Martin Claussen Celebrates His 70th Birthday
Martin Claussen, former director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and head of the independent research group “Climate-Vegetation Dynamics,” celebrated his 70th birthday on November 6. Jochem Marotzke, managing director of the MPI-M, congratulated Claussen warmly on behalf of the institute.
“Martin Claussen has played a decisive role in shaping the MPI-M for many years. We have worked together successfully in the directorate for a long time and have taken bold steps in modeling that were groundbreaking for our institute.”
Martin Claussen studied meteorology at the University of Hamburg, where he received his Ph.D. in 1984 and his habilitation in 1991. His career brought him to the MPI-M several times. He wrote his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Hans Hinzpeter, the director at the time. During this period, Claussen also spent a year as a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. After completing his doctorate, Claussen worked for MPI-M director Klaus Hasselmann, among others, before accepting a position at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht (now Helmholtz-Zentrum hereon). Claussen first returned to MPI-M in 1991 when he joined Lennart Bengtsson's newly established department. In 1996, he was appointed professor of theoretical climatology at the FU Berlin, and in 2002, professor of integrated climate system analysis at the University of Potsdam. During this time, he established the Climate System department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, where he served as managing director from 2002 to 2005. In 2005, Claussen was appointed a scientific member and director at the MPI-M, as well as a professor of general meteorology at the University of Hamburg.
Research focus: climate and vegetation
Claussen's department, “The Land in the Earth System,” studied the relationship between climate and vegetation within the Earth system. This work contributed to the development of comprehensive Earth system models. Claussen was the first to successfully couple a climate model with a model of global vegetation patterns, a prerequisite for modeling climate periods of the past in which the migration of the vegetation played an important role. Since his retirement in 2021, Claussen has continued to focus his research on the climate history of the Sahara, an important hotspot for humanity in terms of the global interaction between climate and vegetation.
Since the beginning of his scientific career, Claussen has been committed to promoting Hamburg as a center for climate research. Among other things, in 2007, he and his colleagues brought the CliSAP (Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction) Cluster of Excellence to the Hanseatic city. He headed the cluster for seven years. As a university lecturer, mentor, and head of the International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling (2018–2023), Claussen was involved in training young scientists. He was a member of various scientific committees and associations, and has been elected into several academies, including the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Claussen has received numerous awards for his work such as the Milutin Milanković Medal from the European Geosciences Union and the Georgi Prize from the GeoUnion Alfred Wegener Foundation.
On the occasion of Claussen’s 70th birthday, the MPI-M has invited around 50 guests to a scientific symposium, which will take place on November 14. The event, which was organized by Claussen’s long-time colleague, MPI-M group leader Victor Brovkin, will focus on the role of vegetation-climate interactions in climate dynamics, with a particular emphasis on the greening of the Sahara in the past.
Further information
Focus on: Martin Claussen und his research interests
Contact
Prof. Dr. Martin Claussen
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
martin.claussen@mpimet.mpg.de