Carlos Calvo-Sancho
The recipient of the EMS Young Scientist Award 2026 was Carlos Calvo-Sancho, Spain, from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He was nominated with the publication “Human-induced climate change amplification on storm dynamics in Valencia’s 2024 catastrophic flash flood,” published in Nature Communications | 2026, 17:1492.
The publication is of extraordinary interest both to the meteorological community and to society at large. It bridges a critical gap in our understanding of how climate change modifies storm dynamics at the mesoscale and convective scale, which are the scales most relevant for flash-flood hazards. The results carry direct implications for civil protection policies, urban planning, and climate adaptation strategies across the entire Western Mediterranean region.
Citation
Carlos Calvo-Sancho is awarded for a pioneering physically-based attribution study demonstrating how anthropogenic climate change amplified storm dynamics and extreme rainfall during Valencia’s 2024 catastrophic flash flood, using km-scale pseudo-global warming simulations.
Award Lecture: From giant hail to flash floods: is climate change intensifying extreme convective events in Spain?
Carlos Calvo-Sancho is an early-career scientist who has already demonstrated an outstanding research trajectory. His research interests span severe convective storms, flash-flood attribution, tropical transitions, and the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on extreme weather events. This breadth of expertise, combined with his deep technical proficiency in high-resolution numerical weather modeling (WRF, HARMONIE-AROME) and pseudo-global warming methodologies, positions him as one of the most promising young scientists in the European atmospheric science community.
Having completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Valladolid in 2024, he currently holds a postdoctoral position at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Despite being at the early stages of his postdoctoral work, he has already accumulated an exceptional publication record of 16 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact international journals, including the nominated paper in Nature Communications (Impact Factor 14.7), articles in Geophysical Research Letters, npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Weather and Climate Dynamics, and Atmospheric Research. In the majority of these publications, Dr. Calvo-Sancho serves as first author, which attests to his scientific leadership and capacity to conduct independent research.
He has actively contributed to high-profile international collaborations, including the multi-institutional study on Medicane Ianos. His capacity to lead multi-authored studies with collaborators across Spain, Italy, Switzer-land, and the United States reflects a mature and collaborative scientific approach
Education
2021 – 2024. Ph.D.: Physics, University of Valladolid. Segovia, Spain
2020 – 2021. MSc, GISc: GIS and Remote Sensing, University of Zaragoza. Zaragoza, Spain
2019 – 2020. MSc, Meteorology, University of Barcelona. Barcelona, Spain
2014 – 2019. BS. Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Zaragoza. Zaragoza, Spain
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