Prof. Dr. rer. nat. André Butz
Professor at the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at Heidelberg University, HCE member since 2018.
My key research questions are:
- How does the contemporary carbon cycle work – in terms biogenic mechanisms and man-made perturbations on regional to local scales?
- How can we improve - in terms of granularity, accuracy, density – on atmospheric composition measurements that inform on the carbon cycle?
- What are the social and behavioral mechanisms that link climate action with my atmospheric measurements?
Why I joined the HCE
I was looking for a place where I could put my research on greenhouse gas measurements in an interdisciplinary context. I wanted to discuss with social and behavioral scientists about their perceptions on the usefulness of our measurements for societal questions. I wanted to discuss with scientists from biogeochemical disciplines how our measurements can be embedded in collaborative research. HCE is the place.
My highlights so far
Together with a broadly interdisciplinary group of scientists from the natural, technical, social, and behavioral sciences, we have fleshed out a research question that is highly topical and timely, yet concrete and scientifically relevant for the entire group. We pose the question how climate action can be made more effective, and we concretize it on the effect of emerging granular greenhouse gas information as a stimulus for action. While discussing the idea, I found new partners, friends, and I garnered a sense of what other science disciplines are after and what methods they use. This was highly rewarding in terms of understanding the multiple, diverse dimensions of grand societal challenges such as climate change mitigation.
My key partners
At HCE, I partner with scientists from a broad range of disciplines ranging from political and economic science, to psychology and ethics, to geography and geoinformatics and to the geosciences. In Germany and abroad, I work closely with scientists working on the development and usage of satellite and ground-based remote sensing of greenhouse gases such as Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), University of Bremen, Technical University Munich (TUM), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON, The Netherlands), Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES, Japan), California Institute of Technology (Caltech, USA), University of Maryland (USA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, USA). For aircraft measurements, I contribute to activities of the German HALO (High Altitude and long Range Aircraft) aircraft and the related consortium.