European Geosciences Union
Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future
President: Irka Hajdas
(cl@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Kerstin Treydte
(kerstin.treydte@wsl.ch)
The Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future (CL) is one of the larger divisions of the European Geosciences Union. It pools from many disciplines and consequently has many co-organised sessions with other divisions at the EGU General Assembly. The division is very interdisciplinary and covers climate variations on all time scales. CL includes the study of any kind of climate archive from rocks to ocean cores, speleothems, ice cores, chronicles, to instrumental records to name a few. Besides observations, climate modelling on all time scales from the deep past to the future are areas covered by the division. Any aspect of the climate system falls into the realm of the division e.g. atmosphere, ocean, biosphere, cryosphere, and geology. Themes focus on the climate on Earth but may also expand other planets or the Sun.
A recently published article by Armstrong Mckay et al. in Science updates the assessment of major climate tipping elements and their possible tipping points first proposed by Lenton et al. (2008). "Climate tipping points occur when change in a part of the climate system becomes self-sustaining, locking in major negative impacts affecting millions of people. Our results provide strong scientific support for rapid emission cuts in line with the Paris Agreement's more ambitious aim of limiting warming to 1.5°C, which would reduce the chances of triggering multiple climate tipping points" says lead-author Armstrong McKay. There have been major scientific advances since the original paper and several new tipping elements have been proposed (e.g. the East Antarctic ice sheet). The article identifies nine global “core” tipping elements and seven regional “impact” tipping elements, along with their climate tipping point thresholds. With further warming heading towards 1.5 - 2°C above preindustrial levels, the authors determine that at least six of these tipping elements will likely pass their critical thresholds. These include the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the demise of low-latitude coral reefs and widespread abrupt permafrost thaw.
References
Armstrong McKay, D.I., Staal, A., Abrams, J.F., Winkelmann, R., Sakschewski, B., Loriani, S., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E., Rockström, J., Lenton, T.M., 2022. Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. Science 377, eabn7950. doi:10.1126/science.abn7950 Lenton, T.M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J.W., Lucht, W., Rahmstorf, S., Schellnhuber, H.J., 2008. Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 1786–1793. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705414105
Climate system is one of the most complex physical systems on this planet. To understand what changes in our climate system can trigger an event, we require excellent understanding of various sub-systems of Earth, an outstanding modelling framework that combines these sub-systems, and enormous computational power. Today we have several coupled Earth system models that can simulate the climate of our planet. This would not have been possible without the pioneering efforts of Prof. Syukuro Manabe and Prof. Klaus Hasselmann, who have driven the climate research and demonstrated that the greenhouse gas emissions is responsible for climate change. For their ground-breaking research that has helped us model and understand one of the most complex systems on this planet, both of them have been awarded 1/4th of the 2021 noble prize for Physics.
This is for the first time that climate scientists have been awarded the most prestigious award in sciences. As climate scientists, we are proud and thrilled to receive this news. The award is timely and it demonstrates the importance of climate research for society. We hope that this award will ignite and enhance public debate on climate change, which should push our leaders to take strong steps in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, protecting the vulnerable, and ensuring a safer planet for everyone. More news can be found here: EGU press release (7.10.2021) and in a blog post of NP division
The 2023 Milutin Milankovic Medal is awarded to Bette L. Otto-Bliesner for her exceptionally outstanding contribution to modelling the earth system from deep-time to glacials and interglacials, and leading pioneering work to use palaeoclimate for better future projection.
The 2023 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Hugues Goosse for wide and significant contributions to palaeoclimate modeling and pioneering work in data assimilation in palaeoclimatology.
The 2023 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to Wim Thiery for his broad-ranging research contributions on the topics of extreme climate events, climate change impacts, energy meteorology, water resources, and land-atmosphere interactions.
The 2022 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Doug Smith for pioneering research in mechanisms of short-term climate variations, and developing methodologies for initialising a climate model with observations to predict climate from one year to decades.
The 2022 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Marlene Kretschmer for outstanding development and the application of statistical methods to the study of causality in climate dynamics.
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Carolina Machado Lima de Camargo Regionalizing the Sea-level Budget Using a Neural Network Approach
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Joel Zeder The challenges of assessing low-likelihood temperature extremes with empirical data of past events
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Julius Oelsmann The impact of continuous space and time-resolving vertical land motion on relative sea level change
The 2022 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Ramesh Glückler Fires and forests: A reconstruction of Holocene fire-vegetation relationships in Central Yakutia, Siberia
‘Women in Climate Science Campfire’ event On November 7th, 2022, the EGU Climate Division outreach team hosted a campfire event, a series of online presentations on ‘women in climate science,’ where we covered subjects from the current state of knowledge on women being affected by climate change to many of the challenges female scientists faced (or faces) in the current societal landscape. Following the presentations given by three invited speakers, we had a lively discussion in an intimate setting; a …
The climate of Earth’s most southerly landmass (i.e., Antarctica) has varied considerably throughout geological time. The Cretaceous (145-66 million years ago – mya) is widely considered to have been a greenhouse Earth with warmer (or at least warmish) temperatures, globally. Although, there is no direct evidence for pre-Eocene ice sheets in Antarctica, some geological and geochemical proxies suggest that Antarctica may have had ice sheets during short intervals of peak Milankovitch insolation during the Cretaceous (relating to the position of …
The Earth’s climate has been rapidly changing in the last decades. That’s a fact! Virtually, every one of us has been experiencing those changes in person, but how do we know that Earth’s climate has changed in the past beyond the instrumental data of the last ~200 years? From ancient manuscripts to geologic records, there are many “archives” one might consider “reading” to infer or reconstruct past climates (depending on if one wants to learn more about climate variability). This …
Both the uncertainty inherent in scientific data, and the background and ethics of the communicators who report such data to any given audience, can sow doubt about the science of climate change. The perception of this duality is engrained in how the human mind works, whereby we tolerate lies but are always ready to condemn hypocrisy. We illustrate this through a personal experience that is connected to global environmentalism whilst providing some guidelines in communicating the science of climate disruption …
In the February newsletter, we hear of exceptional stories from extraordinary women and alternative career options for women in science. Women scientists also tell us the importance of being role models to the younger generation and how other young girls and women can embrace careers in science.
We have heard the expression ‘making a mountain of a molehill’. But most women cannot report a molehill, and most men do not think they are part of the problem. Ingrid Anell examines this complex web, the challenges that hinder gender equity and ways to keep women in academia.
This is your reminder that registrations are open for EGU23! Members of the media are eligible for free registration to the General Assembly, see more here. Stay tuned for our next monthly Update from our conference organiser Copernicus, arriving early March. We recommend subscribing to all Updates here until the upcoming General Assembly in April.