Summary
Friederike (Fredi) is a Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, one of Imperial's six hubs for research, innovation and influence on global challenges.
Fredi is a physicist with a doctorate from the Free University Berlin in philosophy of science in 2011. She joined the University of Oxford in the same year and was director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford before joining Imperial in October 2021.
Her main research interest is on extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and storms, and understanding whether and to what extent these are made more likely or intense due to climate change - known by experts as 'climate change attribution'.
In 2018, Fredi became one of the international climate scientists writing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) The Scientific Basis, which was published in August 2021, she is also an author on the IPCC's final report of the sixth assessment cycle, the Synthesis Report which was published in March 2023.
Fredi is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events. Through rapid attribution studies, which provide timely scientific evidence showing the extent to which climate change influenced a given event, WWA has helped to change the global conversation around climate change, influencing adaptation strategies and paving the way for new sustainability litigation.
In 2020 Climate Change Attribution was named one of MIT Tech Review's top ten breakthrough technologies. In 2021 Fredi was recognised for her co-founding of WWA on the TIME100 list as one of the world’s most influential individuals, according to the renowned TIME magazine and as one of the top 10 people who made a difference in science in 2021, by the journal Nature.
Fredi is the author of the popular science book "Angry Weather" and her work has been featured extensively in global media including the FT, Economist, Times of India, the Sun, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Mail, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, BBC, and CNN.
Publications
Journals
Otto FEL, 2023, Attribution of Extreme Events to Climate Change, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol:48, ISSN:1543-5938
Otto FEL, Raju E, 2023, Harbingers of decades of unnatural disasters, Communications Earth & Environment, Vol:4, ISSN:2662-4435, Pages:1-7
Rivera JA, Arias PA, Sörensson AA, et al., 2023, 2022 early-summer heatwave in Southern South America: 60 times more likely due to climate change, Climatic Change, Vol:176, ISSN:0165-0009
Otto FEL, Harrington L, Schmitt K, et al., 2023, Challenges to Understanding Extreme Weather Changes in Developing Countries: Revealing an Inherent Bias, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol:102, ISSN:0003-0007, Pages:637-639