Helge investigates how the physical climate system functions, and its predictability on scales ranging from days to centuries. After studying biophysics with a focus on theory at the Humboldt Universität of Berlin, global coupled climate models have been one of his main research tools since 2008. While pursuing his doctorate at the MPI for Meteorology, between 2009 and 2012, he investigated the global water cycle and land-atmosphere feed- backs. He joined the AWI in 2012. Since then, his research focus has been on predicting sea-ice conditions and investigating global aspects of climate change, extreme events, Earth’s energy balance and atmospheric radiation, as well as geoengineering methods.
 
From 2014 to 2017, Helge led the coordination office for the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) at the AWI. He headed the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)-funded junior research group ‘Seamless Sea Ice Prediction’ (2017-2023), which focused on sea-ice predictability, forecasting and evaluation. He was responsible for coordinating and implementing near-real-time ice drift forecasts for the MOSAiC expedition, which were used for ordering high-resolution satellite images and other logistics tasks. As part of his research group, amongst other things his team developed a climate and sea-ice forecasting system based on the AWI Climate Model. Since 2022, Helge Goessling has been leading a working group and a joint research project for the Helmholtz Earth and Environment Centres in which recently observed extreme events are simulated against the backdrop of various climate conditions in order to gain a better understanding of the impact of climate change using real-world events and to provide an additional scientific basis for adaptation measures.