Rate My Professor Tim Griffis

Tim Griffis is Professor of Biometeorology in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He earned a BS from Brock University in 1995 and a PhD from McMaster University in 2000. His research centers on the biophysical mechanisms that govern exchanges of energy and mass between the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. Specific interests encompass the development of micrometeorological and optical stable isotope techniques to trace flows of carbon, nitrogen, and water; reactive nitrogen cycling at the biosphere-atmosphere interface; methane and carbon dioxide budgets of tropical and temperate peatlands; biophysical modeling of land-atmosphere trace gas exchange; atmospheric transport and fate of herbicides and pesticides; and boundary-layer inverse analyses. Griffis teaches courses including ESPM 3777: Climate Change: Physics, Myths, Mysteries, and Uncertainties; ESPM 2425: The Atmospheric Environment; and ESPM 5402: Biometeorology and Boundary Layer Climates.

Griffis serves as Chief Editor of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology since 2020, having previously been Editor from 2008 to 2020, Associate Editor of Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences from 2007 to 2011, and Editorial Board member of Atmosphere from 2014 to 2016. He chaired the American Meteorological Society Board on Atmospheric Biogeosciences from 2016 to 2020 and was a member of the National Ecological Observatory Network Fundamental Instrument Unit Technical Working Group from 2009 to 2012. His awards include Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2025, the 2012 Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing for JGR-Atmospheres in 2013, National Science Foundation Career Award in 2006, and CFANS Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006. Key publications feature "Tillage and soil carbon sequestration—What do we really know?" (2007), "CO2 balance of boreal, temperate, and tropical forests derived from a global database" (2007), "Nitrous oxide emissions are enhanced in a warmer and wetter world" (2017), "OCO-2 advances photosynthesis observation from space via solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence" (2017), "A Large Amazonian peatland carbon sink was eliminated by photoinhibition of photosynthesis and amplified ecosystem respiration" (2025), and "Isotopic constraints on nitrous oxide emissions from the US Corn Belt" (2024). Griffis's scholarship, with over 15,000 citations, profoundly impacts atmospheric science, biogeochemistry, biometeorology, and earth system science.