In 1981, he became a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working across the corridor from its director Walter Kohn, who became one of his academic supervisors.

director at the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment at Oldenburg University, he was involved in analysing the structure of ocean currents.

[14] As a long-standing member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[5] which was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Schellnhuber has been a coordinating lead author of the synthesis chapter of Working Group II of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report.

"[21] Schellnhuber has helped create numerous iconic concepts such as the analysis of tipping elements in the climate system,[6][22][23] the burning embers,[24][25] and the budget approach for emissions.

[26] In 2002, Schellnhuber received the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Merit Award[27] In 2004 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

[31] He was honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (first class) as well[32] and holds honorary doctorates from Copenhagen University[33] and Technische Universität Berlin.

[39] In 2009, this event took place in London and in 2011 in Stockholm, where the UN secretary-general's High Level Panel on Sustainability came to the meeting to receive a memorandum that was fed into the Rio+20 conference in 2012.

[44][45] That same year, Schellnhuber presented the keynote at the gala dinner that opened the high-level segment of the world climate summit COP18 in Doha, Qatar.

[50] In the runup of the world climate summit in Warsaw, Schellnhuber discussed possible ways forward with the president of Cop19, the Polish Minister of the Environment Marcin Korolec.