Prof. Dr. Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne, Vice-Chair of the IPCC Working Group I and a professor at ETH Zürich, is this year’s co-laureate of the prestigious German Environmental Award presented by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU). The DBU award is among the most notable in Europe and comes with a €500,000 purse, which this year will be split with the other co-laureate – the management duo Lars Baumgürtel and Birgitt Bendiek being awarded for circular business model.
This year’s DBU award is bestowed upon Prof. Seneviratne for her “excellent innovative climate research”. In the citation, the DBU Secretary-General Alexander Bonde describes Prof. Seneviratne as a “brilliant climate scientist,” who has used new research methods such as satellite image analysis and “groundbreaking studies on land-climate dynamics to highlight the interactions between soil moisture, vegetation, evaporation and the atmosphere in international discourse.”
The German Environmental Award also recognises Seneviratne’s “outstanding climate protection communication”, her work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the establishment of the Swiss National Drought Platform.
Since 2007, Seneviratne has been a Professor at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zürich. She studied environmental physics and biology at ETH Zürich and the University of Lausanne. She obtained her PhD in 2003 at ETH Zürich and was a postdoctoral scientist at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre from 2003 to 2004. Her research addresses climate change and extreme events, land-climate interactions, and terrestrial water processes.
In her work with the IPCC she has been a Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author on several IPCC reports, including the 2012 Special Report on Extreme events, the 2018 Special Report on 1.5°C Global warming, and the 2021 Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report on which she was a Coordinating Lead Author of the Weather and Climate Extremes chapter. In the current seventh assessment cycle, Prof. Seneviratne has been elected as one of the Vice-Chairs of Working Group I, assessing the physical science basis of climate change.
The DBU German Environmental Award, which, this year, will be presented for the 33rd time, honours the achievements of people who make an exemplary contribution to protecting and preserving the environment.
The award ceremony will take place on Sunday, October 26, in Chemnitz, Germany, in the presence of the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier.