Focus on tipping elements: Professorship for Nico Wunderling

24.04.2025 - From April 2025, Nico Wunderling from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) will take up a tenured professorship at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His research will remain firmly anchored in the field of Earth system science and will focus in particular on tipping elements in the Earth climate system and the biosphere.
Focus on tipping elements: Professorship for Nico Wunderling
Nico Wunderling. Photo: Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

PIK scientist Nico Wunderling has been appointed to a professorship with tenure track in Earth System Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt. Tenure-track positions offer early-career scientists a clear pathway to a permanent professorship following a successful evaluation period. The professorship is part of the newly established Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S), which is set to expand to at least twelve professorships in the coming years - a considerable share of which will be dedicated to  human and Earth system modelling under climate change.

Wunderling will maintain his affiliation with PIK and continue his work within the Earth System Resilience Science Unit (ERSU), not least through the newly established cooperation agreement between PIK/ERSU and C3S. His research focus will remain on the dynamics of interacting tipping elements within the Earth system. These include physical components of the climate, such as ice sheets and ocean currents, as well as global ecosystems.

A key aspect of his research is understanding how human activity affects climate stability. Of particular interest is the Amazon rainforest, a critical tipping element currently facing simultaneous threats from global warming, deforestation, and land-use change. To explore these complex interactions, Wunderling applies methods from complex systems theory, network science, and Earth system modeling.

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