Prof. Dr. Jürgen Böhner
Scientist
PRODIGY (BMBF)
Institute of Geography
University of Hamburg
Bundesstr. 55, D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY
Curriculum Vitae
- Since 2006 Full Professor (W3) for Physical Geography at the Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, German
- 2005-2006 Representative of the vacant professorship for Physical Geography at the Faculty for Geosciences and Geography at the University of Göttingen
- 1998-2004 Assistant Professor at the Institute for Geography, University of Göttingen
- 1993-1998 Scientific employee at the Institute for Geography, University of Göttingen
Expertise
Jürgen Böhner holds the chair (W3) of Physical Geography and is head of the research Section Physical Geography at the Geoscientific Department of the University of Hamburg. He graduated at the University of Göttingen in geography, meteorology, bioclimatology and botany and gained his PhD in 1993 with a thesis on ‘secular climate changes and recent climate trends in Central- and High-Asia’. Until 2006, he was scientific assistant and associated Professor at the Institute of Geography in Göttingen, coordinating and participating in national and international research projects on Late Quaternary climate variability, climate impact assessment, and environmental dynamics. His Habilitation thesis on ‘climate spatial prediction and environmental modeling by means of terrain analyses, process parameterization, and remote sensing’ and his publications in numerous peer-reviewed journals mirror his major interests in modeling topoclimates and related environmental processes. Presently, Jürgen Böhner is Co-Chair in the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence „Climate, Climatic Change, and Society (CLICCS)” and moreover heads several third-party funded research projects all ultimately aiming at an operational coupling of numerical and statistical downscaling approaches, surface parameterization methods, and environmental modeling applications for climate impact research. Much of the methods and modeling routines, developed by his working group are embedded in the Hamburg System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA), a modular organized, programmable FOSS GIS platform, especially designed to support regional climate and environmental modeling applications (http://www.saga-gis.org).
Accomplishments
Leading and coordination of the SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses) development (http://www.saga-gis.org).
Pioneering work on the development of a FOSS GIS front-end for numerical climate models, especially designed to bridge HPC based climate modeling and GIS-based environmental modeling applications.
Development of advanced geodata processing architectures within a programmable GIS environment, enabling a dynamical representation of even vast climate model outputs, and to interlink climate model outputs with environmental processes models.
Design and development of a dynamical climate regionalization approach, coupling GCM or RCM simulations, statistical downscaling and (DEM and RS based) surface parameterization techniques within a comprehensive hierarchical downscaling scheme.
Exploitation of new high resolution geodata products and demonstration of the feasibility of parameterizing subgrid-scale processes in urban climate modeling, especially required for modeling urban climates in developing countries with missing geodata infrastructures.
Development of a broad suite of (deterministic and geostatistical) regionalization algorithms, readily available as modular organized routines for geospatial analyses as well as different data aggregation and disaggregation routines supporting climate research and impact assessments at different scales.