Jürg Luterbacher
Prof. Jürg Luterbacher, PhD, is the Director of Science and Innovation and the Chief Scientist of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Prof. Jürg Luterbacher, born 1968 in Solothurn (Switzerland), studied physical Geography, botany, chemistry and geology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He was awarded a PhD in Climate Science from by the Faculty of Science, University of Bern. He worked as operational chief weather forecaster at Meteotest, Switzerland. Before joining the WMO, Prof. Luterbacher has been the Chair of Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change and the Director of the Department of Geography, and member of the Centre for international Development and Environmental Research at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany.
Prof. Luterbacher has demonstrated leadership and excellence in a broad spectrum of climate science. He is a pioneer in paleoclimate science, modelling past and present climate change across various time and space scales. He has contributed significantly to bridging the gap and understanding historical, current and future climate change, weather and climate extremes and impacts on ecosystems and societies.
The results of Prof. Luterbacher’s research have been presented in more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.
He was a lead author of the 5th IPCC Assessment Report chapter 5 “Information from Paleoclimate Archives”. He has received recognition as the Thompson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Geosciences.
Prof. Luterbacher is a recipient of the Senior Visiting Scientist Award of the Chinese Academy of Science, the Scientific Research Expert of the Academy of Athens and the Medal for outstanding scientific contribution in teaching (University of Brno, Czech Republic). He has had several longer research stays at the University of Arizona (Tucson) and at the Chinese Academy of Science, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research in Beijing, China. Prof. Luterbacher is an elected member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature / Mainz, Germany.
