Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Born	June 7, 1950 (1950-06-07) Ortenburg, Bavaria
Nationality	German
Fields	Climatology
Institutions	Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research University of Potsdam
Alma mater	University of Regensburg
Notable awards	German Environment Prize 2007

Hans Joachim "John" Schellnhuber (born June 7, 1950) is the founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. Being one of the leading climate scientists worldwide, he provides advice to, for instance, the President of the European Union Commission, José Manuel Barroso.. In 2007, he was appointed Chief Government Advisor on Climate and Related Issues during Germany's EU Council Presidency and G8 Presidency. Schellnhuber also offers scientific insights to business leaders, as he is member of the Climate Change Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank and chair of the governing board of the European Institute of Technology's Climate Knowledge and Innovation Communities (EIT Climate KIC).

He has qualifications in mathematics and physics—a Doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Regensburg, which he completed in 1980,, followed in 1985 by his habilitation in theoretical physics at the University of Regensburg. In 1981 he was recruited as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working across the corridor from its director Walter Kohn who became one of his academic teachers.. Kohn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1998. From solid state physics and quantum mechanics, John Schellnhuber´s interest was drawn to complex systems and nonlinearity or chaos theory.. This is what later led him to do research on the climate system which is characterised by its complexity and nonlinearity. Having become a full professor for theoretical physics and then director at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment at Oldenburg University in northern Germany, he was involved in analysing the complex structure of ocean currents. In 1991 he was called upon to create PIK before becoming its director in 1993 - making it grow from zero to one of the world's most renowned climate research institutes with today more than 300 employees following an interdisciplinary approach. He is now professor at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute in the US. In 2001-2005 he also served as research director of the Tyndall Centre in the UK and became a visiting professor at Oxford University. The National Academy of Sciences (US) appointed him as a member in 2005. He also has been elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

He received the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2002 and was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2004. He was awarded the German Environment Prize in 2007. In 2011, he was the first German to receive the Volvo Environment Prize, which is the highest-ranking award in the field of environmental sciences worldwide. He was honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (first class) as well and holds honorary doctorates from Copenhagen University and Technical University Berlin.

Schellnhuber has published more than 250 scientific papers and authored, co-authored or edited 50 books or book chapters. He has helped create numerous iconic concepts such as the now famous analysis of tipping elements in the climate system , the burning embers, and the budget approach for emissions. Maybe most notably, in 1995 already Schellnhuber put forward the two degrees guardrail for global warming which has been adopted first by the German government and the European Union - and then, following the Copenhagen accord in 2009, as a global target by governments worldwide.

In 2007, Schellnhuber started "A Nobel Cause - Noble Laureate Symposium Series on Global Sustainability" in Potsdam, bringing together Noble Laureates from all disciplines with leading sustainability scientists. In 2009, this event took place in London and in 2011 in Stockholm, where the UN General Secretary's High Level Panel on Sustainability came to the meeting to receive a memorandum that is to be fed into the Rio+20 conference in 2012.

Being a long-standing member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, Schellnhuber has been a coordinating lead author of the synthesis chapter of Working Group II of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. He warns of dire consequences of continued global warming Being an expert on climatological tipping points, he is a public speaker on the subject. Schellnhuber has signed the Potsdam Denkschrift calling for a change in thinking to enable sustainable development.

He is married to Margret Boysen.

Publications

• Schellnhuber, H.; Obermair, G. (1980). "First-Principles Calculation of Diamagnetic Band Structure". Physical Review Letters 45 (4): 276. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.45.276. 
• Schellnhuber, H. J., Crutzen, P.J., Clark, W.C., Claussen, M. and Held, H. (Eds.) (2004). Earth System Analysis for Sustainability. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, London, UK
• Schellnhuber, H. J. et al. (Eds.) (2006). Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
• Lenton, T. M.; Held, H.; Kriegler, E.; Hall, J. W.; Lucht, W.; Rahmstorf, S.; Schellnhuber, H. J. (Feb 2008). "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system" (Free full text). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (6): 1786–1793. Bibcode 2008PNAS..105.1786L. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705414105. PMC 2538841. PMID 18258748. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=18258748. 
• Schellnhuber, H. J. et al. (2009). Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach. WBGU Special Report, WBGU, Berlin
• Hall, J., Held, H., Dawson, R., Kriegler, E. and Schellnhuber, H. J. (2009). Imprecise probability assessment of tipping points in the climate system. PNAS 106, 5041
• Rockström, J. et al. (including Schellnhuber, H. J.) (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472
• Reid, W. V., Chen, D., Goldfarb, L., Hackmann, H., Lee, Y. T., Mokhele, K., Ostrom, E., Raivio, K., Rockström, J., Schellnhuber, H. J. and Whyte, A. (2010). Earth System Science for Global Sustainability: Grand Challenges. Science 330, 916
• Schellnhuber, H. J, Molina, M., Stern, N., Huber, V. and Kadner, S. (Eds.) (2010). Global Sustainability - A Nobel Cause. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Schellnhuber, H. J. (2010). The road from Copenhagen: the expert's views. Nature published online 28 January 2010
• Gleick, P. H. et al. (including Schellnhuber, H. J.) (2010). Climate Change and the Integrity of Science. Science 328, 689
• Schellnhuber, H. J. (2010). Tragic Triumph. Climatic Change 100, 229
• Kropp, J. P. and Schellnhuber, H. J. (Eds.) (2011). In Extremis: Disruptive Events and Trends in Climate and Hydrology. Springer Verlag, Berlin
• Richardson, K., Steffen, W., Liverman, D., et al. (including Schellnhuber, H. J.) (2011). Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Hofmann, M., Worm, B., Rahmstorf, S., and Schellnhuber, H. J. (2011). Declining ocean chlorophyll under unabated anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 034035
• Schellnhuber, H. J. (2011). Vorwärts zur Natur. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 1. Mai 2011, 17, 28
• Schellnhuber, H. J. et al. (2011). World in Transition – A Social Contract for Sustainability. WBGU Report, WBGU, Berlin
• Schellnhuber, H. J. (2011). "Geoengineering: The good, the MAD, and the sensible". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (51): 20277. doi:10.1073/pnas.1115966108. 

External links

• Roll back time to safeguard climate, expert warns 15 September 2008
• Big Picture TV > Speaker > John Schellnhuber CBE. Videos of John Schellnhuber talking about climate change. 11 December 2006.
• Terra quasi-incognita: beyond the 2°C line. Download video, audio, slides International Climate Conference in Oxford, UK from September 28–30, 2009