Prof. Dr. Andreas Christen

Prof. Dr. Andreas Christen
Head of the Chair of Environmental Meteorology

Werthmannstrasse 10
79085 Freiburg
Room 00 005

Biography

Andreas Christen studied Geography with a minor in Chemistry and Meteorology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. In 2005 he received his PhD in Meteorology from the University of Basel with a dissertation on "atmospheric turbulence and surface energy exchange in urban environments" (under the supervision of Prof. Eberhard Parlow and Prof. Mathias Rotach). In 2005/06 he was post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Ecology of the Technical University of Berlin (Prof. D. Scherer). Between 2006 and 2013 he was appointed assistant professor and from 2013 to 2017 associate professor in Geography and the Atmospheric Science Program at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where he also led the “Laboratory for Atmospheric Research on Greenhouse Gas Exchange”. In 2012/13 he was visiting professor in the lab of Prof. M.B. Parlange at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Since 2017 he is Full Professor in Environmental Meteorology at the University of Freiburg and heads the chair of Environmental Meteorology in the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources.

Research

Working the field of environmental meteorology, Christen and his team measure and model the effect of environmental changes on weather and climate. They investigate and describe the coupling between land surfaces and the atmosphere in the climate system, with emphasis on the near-surface wind field and turbulence, the exchange of trace gases and of  urban climate effects. The outcomes of this research will allow improved assessments and scenarios on how cities, forests, and other land surfaces behave in a changing climate and how changes in land surface dynamics affect the climate system in reverse. A further interest of Andreas Christen is the development of new micrometeorological measurement methods and technology.

Current Offices

• Secretary of the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC), 2018-2022

Editorial board memberships

• Editorial Board Member "Boundary-Layer Meteorology"
• Editorial Board Member "Theoretical and Applied Climatology" 

Awards

• Graham K. Walker Award, Canadian Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2017
• Amerbach-Preis, Preis der Universität, University of Basel, 2005

Recent Publications

Textbooks

• Oke TR, Mills G, Christen A, Voogt JA 2017: Urban Climates, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-11-074-2953-6

