Research

This page groups my research by themes.

Using the Past to Constrain the Future

Sea-level projections constrained at tide-gauge sites — Perrette & Mengel (2025), Science Advances [21].

I use observations and reconstructions of the past to constrain models and improve projections — from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to historical trends and process-based insights. This generally relies on Earth System Models (ESM) ensembles.

LGM reconstruction (ongoing)

Ongoing Bayesian reconstruction of LGM climate and circulation at AWI (in progress, no publication yet), focusing on integrating paleodata with ESM priors to reduce structural uncertainty and inform future projections.

Global & regional sea-level rise

Constraining and projecting sea level using historical data, semi-empirical approaches, and ESM ensembles:

Relative sea-level projections constrained by historical trends (with M. Mengel) — latest work [21] (code). This builds on earlier work combining a simple climate model and fingerprints [7], as well as on the semi-empirical approaches described below.
Robustness of semi-empirical sea-level projections, i.e. simple models calibrated from past relationship between global-mean temperature and global-mean sea-level rise [2,9].

Climate Modelling, Emulators and EMICs

RIME-X, a fast statistical emulator of regional climate impacts — Schwind et al. (2026), preprint [22].

Reduced-complexity models and EMICs enable efficient exploration of long-term feedbacks and policy-relevant scenarios.

RIME/RIMEX impact emulator (with C.-F. Schleussner, N. Schwind, E. Byers, and team) [20,22] — see the RIME/RimeX page at IIASA and the code.
MAGICC: reduced-complexity climate modeling in scenario assessments [7].
CLIMBER-2 EMIC work on long-term Earth-system feedbacks [5,8].
CLIMBER-3: contributions to next-generation EMIC development [19].

In the GREENRISE project (with A. Ganopolski and colleagues at PIK), I developed a lightweight Fortran model of Greenland’s outlet glaciers — including submarine melting driven by plume dynamics [18] — designed as a subgrid scheme for a calibrated large-scale ice-sheet model [12]. A side product was a netCDF wrapper in Fortran, mostly by A. Robinson [11].

Climate Assessments and Outreach

The World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat report series [4] and global coastal damage assessments — Hinkel et al. (2014), PNAS [10].

Some of my work focuses on bridging physical climate modeling with policy-oriented synthesis and assessments:

Turn Down the Heat (World Bank) contributions [4,6].
Cross-sector climate-risk and regional assessment work [13–14].
Global coastal damages, adaptation costs, and protection strategies [10].

My consulting work consists in quantitative climate-risk and scenario work with Climate Analytics, Knowl-Edge, and IISD.

On the outreach side, I invested time in the isipedia.org project led by Katja Frieler (PIK), for the dissemination of climate impact science. I co-built the site’s pipeline (taking over from Robert Giesieke) and built the interactive visualizations.

Early Works

Near-ubiquity of ice-edge blooms in the Arctic, revealed by satellite remote sensing — Perrette et al. (2011), Biogeosciences [3].

My early works touched on ocean data assimilation and remote sensing:

Biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics from space-based observations: Arctic primary production and ice-edge blooms via remote sensing [3].
Flux correction via ocean data assimilation using a state-of-the-art ocean general circulation model [1].

References

See the full, up-to-date publications list.