Sönke Zaehle

Professor Dr Sönke Zaehle is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) in Jena Germany. He received his academic training as geo-ecologist at the universities of Braunschweig and Norwich (TU Braunschweig , Germany, University of East Anglia, UK) and holds a PhD from the Universität Potsdam, Germany (2005). After some time as a Marie-Curie Fellow at the Laboratorie des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE, Gif-sur-Yvette, France) and group leader for terrestrial biosphere modelling at MPI-BGC, he was appointed as a Director in 2020. In his research, he integrates atmospheric and ecosystem observations and global modelling to better understand and predict past and future feedbacks between the biosphere and the climate system. Amongst others, he is member of the steering group of the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory near Manaus, Brazil, and contributes to the German national Earth system modelling strategy. From 2015 to 2022 he has been contributing to the IPCC, most recently as Lead Author of the Sixth Assessment Report.