Bjorn Stevens

Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology;

Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Bjorn Stevens directs the Climate Physics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg Germany. His research has advanced the scientific understanding of how atmospheric water vapor, clouds, and aerosols influence Earth’s climate and climate change. Stevens is among the most cited scientists in the broad field of climate physics world wide, and has initiated and led some of the most influential field studies and modeling initiatives over the past two decades. Stevens co-authored the chapter on clouds and aerosols in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report and served as a joint lead coordinator for the World Climate Research Programme's Grand Challenge on Clouds, Circulation, and Climate Sensitivity. 

Stevens was a post-doctoral fellow with the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, from 1996 to 1998. He then received a Humboldt Fellowship to conduct research at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology from 1998 to 1999. In 1999. He joined the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as an assistant professor, and was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2007. In 2008, Stevens returned to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology as a Director and Scientific Member, and as Managing Director for two terms (2011-2014, 2021-2024). He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a winner of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling and the originator of the concept of Earth Virtualization Engines to embed climate information in decision making. 

Through his leadership at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and his research, Stevens continues to make fundamental contributions to the field of climate science, enhancing the understanding of atmospheric processes and their implications for global climate change.