Richard Bintanja honorary professor Climate and Environmental Change

As of March 1 2017, Dr. Richard Bintanja has been appointed honorary professor Climate and Environmental Change within the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The professorship resides within the Centre for Isotope Research (CIO) of the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG) and aims to fundamentally assess the interactions between the global climate system and the global carbon cycle through Earth System Modelling (ESM).

Many interactions between the changing climate and aspects of the carbon cycle, including ecological issues, are poorly known or quantified. This omission leads to large uncertainties, not only in the combined climate-carbon cycle response, but also in the associated impacts on ecology in vulnerable regions. This professorship will therefore combine the carbon cycle knowledge within ESRIG with climate modelling expertise of KNMI to produce more accurate climate-carbon cycle sensitivities, responses and interactions.

Bintanja will employ the vast observational carbon cycle knowledge within ESRIG to validate ESMs. His previous work with EC-Earth, the Dutch global climate model, soon to be extended to become a full-blown ESM, will be very beneficial in this pursuit. The ultimate goal is to combine observations and ESMs to produce accurate future predictions of the climate, the carbon cycle, and ecology, so as to provide knowledge on the accuracy of future scenario’s, globally but also in selected regions (such as the polar regions) and to assess governing climate-carbon cycle feedbacks.

Richard Bintanja (1967) graduated in 1990 in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at Utrecht University. He received his PhD in 1995, also at Utrecht University, with the thesis entitled “The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Climate.”

Being a senior climate researcher at KNMI, he employs global climate modelling to make projections of future climate change (polar and global), and he uses these to assess climate feedbacks, climate sensitivity and hydrological changes.

More information:

Richard Bintanja
e-mail: r.bintanja rug.nl
telephone: +31 637565005