Piotr Wolski

Piotr is a hydro-climatologist with 30 years of work experience spanning climatological and hydro-climatological analyses, climate modelling, hydrological modelling and climate services. He holds PhD in Earth Sciences from the Free University, Amsterdam. His primary interests are in hydro-climatological analytics and modelling and sharing of hydro-climate information. Since 2009, he has been pursuing his interest in climate variability and change, working at Climate System Analysis Group, University of Cape Town. Earlier - he worked a a wetland hydrologist at the Okavango Research Institute in Botswana. As climatologist, Piotr has led a broad range of multidisciplinary research studies and consulting projects focusing on generation of decision-relevant climate information at climate change and seasonal time scales, at spatial scales from city to regional to continental. Thematically, his projects cover such varied topics as seasonal forecasting, anticipatory action trigger models, climate projections and climate change attribution of extreme events. His research is supported by his formidable data processing and analysis skills and love for creative data visualization approaches. He developed several data/information sharing websites. During the 2015-2018 Cape Town “Day Zero” water crisis he contributed significantly to the public sphere by writing numerous blogs and popular science articles explaining the climatology of the event. In one of his recent projects he worked with SADC Climate Services Centre towards transformation and improvement of the seasonal forecast product issued by the Southern African Regional Climate Outlook Forum. He is an accomplished academic and has published over 110 papers in scientific peer-reviewed journals, presented over 40 papers at international conferences, is a contributing author on the IPCC sixth assessment report and an associate editor of Weather and Climate Extremes, an Elsevier’s journal.