Jan O. Härter

Jan O. Härter is Professor for Climate Physics at the University of Potsdam and serves as Department Head and Work Group Leader at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen. He concurrently leads the Atmospheric Complexity research group at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and maintains affiliations with Jacobs University Bremen.

His research centers on Modeling of Complex Systems with three specialized focus areas: Atmospheric Convection (including self-organization of convection clouds and emergence of clustered systems like mesoscale convective complexes and tropical cyclones), Ecological Systems, and Socio-Economic Systems. At ZMT, his Complexity & Climate group investigates extreme event dynamics and their cascading impacts on tropical coastal ecosystems and human populations, where high population density intersects with environmental vulnerability.

This work integrates complexity science methodologies across atmospheric, ecological, and socioeconomic domains, with particular emphasis on tropical regions where climate phenomena directly affect sensitive ecosystems and densely populated coastal communities through emergent systemic behaviors.