Prof. Dr. Annette Menzel

Academic Career and Research Areas

Human-induced climate change, with its more frequent and more intense extreme events, is causing damage to humans and nature worldwide.  The research activities of Prof. Menzel (*1966) focus on the effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems and human health, from detection and attribution to the analysis of risks from extreme events.

After studying forestry and successfully completing her traineeship at the Bavarian State Forestry Administration, she was seconded to the Chair of Bioclimatology and Immission Research at LMU Munich in 1992, where she obtained her doctorate in 1997 and habilitated in 2002. She has been teaching ecoclimatology at TUM since 2007. She has spent time abroad in Chile and Canada. Prof. Menzel was one of the authors of the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. She is ranked 304th in the Reuters list of the 1000 most influential climate scientists.

Awards

• Nobel Peace Prize (2007, as one of the lead authors of the IPCC)   
• German Forest Science Prize (2002)
• Member of Academia Europaea (2023)
• Member of the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (2025)