Dr. Jasper Denissen

Postdoctoral researcher

Department of Remote Sensing (RS)
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)
Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig

Tel.:   ++49 341 6025 2009          
email: jasper.denissen@ufz.de

photo Jasper Denissen

Career details

2026-present Postdoctoral researcher, Remote Sensing Department, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
2022-2026 Scientist, Research Department, European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Bonn, Germany
2018-2022 PhD researcher, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC), Jena, Germany
2015 - 2017 MSc. Earth & Environment, Wageningen University (WUR), Wageningen, The Netherlands
2010 - 2014 BSc. Soil, Water, Atmosphere, WUR, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Research interests

  • Land-atmosphere interactions
  • Critical soil moisture and evaporative regimes
  • Interplay between regime shifts and climate extremes
  • Physics-based land-surface modelling, data-driven methods and satellite observations

During my PhD project titled "Mapping terrestrial evaporation regimes -- A data-driven analysis of land-atmosphere interactions under climate change", I focused on soil-vegetation-atmosphere interactions and how their respective future trends could affect future climate (heat) extremes. I developed the Ecosystem Limitation Index (ELI), with which the transition. between water- and energy-limited evaporative regimes can be characterized as the critical soil moisture. I've done so using a multitude of data streams, amongst which satellite observations, in-situ observations, such as weather balloons, gridded machine-learning based data sets and heavily constrained and unconstrained model output from Earth system models. 

After my PhD, I worked on land surface and river hydrology modeling in the Land Modeling Team at ECMWF in Bonn for the Destination Earth (DestinE) project. I developed and evaluated components of the in-house Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model, the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), in particular ECMWF's land surface modeling system (ecLand) coupled to the river-routing scheme CaMa-Flood. Most notably, I uncovered and fixed a sub-grid orographic surface runoff parametrization to be scalable across spatial resolutions, using offline and fully coupling simulations. 

In my current work at UFZ, I intend to focus on the following:

  • Development of the modular land surface modeling system, the High resOlution Land Atmosphere Parameters from Space (HOLAPS), potentially by 1) coupling to an atmospheric model to enable the study of land-atmosphere interactions or 2) adding/replacing physics-based model components with machine learning approaches;
  • Study the relevance of (trends in) vegetation characteristics for land-atmosphere coupling and climate extremes;
  • Develop a machine-learning approach for a global observations-based radiosonde emulator.

Awards & nominations

  • Wladimir Köppen Awards 2023 Nominated
  • Bernds-Rendel Preis 2022 Nominated

Publications

  • Polcher, J., Collignan, J., Pablo Sierra Perez, J., Arduini, G., Bastin, S., Best, M., Boone, A., Bravo, M., Covella, F., Denissen, J.M.C., He, C., Munier, S., Prange, M. & Shevliakova, E. (2026). A framework to evaluate and identify development requirements for land‐surface models at km‐scale resolution: Application to a semi‐arid and mountainous region. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, e70229, https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.70229.
  • Kousal, J., Pelletier, C., Denissen, J.M.C., Schulte, L., Keeley, S., Dueben, P., Penny, S.G., Park, R.-S.., Miralles, D.G., Shapkalijevski, M.M., Valmassoi, A., Renfrew, I., Zampiere, L., Kumar, R., Ruiz-Vásquez, M., Schulz, J.-P., Wu, L. & Pedruzo Bagazgoitia, X. (2026). Numerical Weather Prediction Model Coupling—Strategies, Challenges, and Outlook. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 107(1), E183-E189, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-25-0270.1.
  • Orth, R., Denissen, J.M.C., Kroll, J., O, S., Bastos, A., Li, W., Miralles, D.G., Ruiz-Vásquez, M., Hoek van Dijke, A.J., Feldman, A.F., Migliavacca, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Stocker, B.D., Teuling, A.J., Yang, H. & Yu, X. (2025). Regional Emergence of Water‐Related Browning in a Greening World. Global Change Biology, 31(12), e70620, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70620.
  • Segura, H., Pedruzo-Bagazgoitia, X., Weiss, P., Müller, S. K., Rackow, T., Lee, J., Denissen, J.M.C., ... & Stevens, B. (2025). nextGEMS: entering the era of kilometer-scale Earth system modeling. Geoscientific Model Development, 18(20), 7735-7761. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-7735-2025.
  • Denissen, J. M.C., Teuling, A. J., Koirala, S., Reichstein, M., Balsamo, G., Vogel, M. M., Yu, X. & Orth, R. (2024). Intensified future heat extremes linked with increasing ecosystem water limitation. Earth System Dynamics, 15(3), 717-734, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-717-2024.
  • Bogdanovich, E., Guenther, L., Reichstein, M., Frank, D., Ruhrmann, G., Brenning, A., Denissen, J.M.C. & Orth, R. (2023). Societal attention to heat waves can indicate public health impacts. Weather, Climate, and Society, 15(3), 557-569, https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0147.1.
  • Denissen, J. M.C., Teuling, A. J., Pitman, A. J., Koirala, S., Migliavacca, M., Li, W., Reichstein, M., Winkler, A.J., Zhan, C. & Orth, R. (2022). Widespread shift from ecosystem energy to water limitation with climate change. Nature Climate Change, 12(7), 677-684, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01403-8.
  • Kroll, J., Denissen, J.M.C., Migliavacca, M., Li, W., Hildebrandt, A., & Orth, R. (2022). Spatially varying relevance of hydrometeorological hazards for vegetation productivity extremes. Biogeosciences, 19(2), 477-489, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-477-2022.
  • Li, W., Migliavacca, M., Forkel, M., Denissen, J. M.C., Reichstein, M., Yang, H., Duveiller, G., Weber, U. & Orth, R. (2022). Widespread increasing vegetation sensitivity to soil moisture. Nature Communications, 13(1), 3959, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31667-9.
  • Sungmin, O., Bastos, A., Reichstein, M., Li, W., Denissen, J.M.C., Graefen, H., & Orth, R. (2022). The role of climate and vegetation in regulating drought–heat extremes. Journal of Climate, 35(17), 5677-5685, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0675.1.
  • Denissen, J. M.C., Orth, R., Wouters, H., Miralles, D. G., van Heerwaarden, C. C., de Arellano, J. V. G., & Teuling, A. J. (2021). Soil moisture signature in global weather balloon soundings. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 4(1), 13, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00167-w.
  • Denissen, J. M.C., Teuling, A. J., Reichstein, M., & Orth, R. (2020). Critical soil moisture derived from satellite observations over Europe. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(6), e2019JD031672, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031672.