CASUS Distinguished Lecture Series
Climate meets complex systems science: exploring extreme climate events via a complex network approach
CASUS Distinguished Lecture Series, Prof. Jürgen Kurths, Senior Adviser, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Postdam, Germany
Abstract of the talk// The Earth system is a very complex and dynamical one basing on various feedbacks. This makes predictions and risk analysis even of very strong events as floods, landslides, or heatwaves a challenging task. A recently developed approach via complex networks will be presented in the talk. It leads to an inverse problem: Is there a backbone-like structure underlying the climate system?
To treat this problem, Kurths and his team have proposed some methods to reconstruct and analyze a complex network from spatio-temporal data based on a nonlinear causality analysis. This approach enables them to uncover relations in the climate system even between far away tipping points as Amazonia and the Tibetan Plateau, but also to explore mechanisms for heatwaves or to follow-up rather short phenomena as tropical cyclones.
Extreme events are studied from this perspective by means of the nonlinear event synchronization analysis. This way scientists discover relations to global and regional circulation patterns in oceans and the atmosphere, which lead to construct substantially better predictions, in particular for the onset of the Indian Summer Monsoon, or the Indian Ocean Dipole.
CV// Jürgen Kurths studied mathematics at the University of Rostock and received his PhD degree from the GDR Academy of Sciences. He first worked as full Professor at the University of Potsdam, and in 2008 he joined the Humboldt University in Berlin. At the same time, he held the Chair of Research Department 4 “Complexity Science” of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Currently, he is a senior adviser at PIK.
Kurths’ primary research interests include synchronization, complex networks, and time series analysis and their applications in Earth sciences, physiology, engineering, and others. He has made contributions in nonlinear dynamics theory and climate networks. Kurths has published more than 600 articles (h-ind. 128) and has been a highly cited researcher since 2017. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Network Science Society, and a member of the Academia Europaea. He received an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in 2005 and 2021, the Richardson Award from the European Geoscience Union in 2013, the Lagrange Award of Nonlinear Science and Complexity Conferences in 2022 and the SigmaPhi Price of the European Physical Society (together with Michael Kosterlitz, Nobel Price 2016) in 2023. He received eight Honorary Doctorates and Honorary Professorships. He was Editor-in-chief of CHAOS – A Journal of Nonlinear Science (2015-2025) and editor of further journals.
Jürgen Kurths will be talking live in Görlitz. However, as the event is organized in a hybrid format that includes a videoconferencing tool by Zoom Inc., people interested in the topic have the chance to also join the talk remotely. Please ask for the login details via contact@casus.science.
CASUS – The Center for Advanced Systems Understanding Conrad-Schiedt-Str. 20, D-02826 Görlitz, Deutschland
7 October 2026, 2 pm