Martin Heimann

Since the foundation of the Max Planck Institute in 1975 with the now-Nobel laureate Klaus Hasselmann as founding director, the climate science in Hamburg has seen a remarkable boost. Various ideas were brought forward, implemented and tested. Many of them ignited interest in the global scientific community, thus adding significant momentum to the development of modern climate science. The participants of the remarkable development since 1975 have come together to identify these concepts “born in Hamburg”. In an introductory chapter, the historical development, including other significant developments of climate science in the late 19th and early 20th century are addressed. The main part consists of chapters addressing the development of key innovative concepts. These are chosen to describe ideas which have been suggested by scientists while working in Hamburg and have been taken up by the international community in applications and advancements (such as the stochastic framing of dynamics and analysis, adding carbon cycles to climate models, multiple equilibria in climate models, anomaly coupling, downscaling, and constructed proxies). These ideas may not in all cases have been strictly new, or “firsts”, but they were the Hamburg publications which made the difference. The book is mostly a book on scientific concepts and ideas, less so a general history of climate science in Hamburg.

The interactions of biogeochemical cycles influence and maintain our climate system. Land use and fossil fuel emissions are currently impacting the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur on land, in the atmosphere, and in the oceans. This edited volume brings together 27 scholarly contributions on the state of our knowledge of earth system interactions among the oceans, land, and atmosphere. A unique feature of this treatment is the focus on the paleoclimatic and paleobiotic context for investigating these complex interrelationships.

Das Buch bietet eine Einführung in die moderne Klimatologie mit ihren Prognose- und Interpretationsmodellen. Es gibt einen Überblick über die Vorstellungen, die man heute vom Klima und von klimarelevanten Prozessen hat, und wie man diese konzeptionell und quantitativ - also mit Modellen - zu beschreiben versucht. Der Text ist allgemein verständlich geschrieben und setzt keine besonderen Kenntnisse der Mathematik und Physik voraus. Dieses Lehrbuch basiert auf einer Vorlesung am Meteorologischen Institut der Universität Hamburg und richtet sich hauptsächlich an Studenten der Geowissenschaften und Physik, daneben an ebenfalls mit Klima befaßten Disziplinen der Land-, Forst- und Umweltwissenschaften.