Members
Speaker
Mathias uses atmospheric measurements and high-resolution dynamic modeling in order to better understand exchange of mass, momentum and energy between mountainous terrain and the atmosphere. He works on timescales of split seconds to 100 years (into the future).
Research interests: boundary layer dynamics; atmospheric dynamics; mountain meteorology; air pollution modeling
Deputy Speaker
Kurt specializes in dendrochronology, which is the use of tree rings to, e.g., date past environmental events and construct records of climate change. He works on timescales of the last ca. 10,000 years.
Research interests: using different archives, e.g. Alpine tree rings and glaciers, to date, reconstruct and analyse past environmental events and developments during the Holocene
Members
Yuri goes into the field to collect cave deposits and reconstruct paleoclimate in Eurasia. In the lab he analyzes stable isotope composition of paleoprecipitation trapped as fluid inclusions in speleothems.
Research interests: speleothems; karst; paleoclimate; isotope geology; cryogenic carbonates; past permafrost
Alexander is an atmospheric scientist with a strong passion for mountain weather and climate. His research goal is to improve the understanding of atmospheric processes over complex terrain based on field observations and numerical simulations.
Research interests: mountain meteorology, foehn and valley winds, orographic precipitation, boundary-layer meteorology, Doppler wind lidar, atmospheric models
Petra Heidenwolf
Petra is a botanist and uses pollen analysis to understand how climate and vegetation interact in the past. She is also interested in modern pollen monitoring, the influence of current climate on pollen production.
Research interests: palynology, paleoclimate, vegetation history, archeobotany, pollen monitoring
Irmi's work has focussed on observing the relation between glacier, glacier runoff and climate in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca. Currently she coordinates the glacier mass balance monitoring on Hintereis- and Kesselwandferner.
Research interests: glacier mass balance; glacier hydrology
Thomas Karl is an atmospheric physicist interested in processes that govern atmospheric composition and exchange processes between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere.
Research interests: biosphere-atmosphere interactions; air quality; atmospheric chemistry; biogeochemistry; chemical ionization mass spectrometry
Georg studies the interaction between the atmosphere and glacier surface on high mountain glaciers of the European Alps and the global Tropics, and uses this to unravel the fingerprint changing climate systems leaves in the glacial record. He is also a strong advocate for international cryospheric and mountain science.
Research interests: glacier-atmosphere interaction on mountains at several scales; understanding and modelling glacier mass balance from point to global scale.
Karin studies high alpine lakes. She reconstructs past climatic and environmental changes from biological, mineralogical and geo-chemical records in lake sediment profiles; and observes recent, climate-driven changes in aquatic chemistry.
Research interests: long term impact of climate and of atmospheric deposition on alpine lakes; diatoms as indicators for palaeo-environmental conditions; lake - catchment interactions; comparison of recent and past environmental conditions
Gabi is a PhD student whose work focuses on past climate changes of an arid region in Northern Italy. She studies the geochemical signature of vein-filling speleothems from a non-karstic setting and is interested in understanding if reliable information on past climate and environmental changes can be obtained from these unique secondary carbonates.
Research interests: speleothems; uranium-series dating; cave monitoring
Michael Kuhn has worked on Arctic sea ice; energy and mass balance of Alpine glaciers; the boundary layer of, and energy transfer through the Antarctic inversion; atmospheric optics; snow chemistry. He is now interested in the changing water balance of glacierized Alpine basins.
Research interests: Glaciology; cryosphere and climate
Manuela is an atmospheric scientist whose work focuses on boundary-layer processes in mountainous terrain using field observations and model simulations.
Research interests: mountain meteorology; boundary-layer processes; thermally driven circulation; gravity waves; numerical modeling
Thomas is a geographer with research focus in the monitoring and simulation of hydroclimatological processes in Alpine regions.
Research interests: water balance; boundary layer meteorology; land-atmosphere interactions; snow cover; glacier energy and mass balance; model coupling; down- and upscaling of hydrometeorological variables; scenario simulations; interaction of natural systems and man; transdisciplinary scenario generation
Fabien is a climate scientist and glaciologist interested in the climate controls on glacier changes at long and short time scales. He enjoys to mix and merge methods and models across disciplines, and he is also an enthusiast open-source scientific programmer.
Research interests: cryosphere-atmosphere interactions; numerical models (atmosphere, glaciers); climate of the Tibetan Plateau and the Tropical Andes; open-science.
