Universitaet zu Koeln
The University of Cologne (UoC) is the German partner of the QWeCI project. The UoC one of the oldest and largest German universities. The university has seven faculties which offer many choices of courses and research topics in environmental and earth sciences.
Researchers from the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology (IGM) perform the work of UoC for QWeCI. The IGM has a long-standing record in research related to the diagnosis of atmospheric processes governing weather and climate variability using various kinds of observational and modelling data. Previous work focussed on the long-term variability of mid-latitude storm-tracks, indices for climate variability like the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and /El Niño/Southern Oscillation (/ENSO), climate change impacts on Europe, and on the West African monsoon dynamics and tropical-extratropical interactions over North Africa. Noteworthy is the experience of IGM for its leading involvement in the large interdisciplinary African research projects GLOWA-IMPETUS (An Integrated Approach to the Efficient Management of Scarce Water Resources in West Africa; www.impetus.uni-koeln.de ) and AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis; www.amma-international.org ).
The UoC is primarily involved in the following work packages: WP1.2 (atmospheric database), WP5.1 (decision support)
Key People
Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Fink leads the research of the UoC within QWeCI.
Prof. Fink has a long research and teaching record in the field of basic and applied tropical and subtropical meteorology and climatology. His major research foci pertinent are: meteorology and climatology of the West African monsoon, dynamics of synoptic and meso-scale weather systems in West Africa, tropical-extratropical interactions over North Africa, and global and regional climate (change) modeling and forecasting of its impacts in the health, agronomy, and water sectors in West and Northwest Africa. Prof. Fink heads a tropical research group at Cologne since 1995.
Dr. Volker Ermert undertakes most parts of the assigned work of UoC. Dr. Ermert is a graduate meteorologist and his research first focused on rainfall types of the West African monsoon. Since 2004 his research shifted toward health and climate issues as well as disease modelling. He analysed the impact of climate change on the malaria risk in Africa. Regarding the modeling of malaria he constructed a new version of the Liverpool Malaria Model. In terms of capacity building Dr. Ermert was involved in the development of integrated information and decision support systems of IMPETUS.