Yotam Menachem

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Yotam Menachem for the poster/PICO entitled:

Exploring Forest-Atmosphere Interactions Under Heat Extremes in a Semi-Arid Region (Menachem, Y.; Magaritz-Ronen, L.; Rotenberg, E.; Hochman, L.; Raveh-Rubin, S.; Yakir, D.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Yotam Menachem is an MSc student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, supervised by Prof. Dan Yakir and Prof. Shira Raveh-Rubin. His research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions in semi-arid regions, aiming to understand how afforestation affects local weather patterns and boundary layer dynamics during extreme heat events.

In his work presented at EGU25, Yotam combined in situ observations from the Yatir semi-arid forest with high-resolution simulations using the ICON numerical weather prediction model. By calibrating ICON’s land surface data to local forest properties, he successfully reproduced the forest’s distinct energy budget, characterized by enhanced net radiation and large sensible heat flux. He then performed a numerical experiment scaling up the existing forest cover, which revealed amplified sensible heat outfluxes exceeding -200 W/m² and strengthened low-level convergence, triggering localized secondary circulations within the boundary layer consistent with the “canopy convector effect.” The findings demonstrate that semi-arid afforestation can substantially modify the local energy balance and boundary layer dynamics. Subsequent analyses further revealed that these processes also cool the surface skin temperature and generate a local “canopy greenhouse effect,” amplifying their potential climatic impact. Such processes may play a critical role under local climate extremes and should be considered in afforestation-based climate mitigation strategies.