Karin Labitzke

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Karin Labitzke , b. Behr (born July 19, 1935 - † November 15, 2015 ) was a German meteorologist .

Life

She was the daughter of Alfred Ernst Masayoshi Behr (1906–1964) and Susanne Dorothea Behr, geb. Hugk. Labitzke's grandfather, the businessman Ernst Behr (1869-1934), lived in Kobe , Japan , since 1895 , where he married Gladys Mabel Aki Nishikawa (1883-1954), who was of Japanese-English descent.

tomb

Labitzke studied from 1953 at the Free University of Berlin . In 1962 she did her doctorate there with the dissertation Contributions to the Synoptics of the High Stratosphere . She then stayed in Richard Scherhag's department at the Institute for Meteorology. In the 1960s, she stayed several times for extended research stays at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado . In 1969 she completed her habilitation at the Free University. A year later, she accepted a professorship for Meteorology of the Stratosphere and took over the management of the Stratospheric Research Department. Even after her retirement in 2000, she continued her academic work. She died in 2015 at the age of 80. She is buried in the Dahlem forest cemetery.

plant

Labitzke's scientific interest was in the stratosphere . In her early work, she dealt with the sudden warming of the stratosphere and contributed significantly to the understanding of this phenomenon. In her department, daily stratospheric analyzes of the northern hemisphere were created from radiosonde data, which served as a reference for computer analyzes. In 1987 she discovered a connection between the occurrence of stratospheric warming, the eleven-year cycle of solar activity and the quasi-biennial oscillation .

In addition to her scientific work, Labitzke was involved in national and international committees. She was chair of the Committee on Space Research as well as a member of the Scientific Committee of Solar and Terrestrial Physics and the German Government's Scientific Advisory Board on Global Environmental Change . In 1990 she was a member of the working group of the German Meteorological Society (DMG), which led the negotiations on the merger with the Meteorological Society of the GDR . From 1991 to 1993 she was chairwoman of DMG. In 1991 she was accepted as a full member of the Academia Europaea .

Karin Labitzke has authored over 250 scientific publications. Her textbook The Stratosphere: Phenomena, History, Relevance , published in 1999, deserves special mention .

Katja Matthes was one of her doctoral students .

Honors

literature

  • Ulrike Langematz, Karin Petzoldt, Katja Matthes: Obituary for Prof. Dr. Karin Labitzke . In: Mitteilungen DMG 01/2016, p. 21 ( PDF ; 8.0 MB).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Bürkner: Behr, Wilhelm Julius Ernst ベ ー ア ・ エ ル ン ス ト (1869–1934), businessman 商人 on the website “The Japanese memory - 日本 の 想 い 、 ド イ ツ の 想 い”, accessed on September 21, 2016.
  2. ↑ Werner Wehry: Association of the Meteorological Society of the GDR (MG) with the DMG up to the establishment of the EMS - reports from contemporary witnesses (PDF; 231 kB). In Annals of Meteorology. Volume 43, 2008, pp. 108-118.
  3. ^ Membership directory: Karin Labitzke. Academia Europaea, accessed July 3, 2017 .
  4. ^ List of the Alfred Wegener Medal winners (PDF file; 22 kB), accessed on September 22, 2016.
  5. ↑ EMS Silver Medal on the website of the European Meteorological Society, accessed on September 22, 2016 (English).
  6. ↑ Karin Labitzke. Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal 2011 on the website of the European Meteorological Society, accessed on September 22, 2016 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Labitzke, Karin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Behr, Karin (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1935
DATE OF DEATH 15th November 2015