Professor Schellnhuber is Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He is also Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Potsdam outside Berlin, and visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute in the USA. It was his interest in chaos theory that led him to climate research, and on assignment from the German government he built up PIK, a leading international center for sustainability research. His contribution to the science surrounding sustainability at the global level has made him of the world's leading authorities in this complex research field.

"He bases his research work on a rigorous, quantitative background within the field of Earth System Science," writes the Volvo environmental award jury in its citation. Thus Schellnhuber has set the stage for the international development of the field, and it was Schellnhuber who pioneered the well-known "tipping elements" concept that describes parts of the global system that can be radically changed by human influence. He also introduced the so-called burning embers diagram to illustrate the risks of global warming. As the Chairman of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) he was responsible for a report that presented ideas around a two-degree target to reduce global warming, based on the theory that any increase in the planet's average temperature beyond two degrees Celsius will render Earth unsafe as a place to live. The two-degree target has been adopted by politicians around the globe.

Research into global environmental impact is central to many different specialized research fields and politics. For almost twenty years Schellnhuber has endeavored to build bridges between science and politics in order to overcome the challenge of long-term sustainability. Schellnhuber was an advisor to such politicians as German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, the erstwhile British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the EU President, Manuel Barroso.

Among other things, Schellnhuber initiated Global Sustainability — A Nobel Cause, a series of symposiums with Nobel Laureates in physics, chemistry, medicine, economics and literature and leading sustainability research scientists to discuss the way forward to a sustainable future. The participants submitted a memorandum to the UN Secretary-General´s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability. Like the weather itself, climate research is an elusive subject, but Schellnhuber is an optimist. "I have studied chaos theory and our methods of processing complex associations continue to improve, and we're getting ever better at predicting environmental repercussions on a global scale.