Gerald Haug is a paleoclimatologist, geologist and paleoceanographer. He studies the development of the Earth climate over decades to millions of years. He analyses sediment cores from the sea floor and lakes, amongst other climate archives. This allows quantitative reconstructions of past climate conditions and the underlying processes in the ocean, atmosphere and climate system. Haug and his team were able to show that a more stable physical stratification of the water surface in the sub-arctic North Pacific, as well as in the Southern Ocean, reduced the biological activity of the cold periods to explain lower ice age atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. In addition, Haug studied the interactions between climate and cultures.

Haug has been awarded the Albert Maucher and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prizes of the German Research Foundation, the Rössler Prize of ETH Zürich. He has been elected AGU Fellow, and is a member of the Leopoldina, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, and the Academia Europaea. Since March 2020, Gerald Haug is President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.