Curriculum vitae

Here you find his detailed and updated CV both in English   and Chinese   and a short biography both in English   and Chinese  

Personal Information

    Date of Birth: July 21, 1961
    Birth place: Jiangsu (Taizhou city), China
    Citizenship: Swedish

Education

Positions and employments

Awards and Honors

Commissions of trust (International)

  • Associate Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Climate Change Research
  • Coordinating Lead Author of the sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of IPCC (International Panel of Climate Change) Working Group I
  • Member of the Advisory Board for Penn State’s Advanced Data Assimilation and Predictability Techniques (ADAPT) Center
  • Member of Science Steering Committee of the Future Earth Core Project Integrated Risk Governance (IRG)

Commissions of trust (National)

  • Chair of the Earth Science Division of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • Chair of the Nomination Committee of the Stockholm Water Prize
  • Board member of The Future Earth Sweden Foundation
  • Member of the International Science Advisory Council of the Stockholm Resilience Centre

Achievements

Deliang Chen's main achievements relating to science can be summarized in his contributions to scientific research, global research coordination, and science for society. His research was evaluated in 2004 by an international expert panel consisting of world class scientists, commissioned by the Swedish Research Council. The panel stated: "...Chen is in a unique position in pursuing regional climate study in Sweden" and concluded, "Chen has made an important contribution to the understanding of regional climate in Sweden. ... Clearly, he is considered an international expert in the regional climate community." The panle ranked his performance as "excellent-outstanding" from an international perspective and "most strongly" recommended further funding for his research. The detailed report, including the names of the international experts and their evaluation criteria, can be found here. Some of the highlights in his research follow:
  • Chen worked on the development and application of objective classification systems for synoptic weather and atmospheric circulation which provided a powerful framework for quantifying the impact of atmospheric circulation on local air pollution, as well as the statistical downscaling of future climate scenarios and climate model validations. This framework has been widely used by scientists in Europe and beyond.
  • Downscaling is a key tool for climate adaptation and impact studies, and Chen developed a set of statistical downscaling methodologies, as well as contributed to the development of a book and related software on the subject. The book is widely used as literature for international summer schools and postgraduate courses.
  • By combining statistical analyses of aerosol and meteorological observations with numerical process modelling in an innovative way, Chen, together with several international partners, demonstrated the potential of human activity via air pollution to affect climate on the weekly scale. Further and most likely because of that, the light rainfall in eastern China over the past 50 years has significantly decreased. This finding adds an important piece of evidence for human impact on weather and climate.
  • Chen took advantage of the uniquely long instrumental temperature records in Sweden and explored the stability of the relationship between the Swedish regional climate and the well-known teleconnection pattern NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation). This work represents an important contribution in the understanding of the Swedish regional climate, with significant implications for climate prediction in Sweden.
  • Chen participated in an effort to dive into the historic archives of daily meteorological observations in Europe and led a systematic study to establish the long-term trend of extreme weather conditions over a period of up to 200 years. As extreme weather events are rare, studying the longest instrumental observation in the world provides unique evidence of the impact of human-induced climate change on the extremes.
  • Chen proposed a new way to view climate change and its variation with help of shift in the ecoregions. This work provides a new perspective on climate change with the insight that the arid regions have expanded and the regions dominated by tundra in the Arctic have shrunk, along with the global warming and regional precipitation changes.
  • The increased greenness in the Arctic was recently studied by a group led by Chen with a coupled vegetation-climate-sea ice model. The team identified a new positive feedback caused by dynamic vegetation which changed atmospheric heat transport, making a significant contribution to the understanding of the polar amplification and dramatic sea ice reduction over the Arctic.
  • Chen led the pioneering effort to quantify the spatial scales of fine-scale climate variations over the Tibetan Plateau with help of satellite data. This study has important implications for many researches and applications in the region. Its results provide important observational bases for the selection of appropriate downscaling strategies, deployment of climate-data collection networks, and interpreting paleoclimate reconstructions.
