Rate My Professor Christian Jakob

Professor Christian Jakob is the Professor for Climate Modelling in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Faculty of Science at Monash University. He was awarded his PhD in Meteorology by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2001. From 1993 to 2001, he served as a research scientist and then senior research scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, where he worked on the development and evaluation of model representations of clouds, convection, and precipitation. Between 2002 and 2007, he held positions as senior and principal research scientist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Since 2007, he has been a professor at Monash University. He has led major research centres, including as Deputy Director and later Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (remaining a Chief Investigator), and currently Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century.

Professor Jakob's research focuses on the development and evaluation of processes crucial to the energy and water cycles in global atmospheric models, tropical convection, and weather-climate interactions. He co-chairs the World Climate Research Programme’s Digital Earths Lighthouse Activity and has held key international roles, including co-chair of the WCRP Modelling Advisory Council (2012-2017), lead of the Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (2008-2012), and chair of the GEWEX Modelling and Prediction Panel (2007-2010). He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group 1. His awards include the American Geophysical Union Atmospheric Sciences Section Ascent Award (2016), Fellowship of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (2018), the AMOS Morton Medal (2019), and the Monash Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award for Research Team of the Year (shared, 2024). Key publications are 'Heavy summer rainfall in southeastern Australia' (Henderson et al., 2025, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society), 'Stormy Subtropics and Stratiform South: Radar-Based Classification and Analysis of Australian Rainfall Events' (Bowden et al., 2025, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres), 'Weather systems associated with synoptic variability in the moist margin' (Robinson et al., 2025, Weather and Climate Dynamics), and 'Australian Summer Monsoon: Reanalyses Versus Climate Models in Moist Static Energy Budget Evolution' (Mohanty et al., 2024, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres).