Zeb Nicholls
Guest Research Scholar
Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Zebedee Nicholls is an expert in reduced complexity climate modeling currently associated with the Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. His research focuses on the development, evaluation, and application of reduced complexity models with a particular focus on the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC). Alongside Associate Professor Malte Meinshausen, he leads the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project (RCMIP). To facilitate this work and enhance reproducibility, he is committed to developing open-source scientific software and contributes to a number of projects (see github.com/znicholls and gitlab.com/znicholls).In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), he led the writing of Cross-Chapter Box 7.1 on reduced complexity models used for scenario classification in AR6, was a contributing author to Working Group 1 Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and the Technical Summary, and Working Group 3’s Summary for Policy Makers, Chapter 3, and Annex C.
Nicholls completed his PhD at the Climate and Energy College within the University of Melbourne’s School of Geography, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences in 2021. Prior to that, he completed his undergraduate Master’s course in Physics at St. John’s College, University of Oxford, where his thesis was supervised by Professor Myles Allen. He is currently working on the next phase of RCMIP, taking MAGICC open source and developing more regionally detailed emulators.
Last update: 14 SEP 2022
Publications
Nauels, A. , Nicholls, Z. , Möller, T., Hermans, T.H.J., Mengel, M., Kloenne, U., Smith, C. , Slangen, A.B.A., & Palmer, M.D. (2025). Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. 10.5281/zenodo.16572777.
Hewitt, H.T., Flato, G., O’Rourke, E., Dunne, J.P., Adloff, F., Arblaster, J.M., Bonou, F., Boucher, O., Cavazos, T., Dingley, B., Durack, P.J., Fox-Kemper, B., Ilyina, T., Miyakawa, T., Mizielinski, M., Naik, V., Nicholls, Z. , Pincus, R., Taylor, K.E., Tegtmeier, S., & Wedi, N. (2025). Towards provision of regularly updated climate data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. PloS Climate 4 (10) e0000708. 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000708.
Dunne, J.P., Hewitt, H.T., Arblaster, J.M., Bonou, F., Boucher, O., Cavazos, T., Dingley, B., Durack, P.J., Hassler, B., Juckes, M., Miyakawa, T., Mizielinski, M., Naik, V., Nicholls, Z. , O'Rourke, E., Pincus, R., Sanderson, B.M., Simpson, I.R., & Taylor, K.E. (2025). An evolving Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 7 (CMIP7) and Fast Track in support of future climate assessment. Geoscientific Model Development 18 (19) 6671-6700. 10.5194/gmd-18-6671-2025.
Durack, P.J., Naik, V., Nicholls, Z. , O’Rourke, E., Turner, B., Buontempo, C., Brookshaw, A., Goddard, C., MacIntosh, C., Hewitt, H., & Dunne, J. (2025). Earth System Forcing for CMIP7 and Beyond. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 106 (8) E1580-E1588. 10.1175/BAMS-D-25-0119.1.
Schöngart, S., Nicholls, Z. , Hoffmann, R., Pelz, S. , & Schleussner, C.-F. (2025). High-income groups disproportionately contribute to climate extremes worldwide. Nature Climate Change 15 627-633. 10.1038/s41558-025-02325-x.