Jakob Harteg is a doctoral researcher in climate physics specialising in the detection of tipping-relevant dynamics in the Earth system. He is the core developer of TOAD (Tipping and Other Abrupt events Detector), a Python package for detecting, clustering, and synthesising abrupt shifts in gridded Earth-system datasets, including large model ensembles. His work aims to reduce uncertainty in estimated tipping thresholds by systematically quantifying the timing and robustness of abrupt shifts across models, variables, and ensemble members. He works in the Earth Resilience Science Unit (ERSU) under the supervision of Sina Loriani, Jonathan Donges, and Ricarda Winkelmann.
Contact
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Jakob.Harteg[at]pik-potsdam.de
P.O. Box 60 12 03
14412 Potsdam
14412 Potsdam
ORCID
Positions and Roles
- 2024–ongoing: Doctoral researcher in climate physics at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and University of Potsdam (supervisors: Prof. Ricarda Winkelmann; Dr. Jonathan Donges; Dr. Sina Loriani). Focus: methods to detect abrupt shifts and tipping-relevant dynamics in Earth system model ensembles; core development of TOAD (Tipping and Other Abrupt events Detector).
Education
- 2022–2024: MSc in Computational Physics, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. Thesis: Assessing the stability of glacial–interglacial cycles in a conceptual stochastic climate model (supervisors: Dr. Nico Wunderling; Dr. Jonathan Donges; Prof. Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen). Collaboration with PIK.
- 2019–2022: BSc in Physics, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. Bachelor’s project: Developing a precision spectroscopy data pipeline: laser frequency comb calibration and radial-velocity extraction for exoplanet detection (supervisor: Prof. Troels C. Petersen).
Selected additional experience
- 2016–ongoing: Independent app developer (self-employed) — user-oriented software development.
- 2018–2019: UI/UX Designer, Web/App Developer & Graphic Designer, Music Traveler GmbH (Vienna).
- 2015–2016: Junior Graphic Designer, Jahia Solutions Group (Geneva).
2026
- J. Harteg, L. Röhrich, K. De Maeyer, J. Garbe, B. Sakschewski, A.K. Klose, J.F. Donges, R. Winkelmann, S. Loriani, TOAD v1.0: A Python Framework for Detecting Abrupt Shifts and Coherent Spatial Domains in Earth-System Data EGUsphere [preprint], 2026, doi:10.5194/egusphere-2026-356.
2025
- J. Harteg, N. Wunderling, J.F. Donges, Quantifying resilience in Non-Autonomous and Stochastic Earth System Dynamics with Application to Glacial-Interglacial Cycles, Earth System Dynamics, in review, 2025.
