• PhD Student

Rikke Stoffels is a PhD student in the Climate Extremes group, part of the Water & Climate Risk department at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM). She is supervised by both Dim Coumou (IVM) and Frank Selten (KNMI).

Her research focusses on the understanding of the physical processes controlling European climate and its summertime extremes. This includes understanding the drivers of European heatwaves, droughts, and persistent extreme precipitation events, and analysing how these extremes are affected by climate change. The research is part of the EU Horizon EXPECT project, which is a project aiming to better explain and predict regional climate changes.

Rikke holds a MSc degree in Earth & Environment (cum laude) from Wageningen University and Research (WUR), where she specialized in Meteorology and Air Quality. During her studies, she spent two semesters abroad (at the University of Helsinki and ETH Zurich) and did an internship at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). In her MSc thesis, she used moisture tracking methods to study the moisture sources and transport pathways of extratropical cyclones.