Senior Research Scientist, Earth Observations Department, Climate and Seismology Sector

Reinout Boers (the Hague, Netherlands, 1954) received a BSc. in Physics in 1974, and a MSc. in Meteorology (1979) both from the University of Utrecht. In 1983 he received a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Between 1984 and 1990 he was employed as a USA National Research Council Fellow at NASA, Greenbelt, Maryland, a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a University Space Research Association Scientist at NASA, Greenbelt, Maryland. Main topics of research were active and passive remote sensing of the lower atmosphere, the thermodynamic structure of the cloudy boundary layer and the in situ structure of clouds as observed from airborne field studies. He was involved as program scientist in several field experiments (GALE, 1986; FASINEX 1987; COWEX, 1990)

Between 1990 and 2001 Reinout Boers was employed as a Senior Research Scientist and as a Principal Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Division of Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia. Here he studied the naturally occurring seasonal variability of the optical and microphysical properties of marine stratocumulus clouds (1990 – 1998). He was Program Leader of the Clouds Program at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station (1995 – 2001), Principal Scientist of the Southern Ocean Cloud Experiment (SOCEX, 1993; 1995). In 2000 – 2001 he studied the aerosol emission and diffusion in Northern Australia and was involved in a consultancy study of the atmospheric dispersion over south-east Asia.

Between 2001 and 2006 Reinout Boers was Head of the Atmospheric Research Department, and between 2006 - 2009 he was Head of the Regional Climate Department in the Climate and Seismology Sector at KNMI, the Netherlands.

Since October 2009 he is Senior Research Scientist in the Earth Observations Department, Climate and Seismology Sector, KNMI, Netherlands.

His main research interests are

• observations and modeling of the indirect aerosol effect,
• active and passive remote sensing synergy studies
• thermodynamic, radiation and microphysical structure of clouds
• aerosol - chemistry - climate effects

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