Two scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been awarded one of Germany’s most prestigious prizes.
IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Christopher Field and Markus Reichstein, a lead author on the IPCC’s Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) have been jointly awarded the Max Planck Research Prize.
Field and Reichstein received the prize “because they have significantly increased our knowledge of how life on Earth responds to climate change and what reactions can be anticipated between the biosphere and the atmosphere… their work also helps us to estimate the consequences of climate change for the people of the planet,” the Max Planck Society said.
Field is the founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science and holds two professorships at Stanford University. He studies how photosynthesis correlates with light absorption to estimate the amount of biomass that plants build up, which is the experimental basis for his global modeling of biogeochemical and ecological relationships to determine the effect of climate change on the biosphere. He is one the two Co-Chairs of IPCC Working Group II, which deals with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. He was also a Coordinating Lead Author of the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.
Reichstein, who heads the Department of Biogeochemical Integration at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, served as one of the Lead Authors of Chapter 3 of SREX on changes in climate extremes and their impacts on the natural physical environment.
The Max Planck Research Prize is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. It is conferred annually to two internationally renowned scientists, one who works in Germany and another who works in another country.