Maxime Colin

Maxime Colin

Dr. Maxime Colin

Postdoctoral Researcher

Programme Area: Programme Area 2 – Global Change Impacts and Adaptation
Working Group: WG Complexity and Climate

+49 (0)421 23 800 - 0

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Office: Fahrenheitstr. 8
28359 Bremen
Room: 3211 (2nd Floor)

Research interests

I'm a climate scientist, and I'm passionate about applying physics to study climate and cloud processes, and in particular tropical convection. I'm interested in deep convection, clouds, tropical meteorology, microphysics, ocean-atmosphere interactions, mesoscale dynamics, monsoons, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, etc...

I aim to understand basic mechanisms to explain and understand how the Earth's climate behave.

At ZMT, I'm working with Prof. Jan Haerter on the hysteresis of monsoons, the ITCZ, and tropical rain bands, which shows the role of atmospheric memory. To achieve this, I run idealised simulations of the tropical rain band and of monsoons over an aquapatch, to understand the relationship between surface thermodynamic contrasts (forcing) and precipitation intensity (response).

During my PhD, I was investigating what the sources of convective memory in idealised cloud-resolving simulations are, and how to apply convective memory in Global Climate Models. My project aimed at improving convective parameterizations in GCMs, and partly focused on convective memory coming from atmospheric cold pools.

Previous roles:
2021- : Postdoc researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (Germany)
2020-2021: Research Associate at the University of New South Wales (Australia)
2018-2020: Lecturer (full-time teaching) at the University of French Polynesia (French Polynesia)

Education:
2018: Joint PhD in climate science from the University of New South Wales (main university, Australia) and Sorbonne Université (partner university, France). Main supervisor: Steven Sherwood. Co-supervisors: Sandrine Bony, Jean-Yves Grandpeix.
2013: First-class physics and chemistry teaching certificate "Agrégation" (France)
2012: Masters in atmosphere, ocean, and climate physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure (France) and Université Pierre and Marie Curie (France)
2009: Undergraduate in fundamental physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure (France) and Université Paris Diderot (France)

Useful links:
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=P6-nBiQAAAAJ&hl=fr&oi=ao
https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/en/marine-tropics-research/who-we-are/maxime-colin-en.html
https://www.unsw.edu.au/research/ccrc/about-us/our-people/alumni

➢ Papers :

Cristian Vraciu, Julien Savre, Maxime Colin (2025). The rapid transition from shallow to precipitating convection as a predator-prey process. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024MS004630

Takeshi Izumo, Maxime Colin, Fei-Fei Jin, Bastien Pagli (2024). The hybrid Recharge Delayed Oscillator: a more realistic El Niño conceptual model. Journal of Climate. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/aop/JCLI-D-23-0127.1/JCLI-D-23-0127.1.xml

Yi-Ling Hwong, Maxime Colin, Philipp Aglas-Leitner, Caroline Muller, Steven Sherwood (2023). Assessing Memory in Convection Schemes Using Idealized Tests. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS003726

Takeshi Izumo and Maxime Colin (2022). Improving and harmonizing El Niño recharge indices. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL101003. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL101003 

Maxime Colin and Steven Sherwood (2021). Atmospheric convection as an unstable predator-prey process with memory. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-20-0337.1

Maxime Colin, Steven Sherwood, Olivier Geoffroy, Sandrine Bony, David Fuchs (2019). Identifying the sources of convective memory in cloud-resolving simulations. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-18-0036.1

Jiawei Bao, Steven Sherwood, Maxime Colin, Vishal Dixit (2017): The Robust Relationship Between Extreme Precipitation and Convective Organization in Idealized Numerical Modeling Simulation. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017MS001125

Steven C. Sherwood, Daniel Hernández-Deckers, Maxime Colin, and Francis Robinson (2013). Slippery Thermals and the Cumulus Entrainment Paradox. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 70:2426–2442. https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JAS-D-12-0220.1

 

➢ PhD thesis :

Maxime Colin (2020): Convective memory, and the role of cold pools. Ph.D. thesis, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 356 pp. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/70757

 

➢ Posters (selected) :

Maxime Colin, Jan Haerter (2023): Surface thermodynamic gradients and ITCZ properties in idealised simulations over an aquapatch: Hysteresis and delay behaviour of tropical rain belts, even in atmosphere-only seasonal simulations. Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Conference 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19241.40807

 

➢ Conference presentations (selected) :

Maxime Colin, Jan O Haerter, Vishal Dixit (2023). Hysteresis and delay behaviour of tropical rain belts. 3rd Workshop on Cloud Organisation and Precipitation Extremes - WCO3. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.30566.02888