Lisa Thalheimer-Prezyna is a climate scientist focusing on the impacts of climate change and resulting human responses, such as migration, health, and conflict.
At VARMAP, Dr. Thalheimer supports the Towards actionable impact-based early warning in Africa project (EarlyWarning4IGAD). Building on her expertise on human mobility in the context of climate change, she co-develops risk profiles for populations in camp settings in Kenya.
In her research, Dr. Thalheimer advances methods in attribution science to shed new light on the impacts of climate change on migration, health and extreme weather events. She studies how climate science can be leveraged to enhance adaptation and accountability for the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on vulnerable populations and environments. Her research approach is strongly interdisciplinary and collaborative, integrating numerical models and data science methods. She also publishes on the implications of burgeoning early action/early warning and forecast-based financing on displacement risk. Dr. Thalheimer co-leads varies projects on impact attribution of child undernutrition (CLIMAKID), Quantifying the impacts of climate change on migration to and within Europe (CCMIG-EU), and anticipatory action.
Dr. Thalheimer has co-authored over 20 attribution and climate impact publications. Her recent publications include studies on attributing extreme weather to anthropogenic climate change, systemic risk and compounding vulnerability in Somalia, and the impacts of compound drought on migration in Madagascar, Mexico and Nepal. Her research has been published in leading scientific journals, including Global Environmental Change, Earth’s Future, and Climatic Change. Dr. Thalheimer’s work has been featured in the global media, including by The New York Times, BBC, Der Standard and PBS.
She regularly provides scientific advice and training for researchers and practitioners in the Global South and has authored expert reports on climate migration. She is an associate researcher with Climate Econometrics, the World Weather Attribution initiative, and is part of the RISK-KAN steering committee. Dr. Thalheimer serves as a scientific advisor to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and the UNICEF Innocenti Office in Firenze, Italy.
Dr. Thalheimer holds a DPhil in Climate Science from the University of Oxford, UK, a master’s degree in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, US, and an undergraduate degree in Business and Economics from the Business and Technology School, Germany. She worked in a variety of roles on the linkages between the environment and inclusive growth at the World Bank, the IMF in Washington, D.C. and The Earth Institute in New York, NY.