About climes
The research center climes, or the Swedish Center for Impacts of Climate Extremes, is dedicated to building an interdisciplinary research field that focuses on the impacts of climate extremes under the changing global environment.
The center aims to influence the Swedish research landscape in this field by integrating diverse disciplines including physical, medical, social, and engineering sciences, which are pivotal for understanding the genesis of climate extremes’ impacts and are seldom combined synergistically.
Research themes
Our work is organized around three overarching themes, each targeting key knowledge gaps:
Data Development: We compile improved, freely accessible climate impact data for scientific and policy use, utilizing advanced natural language processing techniques for automated information extraction.
Impact Analysis: We unravel the complex interplay between the physical characteristics of climate extremes and societal responses, using interdisciplinary approaches to dissect the genesis of impacts.
Scenario Building: We develop socio-physical scenarios of future extreme events, accounting for societal and adaptation processes to aid in policy formulation and resilience building.
See below to read about our researchers.
Education and training
Our educational initiatives include:
Contributing to master’s programs with a focus on climate impacts.
Establishing the climes Graduate School in Climate Impacts, offering interdisciplinary training to doctoral students.
Providing a comprehensive suite of training objectives and complementary skills development to enhance career readiness and impact.
International collaboration
climes fosters a vibrant international network, engaging in collaborations across academia, the private sector, and public agencies worldwide. Our international exchange program enriches our research and expands our global perspective, ensuring that climes is at the forefront of addressing global challenges related to climate extremes.
Societal engagement
Our commitment to societal resilience and adaptation is reflected in our efforts to:
Promote public awareness of climate extremes’ impacts through various outreach activities.
Produce policy briefs and engage with stakeholders to inform and support evidence-based decision-making.
Involve communities in our research, ensuring that our work is grounded in real-world needs and contributes to sustainable solutions.
Organisational structure
climes operates with a streamlined management structure that includes all principal investigators, supported by dedicated committees for training coordination and external advisory. This collaborative approach ensures that our research is agile, responsive, and impactful.
Principal Investigators
Gabriele Messori, Center Director
Emily Boyd
Emily Boyd is a Professor in Sustainability Studies at LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies), with a focus on environment and climate change. Her research spans across the interdisciplinary nexus of poverty, livelihoods, and resilience, addressing critical issues in global environmental change, notably in cities, sustainable land use, and deforestation across various continents. With a background in social science, Emily’s work offers insights into resilience, adaptation, and community participation in the carbon economy. She holds a variety of positions, including Deputy Coordinator at LU’s Nature-based future solutions and Director at Lund University Sustainability Forum.
Research Focus: Sustainability science, climate adaptation and resilience, governance, and development.
Joakim Nivre
Joakim Nivre, a senior researcher at RISE and a professor of computational linguistics at Uppsala University, has had an academical journey with Ph.D.s in General Linguistics and Computer Science from the University of Gothenburg and Växjö University, respectively. His pioneering work in data-driven methods for language technology, especially morphosyntactic and semantic analysis, has influenced the field. Nivre is one of the developers of the transition-based method for syntactic dependency parsing and a founding member of the Universal Dependencies project, which aims to standardize morphosyntactic annotation across languages. His contributions to computational linguistics are widely recognized, underscoring his leadership in the global research community.
Research Focus: His research centers on advancing language technology through data-driven methods, with significant contributions to morphosyntactic and semantic analysis in computational linguistics.
Elena Raffetti
Elena Raffetti
Elena Raffetti, a medical doctor with a specialty in public health, is deeply engaged in epidemiological research and health data science. She completed her specialty training in public health medicine at the University of Brescia, Italy, in 2016 and obtained her Ph.D. in Medical Science, specializing in Epidemiology, from Karolinska Institutet in 2021. Her post-doctoral work was performed at Department of Primary Care and Public Health at University of Cambridge and Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University. Currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, and involved in multiple research projects across Europe, Elena is dedicated to understanding the health impacts of socio-environmental extreme events, particularly focusing on cardiovascular and maternal health amidst climate extremes and pandemic.
Research Focus: Elena aims to integrate medical, natural, and social sciences to explore the effects of climate extremes and pandemics on human health, with a keen interest in vulnerable groups like pregnant women.
