Johann Klages

Dr. Johann Philipp Klages is a marine geologist and has been working in the Marine Geology section of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven since 2011. He primarily works on ice sheet and climate reconstructions of the Antarctic continent from millions of years ago to the present day in order to better evaluate today‘s changes and to make simulations of future ice sheet development more reliable. He also teaches at the Faculty of Geosciences at the University of Bremen and introduces students to geoscientific field methods on seagoing polar expeditions. 

After studying at the Universities of Würzburg and Kiel (2004-2011) and subsequent doctoral studies at the University of Bremen and the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge (UK), he deepened his research during an own extensive third party funded project of the Helmholtz Association to more precisely decipher the long-term development of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Under his direction, an international team of researchers discovered remains of vegetation from the Cretaceous period in an Antarctic sediment drill core, revealing that a temperate, swampy rainforest grew on the coast of West Antarctica around 90 million years ago. The study led to new basic understandings of global climate dynamics in greenhouse climates. 

Dr. Klages has planned and executed various seagoing research expeditions to the Antarctic continent. He is fascinated by the global significance and the widespread unknown of the white continent and therefore tries to combine different scientific disciplines in order to uncover the secrets of Antarctica. He not only tries to implement this passion scientifically, but also likes to convey it to a general audience in a variety of ways, so that not only knowledge and fascination about our polar regions increases, but also the acceptance of highly-complex geoscientific polar research activities.

More information on Johann can be found here.