Congratulations to Yotam Menachem for winning the Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Awards 2025 of the European Geophysical Society (EGU)!

Congratulations to Yotam Menachem, an MSc student from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, supervised by Prof. Dan Yakir and Prof. Shira Raveh-Rubin, for winning the Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Awards 2025 of the European Geophysical Society (EGU)!

Yotam’s award-winning presentation, “Exploring Forest–Atmosphere Interactions Under Heat Extremes in a Semi-Arid Region,” combines field observations from the Yatir Forest with high-resolution climate simulations to study how afforestation affects local weather patterns and boundary layer dynamics during extreme heat events.

The findings show that semi-arid afforestation alters local energy balance and boundary layer dynamics, cooling the surface and creating a “canopy greenhouse effect” that may significantly influence climate under extreme conditions.

Congratulations to Yotam for this remarkable achievement!

Link to the winning poster: https://www.egu.eu/media/awards/posters/2025/09/15/9d9aebb6-8bee-4086-a2...