July 2, 2026
Article by Katerina Filippidou

Alumni Spotlight: Jakob Schloer Shapes the Next Generation of Weather Forecasting

Jakob Schloer completed his PhD in machine learning for climate science, and the questions he explored during his PhD continue to shape his research today. Now a machine learning expert at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Bonn, he develops AI-based methods to improve weather predictions.
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Predicting rain, spotting droughts before they strike, and knowing the right moment to sow are no longer just matters of farmers’ intuition. Today, our alumnus Jakob Schloer works to extend reliable weather forecasts further into the future — from weeks to a season ahead. At the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, one of the world’s leading centers for weather prediction, he builds data-driven machine learning models for sub-seasonal forecasting, giving decision-makers like farmers and electricity providers more time to plan.

Jakob Schloer’s journey began at our Cluster of Excellence in Tübingen in September 2020, when he joined Bedartha Goswami’s lab as a PhD student to study El Niño and improve our understanding of this climate phenomenon. He completed his PhD in summer 2024. In our video interview, Jakob talks about his time here at the Cluster. He shares his memories of the Tübingen machine learning community, offers advice to current PhD researchers, and explains how machine learning is transforming weather forecasting.

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This video feature is the start of our new “ML Cluster Alumni Spotlights” series, in which we reconnect with former group leaders, postdocs, and PhD researchers to find out where they are today and what they are working on now.

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