About us
Since 1975, the term “environmental physics” stands for a field of research that emerged in the 1950s from the development and application of nuclear physics measurement methods to study the Earth's climate and environmental system.
Today, our scientific mission as a branch of physics encompasses questions that investigate the flow of energy and matter in our environment. Research areas include the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, greenhouse gases, and remote sensing (Prof. André Butz), as well as aquatic processes and the Earth's climate history (Prof. Werner Aeschbach and Prof. Norbert Frank). The measurement and simulation of the radiative impact of aerosols in the climate system (Prof. Stephanie Fiedler). Image processing in the environmental sciences takes place at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing at the University of Heidelberg (Prof. Carsten Rother, em. Prof. Bernd Jähne), and remote sensing of the atmosphere is carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz (Prof. Thomas Wagner). Research into aerosols is carried out at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Prof. Thomas Leisner). Further links exist with the Klaus Tschira Laboratory for Physical Age Determination (KTL), a facility of the Curt Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry (CEZA) and the Curt Engelhorn Foundation.
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Organisation and internal structure of the institute
The Institute of Environmental Physics consists of four professorships and further individual research groups as well as a European infrastructure (ICOS). Approximately 25 staff are employed in science, administration and the workshop. On average 30 doctoral students and a comparable number of Master's and Bachelor's students conduct research at the Institute.