School of Geography and the Environment

Karsten joined the School of Geography and Environment in January 2012 as a postdoctoral researcher, working with Prof. Richard Washington. Prior to this, he did his Ph.D. thesis at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, developing a new global and regional model for the prediction of the mineral dust. One aspect of this work was the evaluation of the model using field campaign and satellite data, with particular focus on Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe, and complemented by sensitivity studies. He received his Ph.D. in Geosciences from the Polytechnical University of Catalonia in Barcelona (January 2012) and his advisors were Dr Carlos Pérez and Prof José María Baldasano. He has a Diploma degree (equivalent to MSc) in Meteorology from the University of Leipzig. For his Diploma, he worked at the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig on a new parameterization method for the hygroscopic growth of aerosol particles.

Karsten's research interests are in the field of climate modelling and atmospheric aerosols including their direct and indirect effects upon clouds and radiation. He is particularly interested in the simulation of the mineral dust cycle (the largest mass contributor to the global aerosol load) and the understanding of the dust emission process in order to refine the dust source description in current climate or dust models.

Currently, Karsten is employed as a post-doctoral research associate in the NERC-funded project DO4 Models: Dust Observation with Prof. Richard Washington and Dr James King. His work lays the groundwork for the development of a new generation of model dust emission schemes with the benefit of observational data sets that exactly match the scale of a regional climate model. The work starts with a box model, assessing the contribution of erosivity and erodibility parameters to emission simulations. The work on the HadGEM3-RA climate model is in collaboration with the Met Office in Exeter.

• Haustein, K., Pérez, C., Baldasano, J.M., Jorba, O., Basart, S., Miller, R.L., Janjic, Z., Black, T., Nickovic, S., Todd, M., and Washington, R. (2011) Atmospheric dust modeling from meso to global scales with the online NMMB/BSC-Dust model: 2. Experimental campaigns in Northern Africa. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 11: 30273-30331.
• Pérez, C., Haustein, K., Janjic, Z., Jorba, O., Huneeus, J., Baldasano, J.N., Black, T., Basart, S., Nickovic, S., Miller, R.L., Perlwitz, J.P., Schulz, M. and Thomson, M. (2011) Atmospheric dust modeling from meso to global scales with the online NMMB/BSC-Dust model: 1. Model description, annual simulations and evaluation. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 11: 13001-13027.
• Seifert, P., Ansmann, A., Mattis, I., Wandinger, W., Tesche, M., Engelmann, R., Müller, D., Pérez, C. and Haustein, K. (2010) Saharan dust and heterogeneous ice formation: Eleven years of cloud observations at a central-European EARLINET site. Geophysical Research Letters, 115: D20201.
• Haustein, K., Pérez, C., Baldasano, J.M., Müller, D., Tesche, M., Schladitz, A., Esselborn, M., Weinzierl, B., Kandler, K. and van Hoyningen-Huene, W. (2009) Regional dust model performance during SAMUM-1 2006. Geophysical Research Letters, 36: L03812.
• Gerasopoulos, E., Kokkalis, P., Amiridis, V., Liakakou, E., Pérez, C., Haustein, K., Eleftheratos, K., Andreae, M.O., Andreae, T.W. and Zerefos, C.S. (2009) Dust specific extinction cross-sections over the Eastern Mediterranean using the BSC-DREAM model and sun photometer data: the case of urban environments. Annales Geophysicae, 27: 2903-2912.
• Pérez, C., Baldasano, J.M., Jiménez-Guerrero, P., Jorba, O., Haustein, K., Cuevas, E., Basart, S. and Nickovic, S. (2009) Dust modeling and forecasting in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center: Activities and developments. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 7: 012013.