Professor Markus Stoffel studied Physical Geography (MSc 1999) and Media and Communication Sciences (MSc 2003) and completed a PhD thesis in Physical Geography (2005) at the University of Fribourg. His research focuses on the impacts and risks of climate change on high altitude and polar regions, with the aim to understand, document and quantify fundamental environmental processes, and the drivers of change, both at the local and the hemispheric scales and covering daily to seasonal, decadal, centennial and millennial timescales.

More particularly, Markus Stoffel is working on the impacts of climatic changes on periglacial mass movements, peatland evolution and its link to hydroclimatic changes, the effects of climate and global changes on biodiversity and biomass. His group is active in Siberia, the European Alps, Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalayas, Tien Shan, the Andes and the Alaskan Coastal Ranges.

Professor Markus Stoffel has published more than 330 peer-​reviewed articles, including numerous papers in leading scientific journals. He also contributed as an author to Chapter 12 of the IPCC AR6 dedicated to “Climate change information for regional impact and for risk assessment”.