European Geosciences Union
Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future
President: Irka Hajdas
(cl@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Kerstin Treydte
(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 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 2021 Milutin Milankovic Medal is awarded to Ayako Abe-Ouchi for fundamental contributions to our understanding of climate-ice sheet interactions on orbital timescales and how they shape the planetary response to Milankovic cycles.
The 2021 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Sonia I. Seneviratne for her groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of land-climate dynamics, their relevance to weather and climate extremes, and their implications for anthropogenic climate change.
The 2021 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Franziska A. Lechleitner for her contributions to the understanding of the past climate and environment as recorded in speleothems.
The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Cameron de Wet North American rainfall patterns during past warm states: A proxy network-model comparison for the Last Interglacial and the mid-Holocene
The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Joanne Elkadi Constraining past bedrock surface temperatures at the Gorner glacier, Switzerland, using feldspar thermoluminescence for surface paleothermometry
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 …
Do you gravitate to science because of the subject’s ability to explain complicated behaviour in nature through experimentation? When we see things or get our hands dirty by conducting experiments, it helps us comprehend scientific theories which are harder to explain. Introducing a complicated scientific theory is often carried out initially by presenting a simplified version. For example, students learn about Newtonian laws of motion prior to special relativity, ball and stick models of the molecule before quantum mechanics, and …
European Geoscience Union (EGU) is an organisation made of different disciplines in geosciences, and each disciplines have their own Division. Within each Division, there are many different volunteered positions. Each year at the EGU General Assembly (a conference), Division members come together to nominate members for those positions. There are variety of positions from President and Deputy President, a Programme Group Chair, Science Officers, as well as Representatives for the Early Career Scientists and an Outreach Team. Information on the …
In the October newsletter, researchers explain why disaster risk reduction strategies aren’t as inclusive as we think. We hear from Blaise Nyandwi, lecturer at the University of Goma, how socio-economic vulnerability affects public perception of hazard risk, and three geoscientists explore the many ways that race and natural hazards are linked. EGU Projects Coordination Officer Simon Clark dissects why we keep dismissing droughts and why perceptions of drought vary so widely around the world.
As a reminder, this is the last call to apply for the EGU Outreach Committee sponsored workshops and to register to join the EU biodiversity event – a hybrid event at the European Parliament – that aims to bridge the science-policy divide.