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

• McKendry IG, Christen A, Lee S-C, Ferrara M, Strawbridge KB, O'Neill N, Black A, 2019: Impacts of an intense wildfire smoke episode on surface radiation, energy and carbon fluxes in southwestern British Columbia, Canada Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 19: 835-846
• Kokkonen TV, Grimmond CSB, Christen A, Oke TR, Järvi L, 2018: Changes to the Water Balance Over a Century of Urban Development in Two Neighborhoods: Vancouver, Canada. Water Resources Research, 54, 6625 - 6642.
• Stephens JJ, Black TA, Jassal RS, Nesic Z, Grant NJ, Barr AG, Helgason WD, Richardson AD, Johnson MS, Christen A, 2018: Effects of forest tent caterpillar defoliation on carbon and water fluxes in a boreal aspen stand. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 253-254: 176-189.
• Allen MA, Voogt JA, Christen A, 2018: Time-continuous hemispherical urban surface temperatures. Remote Sensing, 10 (1).
• Kokkonen TV, Grimmond CSB, Räty O, Ward HC, Christen A, Oke TR, Kotthaus S, Järvi L, 2018: Sensitivity of Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme (SUEWS) to downscaling of reanalysis forcing data. Urban Climate, 23: 36-52.
• Meyer G, Black TA, Jassal RS, Nesic Z, Coops NC, Christen A, Fredeen AL, Spittlehouse DL, Grant NJ, Foord VN, Bowler R, 2018: Simulation of net ecosystem productivity of a lodgepole pine forest after mountain pine beetle attack using a modified version of 3-PG. Forest Ecology and Management; 412: 41-52. :
• Tortini R, Coops NC, Nesic Z, Christen A, Lee S-C, Hilker T, 2017: Remote sensing of seasonal light use efficiency in temperate bog ecosystems. Scientific Reports, 7: 8563.
• Barlow J, Martin Best M, Bohnenstengel SI, Clark P, Grimmond CSB, Lean H, Christen A, Emeis S, Haeffelin M, Harman IN, Lemonsu A, Martilli A, Pardyjak E, Rotach MW, Ballard S, Boutle I, Brown A, Cai X, Carpentieri M, Coceal O, Crawford B, Di Sabatino S, Dou J, Drew DR, Edwards JM, Fallmann J, Fortuniak K, Gornall J, Gronemeier T, Halios CH, Hertwig D, Hirano K, Holtslag AAM, Luo Z, Mills G, Nakayoshi M, Pain K, Schlünzen KH, Smith S, Soulhac L, Steeneveld G-J, Sun T, Theeuwes NE, Thomson D, Voogt JA, Ward HC, Xie Z-T, Zhong J, 2017: Developing a Research Strategy to Better Understand, Observe, and Simulate Urban Atmospheric Processes at Kilometer to Subkilometer Scales. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 98 (10): ES261-ES264.
• Giometto MG, Christen A, Egli PE, Schmid MF, Tooke RT, Coops NC, Parlange MB, 2017: Effects of trees on mean wind, turbulence and momentum exchange within and above a real urban environment. Advances in Water Resources, 106, 154-168.
• Järvi L, Grimmond CSB, McFadden JP, Christen A, Strachan IB, Taka M, Warsta L, Heimann M, 2017: Warming effects on the urban hydrology in cold climate regions. Scientific Reports, 7, 5833.
• Cassidy AE, Christen A, Henry GHR, 2017: Impacts of active retrogressive thaw slumps on vegetation, soil, and net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide in the Canadian High Arctic. Arctic Science, 10.1139/AS-2016-0034.
• Lee JK, Christen A, Ketler R, Nesic Z, 2017: A mobile sensor network to map carbon dioxide emissions in urban environments. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, doi:10.5194/amt-2016-200, 2291-2303.
• Lee, S-C, Christen, A, Black, AT, Johnson, MS, Jassal, RS, Ketler, R, Nesic, Z, Merkens, M, 2017: Annual greenhouse gas budget for a bog ecosystem undergoing restoration by rewetting Biogeosciences, 14, 2799-2814.
• Meyer G, Black TA, Jassal RS, Nesic Z, Grant NJ, Spittlehouse DL, Fredeen AL, Christen A, Coops NC, Foord VN, Bowler R, 2017: Measurements and simulations using the 3-PG model of the water balance and water use efficiency of a lodgepole pine stand following mountain pine beetle attack. Forest Ecology and Management, 393, 89–104.
• Cassidy AE, Christen A, Henry GHR, 2016: The effect of a permafrost disturbance on growing-season carbon-dioxide fluxes in a high Arctic tundra ecosystem. Biogeosciences, 13, 2291-2303, doi:10.5194/bg-13-2291-2016.
• Chance CM, Coops NC, Plowright AA, Tooke TR, Christen A, Aven N, 2016: Invasive Shrub Mapping in an Urban Environment From Hyperspectral and LiDAR-Derived Attributes. Frontiers in Plant Science 07 (891534): 281–19.
• Christen A, Jassal RS, Black TA, Grant NJ, Hawthorne I, Johnson MS, Lee S-C, Merkens M, 2016: Summertime greenhouse gas fluxes from an urban bog undergoing restoration through rewetting. Mires and Peat, 17, Article 3, 1–24.
• Crawford B, Christen A, McKendry IG, 2016: Diurnal course of carbon dioxide mixing ratios in the urban boundary layer in response to surface emissions. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 55, 507–529.
• Giometto MG, Christen A, Meneveau C, Fang J, Krafczyk M, Parlange MB, 2016: Spatial characteristics of roughness sublayer mean flow and turbulence over a realistic urban surface. Boundary Layer Meteorology, 160 (3), 425–452.
  
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