Research

Martin Claußen pioneered climate and Earth system modelling by demonstrating that climate-vegetation interaction is one of the important processes to explain past climate variations. In particular, Claußen investigated the expansion and retreat of the Sahara in the course of glacial-interglacial cycles. Claußen was the first to successfully predict a much reduced or “green” Sahara” in the early and mid Holocene, several thousand years ago, and the fast expansion of more desert-like conditions some 5000 years ago. This work has stimulated many palaeoclimate modellers and palaeoclimatologists to search for “hot spots” of atmosphere-biosphere interaction in all climate zones.