Hans von Storch is a director of the Institute for Coastal Research of the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht and professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg. His research interests are coastal climate and impact (wind, storm surges and waves) in recent times and in possible futures, and methodical issues of statistical climatology (such as detection and attribution of anthropogenic climate change, or utility of proxy data). He is also engaged in transdisciplinary research with social and cultural scientists since many years.

Hans von Storch has published 15 books, and numerous articles. He is member of the advisory/review boards of Journal of Climate, Environmental Science and Policy and Meteorologische Zeitschrift, Annals of Geophysics, the Romanian Journal of Meteorology, and organizor of the GKSS School on Environmental Research (series published by Springer Verlag), and correspondant of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter. He is a member of the steering committees of the Exzellenzzentrum KlimaCampus in Hamburg, of International Meetings on Statistical Climatology and a vice-chair of the BALTEX-programme. He chairs the BALTEX Working Group on BACC II, which will assess in 2007-2012 climate and climate change in the Baltic Sea region. He had similar responsibilities with preparing the 1st BACC report and the "Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg" (see here). After having served as a Lead Author for Working Group I of IPCC TAR, he now acting as a Lead Author of Chapter 2 "Foundations of Decision Making" of Working Group II of IPCC AR5.

Hans studied mathematics, physics and Danish at the University of Hamburg, and received a diploma in mathematics in 1976. While a student he also worked as a programmer at the Department of Oceanography. He went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Meteorological Department of the University of Hamburg in 1979, and his "Habilitation" in 1985. From 1987 - 1995, he was Senior Scientist and leader of the "Statistical Analysis and Modelling" group at the Max Planck-Institut for Meteorology (Hasselmann division). In 1996, Hans von Storch became director of what became later the Institute for Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Centre (now Helmholtz Center Geesthacht) and professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg. Within the Institute for Coastal Research, he heads the division "Systems Analysis and Modelling". In October 2008, he was awarded a doctor h.c. by Göteborgs Universitet.

He is married to Dr. Jin-Song von Storch.

During his academic life, which began in about 1976, Hans von Storch made a number of intellectual achievements. (Werner Krauss wrote a nice subjective piece about my role and my achievements; see also Sven Titz' "Klimawissenschaft zwischen Skylla und Charybdis" in NZZ, 27. January 2010. An overview of my work is also given by the citation of the IMSC achievement award "to recognize his key contributions to statistical downscaling, reconstruction of temperature series, analyses of climatic variability, and detection and attribution of climate change".)

• The invention of the "downscaling"-terminology and the first examples of using the statistical variant of this approach for the construction of climate change scenarios. (Details)
• Also in the field of downscaling: introduction of the spectral nudging technique for usage in mainly reconstructing regional climate across decades of years but also for scenario construction. (Details) Hans von Storch was among the first, who demonstrated that numerical experiments with regional models need signal-to-noise analysis, just as global model experiments do. (Details)
• Assessing changing storminess, and marine implications (surges, waves) in Europe. Also subsynoptic storms are addressed, among them Polar Lows.(Details)
• Implementation the rather abstract concept of Principal Oscillation Patterns of Klaus Hasselmann routinely for analysis and prediction purposes. (Details)
• In the early 2000s, the debate about historical variations of climate was widely suppressed by gatekeeping, with the claim that the "hockeystick" would already describe the past millennium with good accuracy. A simulation study using ECHO-G millennium simulations demonstrated that the methodology behind the "hockeystick" was flawed. The publication of this result lead to the end of the unfortunate blockage which had prevailed so far. (Details)
• Joint work with social scientists allowed Hans von Storch to embed the practice of climate science and its interaction with public, media and politics into concepts such as "post-normal science". This has significant practical implications, such as the insight that even if reduction of emissions may be morally superior but the exclusive focus on it would be misleading when the unavoidable need for early planning of adaptive measures is at the same time neglected. (Details) From these insights followed also the initiative to develop regional climate services (see next items).
• Initiating assessments of scientific knowledge about climate and climate change in specific regions, such as the Baltic Sea catchment (BACC), the metropolitan region of Hamburg, and the North Sea. As a first, an assessment of the scientifically legitimate knowldge about climate, climate change and climate impact in the Baltic Sea Region (BACC) ws concluded in 2008 with the publication of a extensive book, under the leadership of Hans von Storch, organized by the BALTEX secretariat (Hans-Jörg Isemer, Marcus Reckermann). As a second a similar report was published about the metropolitan region of Hamburg in 2010. (Details)
• The issues of post-normal science, assessment reports, building science-stakeholder dialogs and regional reconstructions of climate are elements of a practical concept, named Regional Climate Service. Different from conventional concepts, a key element is the recognition of knowledge competetion in public and political decision processes, and of climate science being a social practice embedded in a cultural milieu. (Details)
• Bilder der Küste: Mapping different views, perceptions and conceptualizations of "coast", together with cultural scientists.(Details)
  Graphics: Ina Frings
  
• Personal accounts of experiencing the changing conditions, ideas and moods of clinate research, provided by interviews with important scientific personalities in the field. (Details)