Climate Modelling User Group (CMUG) Home Page

Alexander Loew 1975-2017

The sudden passing of Alexander Loew, one of the original Climate Modelling User Group (CMUG) founding members, is a tragic loss for the European Earth Observation and Climate Research communities. He was very active in his participation in both phases of CMUG, not only in his particular areas of interest, but also in helping to formulate the overall CMUG strategy to ESA. Throughout his time in CMUG he would always come forward with innovative ideas on how to assess the new climate data records coming from the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI), many of which were adopted. He was a true leader bringing forward an integrated view of what the community was doing for Climate. His contribution to CMUG has been fundamental in particular regarding land surface modelling and the integration of the new generation of tools within the whole CCI community. He was also a "catalyst" for the team, who could bring different (sometimes very different) views into a consensus understanding always with a positive mind set.

During his time at the Max Planck Research Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) in Hamburg he personally contributed to the CMUG activities concentrating on evaluating the soil moisture satellite climate data record. He also published work on estimating the uncertainty of satellite climate records for the land surface and on how long these records need to be to get meaningful trends. In 2014 he moved to Munich, to be closer to his family, becoming a professor in the Geography Department at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) where he continued to work on deriving land surface parameters from remote sensing data and their assimilation into climate and land surface process models. He also joined the ESMValTool core development team focusing on evaluating land parameters.

Alex hosted two successful CMUG Integration meetings one in Hamburg at the MPI-M in 2013 and more recently a second one at his new location in Munich at LMU in March 2016 which brought together the Earth observation experts and the climate modellers. The breakout sessions during these meetings were often chaired by him. He was also a regular attendee of the ESA-CCI colocation meetings at ESRIN in Frascati always making valuable contributions and representing CMUG.

Alex had the ability of making everybody feel welcome and part of the discussion, regardless of their seniority or competences. He will be sadly missed both as a great scientist to consult with but also as a friend to the CMUG colleagues who met him during the many meetings over the past 7 years. Our sympathies and thoughts are with his family at this very difficult time.

Latest News

The 7th CMUG Integration meeting was held on the 13-14 February 2017 at IPSL in Paris. Research sceintists from the CCI ECV projects, CMUG and other experts in Earth observations and climate modelling examined the latest results from CCI data and the validation of those data with climate models. [15-02-2017]

Roger Saunders gave a presentation of CMUG research and results at the EUMETSAT/CMSAF Workshop on Applications of Satellite Climate Data Records in Numerical Modelling, held at ECMWF, 15-17 November 2016. [18-11-2016]

CMUG attended the CCI colocation meeting at the ESA ESRIN office from 4 to 6 October 2016. CMUG researchers from the UK Met Office, SMHI and ECMWF attended the meeting and gave presentations on CMUG results and scientific research directions in the near term.  [10-10-2016]

Previous news

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