison of Algorithms and Feature Extraction Techniques. Earth System Dynamics 8, 677-696. 10.5194/esd-8-677-2017.
Sippel, S., Forkel, M., Rammig, A., Thonicke, K., Flach, M., Heimann, M., Otto, F. E. L., Reichstein, M., and Mahecha, M. D. (2017) Contrasting and interacting changes in spring and summer carbon cycle extremes in European ecosystems. Environmental Research Letters 12(7), 075006. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7398.
Ilie, I., Dittrich, P., Carvalhais, N., Jung, M., Heinemeyer, A., Migliavacca, M., Morison, J. I. L., Sippel, S., Subke, J.-A., Wilkinson, M., and Mahecha, M. D. (2017) Reverse engineering model structures for soil and ecosystem respiration: the potential of gene expression programming. Geoscientific Model Development 10, 3519-3545. doi:10.5194/gmd-10-3519-2017.
Sippel, S., Zscheischler, J., Mahecha, M. D., Orth, R., Reichstein, M., Vogel, M., and Seneviratne, S. I. (2017) Refining multi-model projections of temperature extremes by evaluation against land–atmosphere coupling diagnostics. Earth System Dynamics 8, 387-403. doi:10.5194/esd-8-387-2017.
Sippel, S., Zscheischler, J., Heimann, M., Lange, H., Mahecha, M. D., van Oldenborgh, G. J., Otto, F. E. L., and Reichstein, M. (2017) Have precipitation extremes and annual totals been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years? Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 21, 441-458. doi:10.5194/hess-2016-452.

2016

Sippel, S., Lange, H., Mahecha, M. D., Hauhs, M., Bodesheim, P., Kaminski, T., Gans, F., and Rosso, O. A. (2016) Diagnosing the Dynamics of Observed and Simulated Ecosystem Gross Primary Productivity with Time Causal Information Theory Quantifiers. PLoS ONE 11(10), e0164960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0164960.
Sippel, S., Otto, F. E. L., Flach, M., and van Oldenborgh, G. J. (2016). The Role of Anthropogenic Warming in 2015 Central European Heat Waves. In Herring, S. C., Hoell, A., Hoerling, M. P., Kossin, J. P., Schreck III, C. J., and Stott, P. A. (Eds.), Explaining Extremes of 2015 from a Climate Perspective. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 97(12), S51–S56. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0149.
Sippel, S., Zscheischler, J., and Reichstein, M. (2016) Ecosystem impacts of climate extremes crucially depend on the timing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(21), 5768-5770. doi:10.1073/pnas.1605667113.
Sippel, S., Otto, F. E. L., Forkel, M., Allen, M. R., Guillod, B. P., Heimann, M., Reichstein, M., Seneviratne, S. I., Thonicke, K., and Mahecha, M. D. (2016) A novel bias correction methodology for climate impact simulations. Earth System Dynamics 7, 71-88. doi:10.5194/esd-7-71-2016.

2015

Sippel, S., Zscheischler, J., Heimann, M., Otto, F. E. L., Peters, J., and Mahecha, M. D. (2015), Quantifying changes in climate variability and extremes: Pitfalls and their overcoming, Geophysical Research Letters 42(22), 9990–9998. doi:10.1002/2015GL066307.
Sippel, S., Mitchell, D., Black, M. T., Dittus, A. J., Harrington, L., Schaller, N., and Otto, F. E. L. (2015) Combining large model ensembles with extreme value statistics to improve attribution statements of rare events. Weather and Climate Extremes 9, 25-35. doi:10.1016/j.wace.2015.06.004.
Sippel, S., Walton, P., and Otto, F. E. L. (2015) Stakeholder perspectives on the attribution of extreme weather events: An explorative enquiry. Weather, Climate and Society 7(3), 224-237. doi:10.1175/WCAS-D-14-00045.1.
Liu, M., Dannenmann, M., Lin, S., Saiz, G., Yan, G., Yao, Z., Pelster, D., Tao, H., Sippel, S., Tao, Y., Zhang, Y, Zheng, X., Zuo, Q., and Butterbach-Bahl, K. (2015). Ground cover rice production systems increase soil carbon and nitrogen stocks at regional scale. Biogeosciences 12(15), 4831-4840. doi:10.5194/bg-12-4831-2015.

2014 & Before

Sippel, S. & Otto, F. E. L. (2014) Beyond climatological extremes - assessing how the odds of hydrometeorological extreme events in South-East Europe change in a warming climate. Climatic Change 125, 381-398. doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1153-9.
Liu, M., Lin, S., Dannenmann, M., Tao, Y., Saiz, G., Zuo, Q., Sippel, S., Wei, J., Cao, J., Cai, X., and Butterbach-Bahl, K. (2013) Do water-saving ground cover rice production systems increase grain yields at regional scales? Field Crops Research 150, 19–28. doi:10.1016/j.fcr.2013.06.005.
Dannenmann, M., Willibald, G., Sippel, S. & Butterbach-Bahl, K. (2011) Nitrogen dynamics at undisturbed and burned Mediterranean shrublands of Salento Peninsula, Southern Italy. Plant and Soil 343(1-2), 5–15. doi:10.1007/s11104-010-0541-9.