Christoph Rudiger

Team Leader - Land Modelling
Research, Earth System Modelling, Land Modelling

Summary:
I am the team leader of the Land Modelling team within the Research Department (Earth System Modelling section). The team is leading the continuous development of ecLand, including all aspects related to the land surface dynamics, as well as glaciers and sea-ice, orography, and land surface climate fields/ancillaries.
Professional interests:
The land plays a prominent role in the major global cycles : water, energy, and carbon. My modelling interests therefore span across those three, in particular land surface hydrology (e.g. soil moisture, surface runoff and streamflow, evaporation) and vegetation dynamics (carbon assimilation, growth and senescence periods, energy and water exchange with the atmosphere). A special interest out of those is around fires, particularly the conditions leading up to fires (e.g. live fuel moisture content), observing fires, their intensity and severity, and also the landscape recovery post-fire, and how those affect the land surface dynamics and its coupling with the atmosphere.
Career background:

My background is in hydrological modelling, remote sensing, and data assimilation. I have worked in both modelling and observations, and for the latter, have coordinated and led the ground components of several field campaigns across Australia for the calibration and validation of ESA's SMOS satellite (and supported those for NASA's SMAP mission).  

2002 - 2006 : PhD (Environmental Engineering); The University of Melbourne, Australia

2006 - 2008 : Post-doctoral research fellow; Météo France/CNES, France

2008 - 2010 : Research fellow; The University of Melbourne, Australia

2010 - 2011 : Research fellow; Monash University, Australia

2011 - 2021 : Associate Professor; Monash University, Australia

2021 - 2024 : Team Leader (Hydrological Modelling); Bureau of Meteorology, Australia