Bjorn Stevens

Bjorn Stevens is the Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and a Professor (§17) at the University of Hamburg. He leads the Climate Physics department, focusing on understanding how atmospheric water vapor, clouds, and radiative processes shape global and regional climates. His research explores turbulent mixing, cloud microphysics, and their role in climate feedback mechanisms, with contributions to observational techniques and high-resolution climate modeling.

Education: PhD in Atmospheric Science (1996, Colorado State University), M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (1990 and 1987, Iowa State University). Professional experience includes roles at UCLA, NCAR, and leadership in major initiatives like HD(CP)2 and NextGEMS. He has supervised 25 PhD students, 29 master’s students, and 30 postdocs.

Research interests span climate variability, cloud organization, and interactions between clouds and large-scale circulation. Recent work emphasizes storm-resolving models, tropical convection, and radiative feedbacks. Stevens has contributed to the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC assessments and leads projects like the Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE) to advance climate simulation capabilities.