Marlow Julius Cramwinckel
CL Climate: Past, Present & Future
The 2026 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Marlow Julius Cramwinckel for innovative contributions to the combination of climate reconstructions and modelling to constrain climate, carbon cycle, and hydrological feedbacks in the past.
Marlow Cramwinckel is an assistant Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and expert in algal growth experiments, ecosystem reconstructions, climate-carbon cycle modelling and tipping behavior in complex systems. Cramwinckel’s research focuses on past Earth System dynamics and feedback mechanisms, specifically the carbon and hydrological cycle, and their interaction with climate during warm periods, with his principal study period in Earth's history being the hot Eocene (about 56 to 34 million years ago). His major scientific contributions include incorporating carbon cycle tipping elements, such as methane hydrate and permafrost systems, into carbon cycle models to resolve their role in past, present and future climate dynamics. Importantly, Cramwinckel demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 was a key driver of global climate trends during the Eocene and that harmful algal blooms (HABs) occurred in tropical waters during a phase of global warming, 40 million years ago. Cramwinckel provided fundamental and highly relevant insight into the limitation of climate models to simulate hydrological patterns under globally warm climates, and the inconsistency of these patterns with the available field reconstructions - a major challenge to resolve for future projections of hydrological change.
In addition to his excellent research, Cramwinckel serves the community through great engagement for academic supervision and science outreach, including winning the “Faces of Science” award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, and as an active protagonist for diversity and founder of the Utrecht University diversity network. In conclusion, Marlow Cramwinckel is an exemplary representative of the next generation of researchers who are shaping the future of the international scientific community. He therefore strongly deserve the 2026 EGU Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award for the Climate: Past, Present and Future Division.