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Research interests

My main research interest is on physical and bio-geochemical climate feedbacks and their role in affecting future climate change. The question of quantifying and constraining projection uncertainty is a central aspect of my work, with a focus on climate sensitivity, permafrost-carbon feedback, and runaway climate conditions.


Reducing Uncertainty in Climate Sensitivity

Uncertainty in Climate sensitivity - the equilibrium change in global mean temperature following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 content - crucially affects projections of future climate warming. Recent studies have shown that (up to now) it has not been possible to satisfactorily constrain Climate Sensitivity by focusing on historical data of past warming (~last 100 years) or on present day climatology.

In my work I investigate which constraints prove especially promising in putting effective bounds on climate sensitivity - such as information of regional differences in the observed warming, or information stemming from paleo data archives (such as the reconstructed cooling during the last  glacial maximum, LGM, 21kyrs B.P.).

 

 Permafrost-carbon feedbacks

 How strongly will permafrost degradation affect future global temperature rise and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels? What role do methane emissions play for the strength of the permafrost-carbon feedback?

For investigating these aspects of uncertainty in the terrestrial carbon cycle I developed a new and simplified module which calculates the thawing of permafrost and subsequent decomposition of soil carbon. This module was coupled to MAGICC-6, an efficient climate-carbon cycle model which allows running large ensembles for scenario-based probabilistic climate predictions.

 

Runaway climate conditions

Is there a risk that the sum of physical and bio-geochemical feedbacks will increase such that a self-amplified warming of the Earth-climate system will result (for a limited temperature regime)?

 

Communication of climate change science

Currently I am working in a project which aims at developing new formats for better communicating climate science to the public. We are running a pilot project funded by the Volkswagenstiftung:

www.aufgeheizt.org

 

 

Further research interests
  • Paleo climates (esp. polar amplification in hothouse climates)
  • Probabilistic projections of future climate change
  • Emission targets for climate policies
  • Risk assessment of geo-engineering strategies
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