Usted no se lo cree

Fecha de nacimiento:

1950

Formación:

1980: Doctor en Física Teórica por la Universidad de Regensburg

Honores

• 2004: Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
• 2007: German Environment Prize

Posición:

• Director del Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
• Chief Government Advisor on Climate and Related Issues during Germany’s EU Council Presidency and G8 Presidency
• Postdoctoral fellow, Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP), University of California, Santa Barbara
• Editor de cambio climático de Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Área principal de conocimiento:

Tipping points

Citas destacadas:

“The second Copernican revolution will be completed only if we take this responsibility — in spite of irreducible cognitive deficits as once lamented by Alonso X of Castile: “If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking on the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler.”

Earth system analysis and the Second Copernican Revolution – Nature 402:C19-C23 – 02/12/1999

“The likelihood of global warming even beyond the 2.4°C margin in the 21st century is frustratingly high … The resulting expectations for the planetary temperature clearly qualify for DAI … No conceivable international CO2-reduction strategy (including the one hoped to transpire from the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen next year) could possibly avoid that the planet will enter the DAI zone, where largely unmanageable climate impacts (like sea-level rise in the multimeter range) lurk.”

Global warming: Stop worrying, start panicking? – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 105:14239–14240 doi:10.1073/pnas.0807331105 – 23/09/2008

“Many of the articles in this Special Feature sketch the research way forward, but it seems that we have to live with at least another decade of tantalizing ignorance concerning the most worrying potential impacts of global warming.”

Tipping elements in the Earth system – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 106:20561-20563 doi:10.1073/pnas.0911106106 – 08/12/2009

Observaciones:

Coordinating lead author of the synthesis chapter of Working Group II’ of the Third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Coautor del paper “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity.”

Presencia en los medios convencionales:

Mark Hertsgaard – A scary new climate study will have you saying ‘Oh, shit!’ – Grist – 13/10/2009 – http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-13-a-scary-new-climate-study-will-have-you-saying-oh-shit/
“Listening to the speeches, ground-breaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao  delivered Sept. 22 at the U.N. Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent «Oh, shit» moment.  It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly enough, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico’s Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study  so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. If its conclusions are correct — and Schellnhuber ranks among the world’s half-dozen most eminent climate scientists — it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.”

Libros:

Papers destacados:

Timothy M. Lenton and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2007) – Tipping the scales – Nature Reports Climate Change 1:97-98 doi:10.1038/climate.2007.65 – 22/11/2007 – School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia; Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
“Such highly non-linear transitions, where «a small forcing can make a big difference», have been described as ‘tipping points’. For clarity, we have recently introduced the term ‘tipping element’ to describe those components of the Earth System that are at least sub-continental in scale and can be switched — under particular conditions — into a qualitatively different state by small perturbations. The term ‘tipping point’ is then used to refer to the critical threshold at which such a transition is triggered. Our formal definition of a tipping element requires that the factors influencing the system can be combined into a single control parameter; there exists a critical value of this control parameter from which a small perturbation leads to a significant change in a crucial feature of the system, and this state change can be observed either instantaneously or after some lag time.”

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2009) – Tipping elements in the Earth system – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS 106:20561-20563 doi:10.1073/pnas.0911106106 – 08/12/2009 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
“The Earth System (ES) is defined as the conglomerate formed by human civilization and its planetary matrix (i.e., all parts of the Earth that interact with the members and manifestations of our species) (1, 2). Thus, eminently complex systems like the global economy or the human brain are just components of the ES, contributing to its overall evolution. The climate machinery is another formidable subsystem that comprises vast domains of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and pedosphere, involves innumerable intertwined processes, and generates fairly robust dynamical patterns like the Hadley cell. This machinery still operates in the ‘‘Holocene mode’’.’’

Otras publicaciones:

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber et al (2009) – Solving the Climate Dilemma: The WBGU Budget Approach – Factsheet no 3/2009 – 09/07/2009 – German Advisory Council on Global Change – http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_factsheet_3_en.pdf – 9 authors
“The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) has developed an innovative approach to tackling the problem of climate change. A key component is an agreement between the community of states regarding a cap, in the form of a global budget, for the total amount of carbon dioxide that may be emitted from fossil-fuel sources until the year 2050, in order to avoid dangerous climate change. As the global budget would be distributed among all countries in line with fundamental principles of equity, the budget approach can serve as the basis for a new global climate treaty.”

Presentación: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2009) – Terra Quasi-Incognita: Beyond the 2°C Line – International Climate Conference: 4 Degrees and Beyond – 40086 – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/ppt/1-1schellnhuber.pdf