Prof. Dr. Markus Stoffel

My research focuses on Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), with the aim to understand, document and quantify fundamental environmental processes, and the drivers of change. We observe, document and analyze environmental and climatic changes both at the local and the hemispheric scales and by covering daily to seasonal, decadal, centennial and millenial timeframes.

As a physical geography student with a keen interest in climate change, natural hazards and land-use planning, I very soon realized that solutions can best be found through the linking of and collaboration with colleagues  from different fields. Following my appointment at the interfaculty Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva, my desire to work across and to collaborate between disciplines has only grown more. Today I lead a group of more than 30 PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, senior researchers and readers with backgrounds in geography, environmental sciences, physics, civil and forest engineering, archaeology, history, social and political sciences.

This interest in working across disciplines also was the key motivation for me to build and manage “dendrolab.ch – The Swiss Tree-Ring Lab” from the first days of my PhD thesis onward. The aim of re-search in this field was–and still is–to understand, document and quantify fundamental environmental processes, past and present climate change and its drivers. As my dendrolab.ch has operated from its origin with project money, I have built up a broad and varied network of international research collaborations and have successfully applied for project funds on all continents except Antarctica. The research and development projects I have managed were dedicated to the fields of past, present and future climate changes, the full set of terrestrial mass wasting and periglacial processes, but also included work on climate change adaptation or the effect of large volcanic eruptions on climate.

Today, my dendrolab.ch is one in just a few worldwide reference labs specialized in the use of tree rings as a proxy of climate and terrestrial morphodynamics. When appointed to the University of Geneva, I have complemented the spectrum of approaches by including Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), precision ground surveys and high-resolution satellite imagery approaches on the one hand and by appointing colleagues from the humanities and social sciences to my team so as to facilitate transdisciplinary research and to improve the breadth of applications used and to strengthen multidisciplinary approaches towards many fields of the environmental system.

Function

Full Professor, Chair for Climate Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences (ISE), Department F.-A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences (DFSEA) and Department of Earth Sciences (DESTE), University of Geneva.

Founder and Director of the Swiss Tree-Ring Lab (www.dendrolab.ch)

Education

Research interests

Selected Publications

All papers can be found at Archive Ouverte Unige. Students enrolled at the University of Geneva can download papers at dendrolab.ch.

Jacquemart, M., Weber, S., Chiarle, M., Chmiel, M., Cicoira, A., Corona, C., Eckert, N., Gaume, J., Giacona, F., Hirschberg, J., Kaitna, R., Magnin, F., Mayer, S.I., Moos, C., van Herwijnen, A., Stoffel, M., 2024. Detecting the Impact of climate change on alpine mass movements in observational records from the European Alps. Earth Science Reviews, 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104886.

Eckert, N., Corona, C., Giacona, F., Gaume, J., Mayer, S., van Herwijnen, A., Hagenmuller, P., Stoffel, M., 2024. Climate change impacts on snow avalanche activity and related risks. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 5, 369–389.

Stoffel, M., Trappmann, D.G., Coullie, M.I., Ballesteros Cánovas, J.A., Corona, C., 2024. Rockfall from an increasingly unstable mountain slope driven by climate warming. Nature Geoscience 17, 249–254.

Björklund, J., Seftigen, K., Stoffel, M., Fonti, M.V., Kottlow, S., Frank, D.C., Esper, J., Fonti, P., Goosse, H., Grudd, H., Gunnarson, B.E., Nievergelt, D., Pellizzari, E., Carrer, M., von Arx, G., 2023. Fennoscandian tree-ring anatomy shows a warmer modern than medieval climate. Nature 620, 97–103.

Guillet, S., Corona, C., Oppenheimer, C., Lavigne, F., Khodri, M., Ludlow, F., Sigl, M., Toohey, M., Atkins, P. S., Zhen, Y., Muranaka, T., Horikawa, N., Stoffel, M., 2023. Lunar eclipses illuminate timing and climate impact of medieval volcanism. Nature 616, 90–95.

Hantemirov, R.M., Corona, C., Guillet, S., Shiyatov, S.G., Stoffel, M., Osborn, T.J., Melvin, T.M., Gorlanova, L.A., Kukarskih, V.V., Surkov, A.Y., von Arx, G., Fonti, P., 2022. Current Siberian heating is unprecedented during the last seven millennia. Nature Communications 13, 4968.

