Quentin Nicolas

Postdoctoral Fellow, ETH Zürich

Email: qnicolas __at__ berkeley __dot__ edu
Github profile, Google scholar, CV

About

I am a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Environmental Systems Sciences at ETH Zürich, in Heini Wernli's group. My main research interest lies in climate dynamics, with an emphasis on the dynamics of the tropical atmosphere. I strive to develop simple theories to understand the distribution of rainfall in the tropics. I previously obtained my Ph.D. in the department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley, working with William Boos. My thesis work focused on the organization of rainfall around mountains, termed orographic precipitation.

I am more broadly interested in geophysical fluid dynamics, and I have had the chance to dip my toes in the world of the geodynamo, working with Bruce Buffett on wave generation in Earth's outer core. I am also collaborating with Geoffrey Vallis on the physics of superrotation. I met Geoff during the Geophysical fluid dynamics summer program at WHOI, where I was a fellow in 2023.

Prior to my PhD, I earned a MS in applied mathematics at Ecole polytechnique, just south of Paris, France. There, I had my first research experience developing mathematical models of the human liver with Irene Vignon-Clementel at Inria Paris.

Publications

• Sensitivity of tropical orographic precipitation to wind speed with implications for future projections
  Quentin Nicolas and William R. Boos.
  Weather and Climate Dynamics, accepted
  Preprint, Code
• Understanding the spatiotemporal variability of tropical orographic rainfall using convective plume buoyancy
  Quentin Nicolas and William R. Boos.
  Journal of Climate, 2024
  PDF, Journal site, Code
• Excitation of high-latitude MAC waves in Earth’s core
  Quentin Nicolas and Bruce Buffett.
  Geophysical Journal International, 2023
  PDF, Journal site, Code, Best student paper award
• A Theory for the Response of Tropical Moist Convection to Mechanical Orographic Forcing
  Quentin Nicolas and William R. Boos.
  Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 2022
  PDF, Journal site, Code
• The Globally Coherent Pattern of Autumn Monsoon Precipitation
  Nandini Ramesh, Quentin Nicolas, and William R. Boos.
  Journal of Climate, 2021
  PDF, Journal site, Code
• Predicting the risk of post-hepatectomy portal hypertension using a digital twin: A clinical proof of concept
  Nicolas Golse, Florian Joly, Prisca Combari, Maïté Lewin, Quentin Nicolas, Chloe Audebert, Didier Samuel, Marc-Antoine Allard, Antonio Sa Cunha, Denis Castaing, Daniel Cherqui, René Adam, Eric Vibert, and Irene E. Vignon-Clementel.
  Journal of Hepatology, 2021
  Journal site
• Indocyanine Green Fluorescence Imaging to Predict Graft Survival After Orthotopic Liver Transplantation: A Pilot Study
  Damien Dousse, Eric Vibert, Quentin Nicolas, Muga Terasawa, Luis Cano, Marc-Antoine Allard, Chady Salloum, Oriana Ciacio, Gabriella Pittau, Antonio Sa Cunha, Daniel Cherqui, René Adam, Didier Samuel, Irene Vignon-Clementel, and Nicolas Golse.
  Liver Transplantation, 2020
  Journal site
• Partial Orthotopic Liver Transplantation in Combination With Two-stage Hepatectomy : a proof-of-concept explained by mathematical modelling
  Nicolas Golse, Florian Joly, Quentin Nicolas, Eric Vibert, Pål-Dag Line, Irene Vignon Clementel.
  Clinical Biomechanics, 2020
  Journal site, Corrigendum

Recent Presentations

• A quasiequilibrium view of tropical orographic precipitation

  ENS, December 2023 and Sorbonne Université, January 2024 (Paris, France)

• Convectively Coupled mountain waves and the sensitivity of orographic precipitation to warming

  AGU Fall meeting 2023 (San Francisco, CA, USA)

• Understanding the spatio-temporal variability of tropical orographic rainfall using convective plume buoyancy

  AGU Fall meeting 2022 (Chicago, IL, USA)

• Excitation of high-latitude MAC waves in Earth’s core

  AGU Fall meeting 2022 (Chicago, IL, USA)

• Orographic precipitation in the tropics and its sensitivity to climate change (invited)

  AGU Fall meeting 2022 (Chicago, IL, USA)

• A Theory for the response of tropical moist convection to mechanical orographic forcing

  20th conference on Mountain Meteorology, 2022 (Park City, UT) - awarded second best student presentation,
  23rd Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics, 2022 (remote),
  AGU Fall meeting 2021 (remote) - awarded an oustanding student presentation award (OSPA)

Nice orographic cumuli (presumably forced by the background southwesterly wind) over Catalina island in November 2023