Read more…
Olof Mogren
Olof Mogren
Olof Mogren serves as a senior researcher on foundational and applied machine learning at RISE. After obtaining his Ph.D. in machine learning from Chalmers University of Technology in 2018, Mogren has gained extensive experience in leading applied AI projects addressing challenges in climate adaptation and ecology. He leads RISE Learning Machines Seminars and works on AI for soundscape analysis, biodiversity monitoring, and remote sensing, demonstrating his commitment to using AI for societal benefits and environmental sustainability.
Research Focus: Mogren’s research is dedicated to developing machine learning solutions for environmental and climate-related issues, emphasizing the practical application of AI to foster sustainable advancements.
Climes Board
Dr. Hanifeh Khayyeri
Institution: Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE)
Expertise: Biomechanics, medical technology, and engineering sciences
Prof. Emily Boyd
Institution: Lund University (LU)
Expertise: Human-environment geography, climate adaptation, and vulnerability
Dr. Olof Mogren
Institution: Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE)
Expertise: Deep learning, artificial intelligence, and climate data analysis
Dr. Elena Raffetti
Institution: Uppsala University (UU) and Karolinska Institutet (KI)
Expertise: Epidemiology, public health, and medical sciences
Prof. Giuliano Di Baldassarre
Institution: Uppsala University (UU)
Expertise: Hydrology, natural hazards, and disaster risk reduction
Prof. Joakim Nivre (Adjunct Member)
Institution: Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE)
Expertise: Natural language processing, computational linguistics, and machine learning
Prof. Gabriele Messori
Institution: Uppsala University (UU)
Expertise: Climate science, extreme weather events, and atmospheric
dynamics
Dr. Martina Angela Caretta
Institution: Lund University (LU)
Expertise: Water insecurity, climate change adaptation, vulnerability, gender
Sakıp Murat Yalçın (Adjunct Member)
Institution: Uppsala University (UU). Project coordinator
Researcher Profiles
Sanja Duvnjak Žarković
Postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University’s Department of Earth Sciences. She completed her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, specializing in power systems, particularly Security of Supply. Sanja’s expertise includes mathematical optimization, data analysis, machine learning, and reliability analysis in power systems.
Her current research focuses on the impacts of extreme weather on power systems and their societal implications. She aims to enhance the resilience and security of these critical infrastructures by integrating security of supply concepts into broader power system resilience frameworks.
Research focus: Impacts of extreme weather on power systems and societal dependencies, aiming to improve resilience and security.
Murathan Kurfalı
Postdoctoral researcher at RISE, specializing in natural language processing. Murathan holds a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics from Stockholm University, with his research covering areas such as multilingual discourse analysis, evaluation of language models across languages, and computational analysis of textual corpora to gain insights into human perception.
During his post-doc at the climes project, Murathan applies natural language processing techniques to large datasets (e.g., news, articles, reports) to explore the impacts of climate change. His work focuses on mining data related to climate-related disasters and societal impacts, as well as analyzing how perceptions and discussions of climate change evolve over time.
Research focus: Improving language models for diverse linguistic applications, with a particular emphasis on developing computational tools for analyzing multilingual texts.
Aditya Narayan Mishra
Postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University’s Department of Earth Sciences. Aditya completed his Ph.D. in Climate Science at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria, specializing in regional climate modeling and extreme weather events. His research integrates climate simulations, atmospheric dynamics, and climate variability to assess the impacts of extreme events, particularly in extra-tropical regions.
His previous work spans multiple institutions, including time as a visiting scholar at the University of Reading and conducting research at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. Aditya’s expertise includes precipitation patterns, climate dynamics, and feedback mechanisms in climate systems, with a focus on understanding how climate change intensifies extreme weather phenomena.
Research focus: Impacts of climate change on precipitation, atmospheric dynamics, and extreme weather events, with particular emphasis on regional climate modeling and simulation techniques to predict future climate scenarios.
Affiliated Researchers
Project Coordinator
Sakıp Murat Yalçın
Murat is the Project Coordinator for climes at Uppsala University, where he ensures effective project management, team coordination, and strategic alignment for climate resilience and adaptation initiatives. With extensive experience in agile project management and stakeholder engagement, Murat plays a crucial role in facilitating collaboration across interdisciplinary research teams.
Previously, he led national projects on digital inclusion, adult education and major cultural events. His expertise includes agile methods, event management, communication strategies.
Focus: Cross-disciplinary coordination, team facilitation, stakeholder engagement, project administration and communication strategies, in order to support impactful climate resilience initiatives.