Tapio Schneider: Climate science meets the ‘physics of everyday life’

Meet Tapio Schneider. He's part of an elite team of scientists hoping to put climate prediction in the palm of your hand. 

The snow intrigued him. As a student, Tapio Schneider was a triathlete and competitive cross-country skier in the mountains of northern Germany.

“I was doing a lot of ski races and snow was becoming rarer and rarer, and appearing lighter and lighter. And I started to be interested in the question of why.”

He was a physics student and a good programmer. Eventually, he says, “I realized that the physics that interests me is the physics of everyday life: why the sky is blue and how the refrigerator works.” The atmosphere, he recalls, “was the set of phenomena that were right outside the window.”

Dr. Schneider came to the United States on a graduate fellowship and stayed because, he confides a bit sheepishly, science “was so much more fun” here than in Europe. 

“There’s just this can-do spirit. I think the U.S. is really unique in that regard. And that’s why a lot of us immigrants are here.” 

He dove into climate modeling at Princeton University, went to the California Institute of Technology, and in 2018 embarked with other scientists on a five-year, $25 million race to set aside the 30 or more existing climate models and build a new one from scratch. He leads the project. It is a bold idea. He decided on pursuing it after talking to a colleague who heard his ideas and said simply, “Well, that’s exactly what we should be doing. We just need to do it.” 

From his house in South Pasadena, California, where he lives with his two children and wife – Chiara Daraio, an engineering professor at Caltech – Dr. Schneider shrugs off critics who are skeptical he can develop a model that gives the firm climate forecasts he envisions.

“I think scientifically there isn’t any issue that’s insurmountable,” he says. “The more important question to me is, how long does it take to get there?”

Read about Dr. Schneider's work on an ambitious effort to build a new climate model that could one day put climate prediction in the palm of your hand.