Büntgen, U., Allen, K., Anchukaitis, K., Arseneault, D., Boucher, É., Bräuning, A., Chatterjee, S., Cherubini, P., Churakova (Sidorova), O.V., Corona, C., Gennaretti, F., Griessinger, J., Guillet, S., Guiot, J., Gunnarson, B., Helama, S., Hochreuther, P., Hughes, M.K., Huybers, P., Kirdyanov, A.V., Krusic, P.J., Ludescher, J., Meier, W.J.H., Myglan, V.S., Nicolussi, K., Oppenheimer, C., Reinig, F., Salzer, M.W., Seftigen, K., Stine, Z., Stoffel, M., St. George, S., Tejedor, E., Trevino, A., Trouet, V., Wang, J., Wilson, R., Yang, B., Xu, G., Esper, J., 2021. The influence of decision-making in tree ring-based climate reconstructions. Nature Communications 12, 3411.

Zheng, G., Allen, S.K., Bao, A., Ballesteros-Cánovas, J.A., Huss, M., Zhang, G., Li, J., Yuan, Y., Jiang, L., Yu, T., Chen, W., Stoffel, M., 2021. Increasing risk of glacial lake outburst floods from future Third Pole deglaciation. Nature Climate Change 11, 411–417.

Ballesteros-Cánovas, J.A., Trappmann, D., Madrigal-González, J., Eckert, N, Stoffel, M., 2018. Climate warming enhances snow avalanche risk in the Western Himalayas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 115, 3410–3415.

Toohey, M., Krüger, K., Schmidt, H., Timmreck, C., Sigl, M., Stoffel, M., Wilson, R., 2019. Disproportionately strong climate forcing from extratropical volcanic eruptions. Nature Geoscience 12, 100–107.

Stoffel, M., Corona, C., 2018. Future winters glimpsed in the Alps. Nature Geoscience 11, 458–460.

Madrigal-González, J., Ballesteros-Cánovas, J.A., Herrero, A., Ruiz-Benito, P., Stoffel, M., Lucas-Borja, M.E., Sancho-García, C., Zavala, M.A., 2017. Forest productivity in southwestern Europe controlled by coupled North Atlantic and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillations. Nature Communications 8: 2222.

Guillet, S., Corona, C., Stoffel, M., Khodri, M., Lavigne, F., Ortega, P., Eckert, N., Selenniou, P., Daux, V., Churakova (Sidorova), O., Davi, N., Edouard, J.L., Yong, Z., Luckman, B.H., Myglan, V.S., Guiot, J., Beniston, M., Masson-Delmotte, V., Oppenheimer, C., 2017. Climate response to the Samalas volcanic eruption in 1257 revealed by proxy records.Nature Geoscience 10, 123–128.

Edvardsson, Stoffel, M., Corona, C., Bragazza, L., Leuschner, H.H., Charman, D., Helama, S., 2016. Subfossil peatland trees as proxies for palaeohydrology and climate reconstruction during the Holocene. Earth-Science Reviews 163, 118–140.

Stoffel, M., Khodri, M., Corona, C., Guillet, S., Poulain, V., Bekki, S., Guiot, J., Luckman, B.H., Oppenheimer, C., Lebas, N., Beniston, M., Masson-Delmotte, V., 2015. Estimates of volcanic-induced cooling in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,500 years. Nature Geoscience 8: 784–788.

Sorg, A., Kääb, A., Roesch, A., Bigler, C., Stoffel, M., 2015. Contrasting responses of Central Asian rock glaciers to global warming. Nature Scientific Reports 5, 8228. doi:10.1038/srep08228.

Stoffel, M., Corona, C., 2014. Dendroecological dating of geomorphic disturbance in trees. Tree-Ring Research 70, 3–20.

Sorg, A., Bolch, T., Stoffel., M., Solomina, O., Beniston, M., 2012. Climate change impacts on glaciers and runoff in Central Asia. Nature Climate Change 2(10): 725–731.

Bolch et al., 2012. The state and fate of Himalayan glaciers. Science 336, 310–314.

Markus Stoffel’s full CV can be downloaded here.