New Professor at IMKTRO

Limitations in understanding and difficulties in modelling cloud and convective processes and their coupling with larger scales are at the heart of uncertainty in climate sensitivity and weather extremes. The multi-scale nature of cloud and convective processes—from tiny cloud droplets to convective storms and all the way up to the planetary-scale circulation—challenge traditional observing and modelling strategies. With her new group of Experimental Meteorology at IMKTRO, Raphaela Vogel will build on the excellent observational infrastructure of the KITcube to develop innovative methods to extract process-oriented observational products that help constrain the role of cloud, convective, and mesoscale processes for climate (change) and weather (extremes).

Raphaela Vogel´s research combines in-situ and remote sensing observations, high-resolution simulations, and conceptual models to improve our fundamental understanding of cloud and convective processes. As part of her ongoing ERC Starting grant ROTOЯ, she and her group aim to elucidate how the evaporation of tiny rain drops influences our life on Earth through a combination of new observational benchmarks and cutting-edge simulations. Together with her new colleagues and group at KIT she plans to use the KITcube facility to develop new ideas and strategies for field campaigns that aim to answer some of the most pressing questions in Meteorology and Climate science.

Raphaela Vogel joined IMKTRO on August 1, 2026. Before moving to KIT, she taught as a tenure-track professor of Mesoscale Meteorology at the University of Hamburg. She studied Environmental Sciences at ETH Zurich, obtained her PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and enjoyed four years as a postdoc at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris.