Sarah Jones

Prof. Dr. Sarah Jones, Leiterin des Geschäftsbereichs Forschung und Entwicklung

Sarah Jones has been Member of the Executive Board and Director Research and Development of the Deutscher Wetterdienst, (DWD) since 2011. She is responsible for the overall coordination of DWD research activities and research programmes, including the academic-operational partnership in the Hans-Ertel Centre for Weather Research. In the Business Area Research and Development she is responsible for Numerical Modelling and Analysis, Meteorological Algorithms and Applications, the Meteorological Observatory Hohenpeißenberg and the Meteorological Observatory Lindenberg.

Sarah came to DWD from an academic career starting with her Ph.D. at the University of Reading in 1990, the “Venia Legendi” for Meteorology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2003 and an Associate Professorship at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from 2004-2011. Her research aims to understand the processes responsible for the development and evolution of High Impact Weather Systems, to quantify the relationship between their structure, intensity and damage potential, to elucidate the mechanisms leading to reduced predictability, and to improve the analysis and prediction of High Impact Weather. She was speaker of the German Science Foundation (DFG) Research Unit PANDOWAE – Predictability and Dynamics of Weather Systems in the Atlantic-European Sector from 2008 to 2015. She was fortunate to be able to work with excellent established and early career scientists and is proud to see the doctoral and masters students she advised developing their careers in academia, operational weather services and industry.

Sarah is committed to international collaboration in science to improve weather and climate services. She serves on many advisory committees and served the World Meteorological Organisation as Vice Chair of the Research Board (2019-2020) and Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the World Weather Research Programme (2014-2020). Sarah received the Georgi-Preis of the GeoUnion Alfred Wegener Stiftung in 2019 for her research on tropical cyclones and their influence on midlatitide predictability as well as for her support of early career scientists worldwide. At DWD Sarah works to promote a corporate culture of respect, openness and tolerance that fosters diversity.