Bärbel Hönisch (born 1974) is a German paleoceanographer and

paleoclimatologist Paleoclimatology (British spelling, palaeoclimatology) is the study of climates for which direct measurements were not taken. As instrumental records only span a tiny part of Earth's history, the reconstruction of ancient climate is important to ...

, author, and professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Life

Hönisch earned a

vordiplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, ...

in biology at

Bielefeld University Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization ...

in 1995, a diplom (

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

) in marine biology in 1999 at the

University of Bremen The University of Bremen (German: ''Universität Bremen'') is a public university in Bremen, Germany, with approximately 23,500 people from 115 countries. It is one of 11 institutions which were successful in the category "Institutional Strategi ...

, and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in natural sciences in 2002 at the

Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research The Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (German: ''Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung'') is located in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a member of the Helmholtz Association ...

. From 2002 to 2006 she worked in various scientific roles, including at the

Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory The Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) is the scientific research center of the Columbia Climate School, and a unit of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. It focuses on climate and earth sciences and is located on a 189-acre (64 ...

, and since 2007 she has been a professor at Columbia University. She has been a tenured professor at the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences there since 2019.

Work

Based on an analysis of the Middle

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

, in the course of which the duration of the various

glacial period A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betwe ...

s increased from 40,000 to 100,000 years, Hoenisch and her co-authors reconstructed the temperature fluctuations and the carbon dioxide concentration over the past 2.1 million years in a study published in 2009 indicating that the current CO₂ values are the highest within this comparison period. She was the lead author of a 2012 study on

ocean acidification Ocean acidification is the reduction in the pH value of the Earth’s ocean. Between 1751 and 2021, the average pH value of the ocean surface has decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14. The root cause of ocean acidification is carbon dioxid ...

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

, collaborating with James Zachos,

Ellen Thomas Ellen Thomas (born January 24, 1947) is an American peace activist. She first became involved with the White House Peace Vigil on April 13, 1984. The daughter of a US Marine, Thomas was born in Brooklyn and grew up in California. She became opp ...

, and others. Summarizing the results, she said, "What we’re doing today really stands out. We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon." Hönisch received the 2018 Willi Dansgaard Award from the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's a ...

in recognition of her "research impact, innovative interdisciplinary work, educational accomplishments (mentoring), societal impact, or other relevant contributions and to acknowledge that the awardee shows exceptional promise for continued leadership in paleoceanography or paleoclimatology." The award cited her pioneering work in the development and application of geochemical proxies for reconstruction of paleo ocean temperatures, carbonate chemistry, and atmospheric CO₂. In 2018 she gave the Marie-Tharp Lecture at GEOMAR. Web of Science records 60 publications and an

h-Index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 27 (as of January 2020).Query of the Web of Science database on 17 January 2020.

Selected publications

* * *

External links

''Bärbel Hönisch, Professor Earth and Environmental Sciences, Geochemistry''

'' Women in Oceanography: A Decade Later, Autobiographical Sketches, Bärbel Hönisch, Associate Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA''
in: Oceanography, the official magazine of The Oceanographic Society, S. 139, PDF, S. 93
Bärbel Hönisch
on

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Honisch, Barbel Columbia University faculty German climatologists German women scientists 21st-century German scientists Bielefeld University alumni University of Bremen alumni 1974 births Living people 21st-century German women