Prof. Reto Knutti
ETH Zürich
About the author
Reto Knutti got his PhD in Physics from the University of Bern, worked as a PostDoc and visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO) and since 2007 is a professor for climate physics at ETH Zurich. He is also the Associate vice president for sustainability of ETH Zurich and past president of ProClim, the Forum for Climate and Global Change of the Swiss Academies.
His activities in research and teaching have focused on understanding changes in the global climate system caused by the growing emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Using a combination of process understanding, observations, dynamical and statistical methods, he has made contributions to understanding recent climate change, to quantifying the human contribution to the observed trends, and to using this information to improve projections into the future as well better quantifying their uncertainties. But his work has gone far beyond the physics and modelling of climate change: with contributions in economic journals, collaborations with statisticians, projects in Big Data, publications on the value of climate models for adaptation, mitigation and policy, and contributions to philosophy of science, he has bridged the gap to several other research fields.
Reto Knutti was a lead and coordinating lead author of the IPCC assessment reports 2007 and 2013. Through research, public outreach and coordination work he has also contributed substantially to the Swiss Climate Scenario Reports 2011 and 2018, to various Swiss Academies Reports and to the scientific activities underpinning future climate services in Switzerland. As one of the most prominent voices, through talks, reports for the public and policymakers, and through countless media contributions in Switzerland and abroad he has been instrumental to inform society about the challenge of climate change and the steps required to address it.
Articles by this author