Georg pushes the limits of the reliability of weather forecasting. He is also interested in predicting the uncertainty of a forecast. To achieve this, he combines data from numerical weather prediction models and observations with statistical methods. He enjoys collaborating with colleagues from other disciplines such as oceanography and statistics. Being able to work with students and young scientists is a highlight of his job.
Research interests: weather forecasting (especially in mountainous terrain); applying statistical methods to atmospheric science problems; mountain meteorology and foehn winds; energy meteorology
Michael is a quaternary geologist and geochronologist and heads the laboratory for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. He uses this technique to reconstruct paleoclimatic and environmental changes of the last half a million years.
Research interests: OSL dating of archaeological and paleoenvironmental sites; Glaciations and human occupation of central High Asia; Quaternary landscape evolution and environmental change; Reconstruction of human-environmental interlinkages
Jasper is an earth scientist using the sedimentary archive of lakes to reconstruct past extreme events.
Research interests: combining geophysical, geotechnical and sedimentological techniques to quantitatively characterize sediment dynamics and its forcing factors (earthquakes, tsunamies, climate varaibility, volcanic activity) in Chile, Alaska, Japan and the Alps.
Gina uses deposits found in caves to reconstruct records of climate change, sea-level change, and landscape evolution over the last half a million years.
Research interests: speleothems; caves; karst; Quaternary; palaeoclimate (change); abrupt climate change; past warm periods; sea-level change; science communication
Uli is interested in atmospheric trace substances and the quality and chemistry of air and precipitation. She also focuses on the impact of alpine permafrost on the water quality of high alpine freshwaters.
Research interests: air and precipitation quality; alpine permafrost; biogeochemistry of alpine headwaters
Friedl has mostly worked on observing and modeling surface exchange processes above snow and ice in Alpine and Arctic environments and on associated meteorological conditions.
Research interests: mountain meteorology; micrometeorology; snow processes; Arctic glaciers
Rudi works mainly with terrestrial laser scanners in high alpine terrain, focussing on permafrost, glaciers and avalanches. Beside that he is senior lecturer and mainly involved in natural hazards courses.
Research interests: Cryosphere; Natural Hazards, Avalanches; Alps
Elisabeth studies the atmospheric processes that influence the relationship between air temperature and stable water isotope ratios in Antarctic snow and ice in order to improve the interpretation of deep ice cores for paleoclimatological studies.
Research interests: Antarctic weather and climate; ice cores; paleoclimate; snow processes; stable water isotopes
Christoph is an earth scientist whose research focuses on Quaternary geology and paleoclimate.
Research interests: using geological archives to reconstruct and understand large environmental changes over a range of time scales, with an emphasis on caves and their sediments
Ivana is a mountain meteorologist who uses measurements from around the world to study turbulence in mountainous region and its interaction with mesoscale flows such as foehn winds, mountain waves and valley and slope circulations.
Research interests: scale interactions; boundary layer turbulence; mountain meteorology; gravity waves; thermally and dynamically driven wind systems;
Michi is an earth scientist conducting research on the quantitative characterization of dynamic sedimentary and tectonic processes and related natural hazards.
Research interests: Using geophysical and analytical methods to explore sedimentary archives of lakes and oceans to understand the dynamic response of sedimentary systems to geological, climatic, environmental and/or anthropogenic forces acting on timescales from seconds to millions of years.
Uli specializes in the physically based modelling of hydroclimatological processes in mountain areas. His main interest is to better understand the water balance in a changing climate at scales ranging from local to regional.
Research interests: seasonal snow cover; glacier mass balance; regionalization of meteorological variables; effects of climate change; interfaces to socio-economic processes
Research interests: ecosystem physiology; micrometeorology; trace gas exchange; soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transfer modeling
Research interests: speleothems, caves, pollen, paleoclimate, Arctic/alpine
Wolfgang has a background in atmospheric- and cryospheric sciences and is coordinating the research area mountain regions at the University of Innsbruck.
Research interests: all kind of mountain research
Lena is a geoecologist who specialised in micrometeorology during her PhD. She uses spatial continuous measurements of temperature as well as other observations to better understand turbulent exchange in complex environments such as mountainous regions.
Research interests: boundary-layer processes, submesoscale motions, mountain meteorology, fiber-optic distributed sensing