What are the impacts of climate change on our society and ecosystems?
Research focus: Climate Change and Extreme Weather Impacts
Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including e.g., droughts, heatwaves and floods. The extremes are often changing more rapidly than the mean climate, with strong regional differences. Ultimately it is also important to understand how extremes lead to impacts, which is often highly non-linear and may involve compounding or cascading of multiple extremes. I aim to quantify changes in extremes and how this translates to impacts on society and ecosystems.
Research tools: Modeling Approaches and Remote Sensing
In my research I use remote sensing data to study extremes and their impacts, e.g. the impact of a large drought on the Amazon (Koren et al., 2018). Also, I use process-based and data-based models for quantifying the exchange of carbon between ecosystems and the atmosphere. Although I am working mainly as a modeler and user of remote sensing data, I try to find time to contribute to occasional measurement campaigns, such as a campaign at the Loobos flux tower site (see ICOS success story).
News items
- Consortium awarded €3.2 million for space-based vegetation research (June 2026)
- Funding for an overarching knowledge management project on adaptive delta management in Bangladesh (May 2026)
- AI in the environmental & sustainability sciences (September 2025)
- Almost 1.8 million awarded for controlling wildfires (May 2025)
- Four Bangladeshi-Dutch consortia to start Living Labs research on the Bangladesh delta (May 2025)
- Utrecht University to design conceptual framework for DestinE’s digital twins’ Quality Control (June 2024)
- Predicting nitrous oxide flux using machine learning: Ifekristi Ogunwobi’s FLUXNET Secondment Experience (April 2024)
- New NWO grant on space infrastructure for studying the Amazon (January 2024)
- Xarray-regrid: regridding with ease (January 2024)
- Climate Resilience and Sustainability Editors’ Award for Gerbrand Koren (July 2023)