In his role as the Executive Director of ICSU, Chen made great efforts in the coordination/facilitation of global scientific research, as well as the promotion of Universality of science, and science for policy. In that capacity, he was in a position to play a leading role for the coordination of 140 national academies (or scientific bodies/agencies) and 31 international scientific unions, as well as 17 international and interdisciplinary research programs such as IPY (International Polar Year), WCRP (World Climate Research Programme), IGBP (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme), DIVERSITAS (International Programme of Biodiversity Science), and IHDP (Human Dimension Programme of Global Change) and its partnership ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership). The most important contribution he made during this period was probably the initiative to design a new international research program for global sustainability: Future Earth. Chen has taken a scientist's responsibility for society for years. A few examples are listed:
  • Chen has been a key player for Rio+20 which is the United Nations (UN) conference for the global heads of state on sustainable development. The meeting is a historic opportunity to define pathways for a safer, more equitable, cleaner, greener, and more prosperous world for all. Chen acted as the global coordinator for the scientific community and was charged with providing scientific input to the Rio+20 process. Together with a group of researchers from Stockholm, he organized a global symposium in Stockholm entitled "3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability - Transforming the World in an Era of Global Change", with the participation of 18 Nobel laureates and the UN's high-level panel on global sustainability. This symposium delivered the well-known Stockholm Memorandum which was an important contribution to the Rio+20 Summit.
  • Chen made a significant contribution to the development of scientific evidence for policy-making. He acted as one of the two Swedish lead authors for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) fifth assessment report which is the "bible" for climate change science and related policy-making. He also participated in other national and regional environmental assessment reports such as ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment), BACC (The BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea basin), and the National Climate Change assessment report of China. Recently, together with a group of around 80 leading Chinese scientists, he finished a large-scale effort to conduct an assessment of environmental change in Tibet. The outcome is being published as a book, as well as a refereed article which he leads.
  • Chen is a caring, respected scientist who provides expert advice to organizations at international, national, and local levels.
  • Together with a group of international scientists and science managers, Chen participated in an effort to organize an "International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU)" to promote society's understanding of sustainability. He has been acting as a member of the steering committee since 2010.
  • Chen has kept close contact with science development in China through his endeavor as science director of the National Climate Center (NCC) for eight years, as well as through much cooperation with, and many activities in, China since 1983. During his directorship at NCC, a Global Climate Model was successfully developed which was the first ever from a developing nation within the IPCC process. He also mentored a large number of young Chinese Scientists over a long period of time, some of whom have become important scientists in China.
  • In his position as the executive director of ICSU during 2009 and 2012, Chen worked very hard to promote science in developing countries mainly though the development and reestablishment of three ICSU Regional Offices in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Although there have not been offices established in the Middle East and North Africa regions as yet, he spends a lot of time trying to promote science development in these regions. His efforts in encouraging more scientists from developing countries to participate in international research programs and other scientific activities have been witnessed by many. Additionally, in this position, he pushed the idea of hosting the World Science Forum in a developing country. He also made some significant contributions in mobilizing funds for researchers in developing countries. When he left ICSU in 2012, the ICSU president, Nobel laureate Prof. Y.-T. Lee made the following statement in a press release: "For the past three years, Professor Chen has worked with extraordinary dedication, and made a tremendous contribution to the rejuvenation of ICSU. It was during his tenure that several major initiatives got off the ground, including Future Earth and ICSU’s key role at Rio+20. The international visibility of ICSU also increased, thanks in large part to his efforts. His outstanding service deserves the deep gratitude of our entire community. While we will dearly miss his full-time presence, Professor Chen will continue to work with ICSU as a concerned scientist." The future Earth project has been launched as a 10-year international research program in which the development and participation of developing country scientists have been emphasized.

You are also very welcome to take a look at the following publications.
  • ICSU's press release for his appointment as its Executive Director and for his departure
  • An international evaluation commissioned by the Swedish Research Council on his research. You find the whole report with the detailed explanation of the evaluation criteria and processes