Stefan Rahmstorf


Stefan Rahmstorf is a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography from Victoria University of Wellington. His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change. He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

Public role

Rahmstorf is a co-founder of the blog Real Climate, which has been described by Nature as one of the top-5 science blogs in 2006, and included among the 15 best environmental websites by Time in 2008. He also co-founded the German blog KlimaLounge. KlimaLounge won the 3rd prize of the science blog award of 2013. He is a frequent contributor of articles on climate and climate change/global warming in the popular press, some of which are internationally syndicated via Project Syndicate. He writes a regular column in the German environmental magazine Zeo2, and has published the children's science book Wolken, Wind und Wetter on weather and climate. The book was selected as Environmental Book of the Month for January 2012 by the Deutsche Umweltstiftung. In addition, it was later voted Environmental Book of the Year 2012.
Rahmstorf has commented on climate change and climate policy on TV and radio. He was portrayed as one of the world's 10 leading climate scientists by the Financial Times in 2009. The ARD presented a portrait of Rahmstorf in their prime news magazine Tagesthemen when he received the Deutscher Umweltmedienpreis in 2007.

Work

The University of Flensburg found that among all climate scientists from Germany, Rahmstorf published the largest number of studies which ranked amongst the most-cited in the scientific literature during the years 1994–2013. Rahmstorf was from 2004 till 2013 a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change.

Awards and honors

An overview of Rahmstorf's publications can be found at his profile.