Konrad Steffen

DepartmentOrganizationEmailPhoneSwitzerlandBioDr. Konrad (Koni) Steffen is the Director of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and a Professor in Climate and Cryosphere at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at EPF-Lausanne, and at the Institute for Atmosphere and Climate at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He is responsible for vital instrumentation deployed in the Arctic to help us monitor the significant changes taking place on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Without his work, human knowledge of Arctic climate, warming, and melting dynamics would be substantially diminished. He has led field expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet, to Antarctica, and other Polar Regions for the past 40 years to measure the dynamic response of ice masses under a warming climate. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and 15 book chapters. He spent 24 years at the University of Colorado and led the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) before returning to his homeland in July 2012. He is currently the Chair of the Global Climate Observing System Terrestrial Observation panel, a member of the ESA Climate Advisory board, the Advising Board of the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Sciences in Germany, the Swedish Polar Institute, and a was a lead author of the IPCC AR5 assessment for the Cryosphere chapter.

Interests

Sea Ice

Science Specialties

climatology, remote sensing, glaciology

Current Research

Climate variability assessment of the Greenland ice sheetTemporal and spatial sea ice variability of Lady Ann Strait polynaya (SAR).Spectral hemispheric and directional reflection of snow types.Greenland Ice Sheet Climate Network.