European Geosciences Union
Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future
President: Irka Hajdas (cl@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Didier Roche
(didier.roche@lsce.ipsl.fr)
The Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future is one of the larger divisions of the European Geosciences Union. It pools from many disciplines and consequently has many co-organized and co-listed sessions with other divisions at the 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 modeling 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.
EGU is saddened to report the death of John Kutzbach, a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kutzbach was awarded EGU’s Milankovich Medal in 2001 for his “pioneering and outstanding contributions towards the understanding of the response of the climate system to astronomical forcing using three-dimensional ocean-atmosphere models”.
The following tribute was written by Bette Otto-Bliesner in his honour:
Kutzbach’s career centered around using climate models to study previous as well as future climates. His colleagues at the university shared that “Professor Kutzbach’s pioneering use of general circulation models for climate research broke ground for future generations of climate scientists to study past, present, and future aspects of our Earth system. His interdisciplinary work with geologists, geochemists, palaeoecologists, glaciologists, archaeologists, and hydrologists helped identify, and ultimately improve, the quality of the output of the climate models that current Earth system scientists use to develop climate projections."
In recent years, Kutzbach’s work has focused on the impacts of climate and climate change on natural resources and society; past climates and past environments; how humans have contributed to climate change; and present-day climate variability and simulations of future climate changes.
In 2006, AGU awarded Kutzbach the Roger Revelle Medal, citing his body of work that “forms a large part of the framework of our current understanding of past climates”. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of AGU, AMS, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
John is survived by his wife, Professor Gisela Hanebuth Kutzbach, their three children, and six grandchildren.
On a personal note, John started me, soon after my PhD, on modeling past climates, a rewarding focus that has taken me down a path of many new and intriguing challenges and exciting interdisciplinary collaborations. He was a mentor, a colleague, and a friend.
Bette Otto-Bliesner
National Center for Atmospheric Research
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 2020 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Kim M. Cobb for pioneering acquisition and interpretation of high-resolution observations from corals and cave deposits in Earth’s equatorial regions and their implications for climate change.
The 2020 Milutin Milankovic Medal is awarded to Valérie Masson-Delmotte for outstanding contributions to research on long-term climate change, namely palaeotemperature records from ice cores, and for her leadership in international efforts to translate science to society.
The 2020 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to François Massonnet for his significant contribution to polar climate prediction, projection and reanalyses, including original integration of model and data evidence.
About the blog series: Life of a Climate scientist Life of a Climate Scientist is a new blog series started by the EGU Climate Division. The main focus of this series is to provide a platform for climate scientists to tell their stories of life in research. We will be covering a wide-range of subjects, from their scientific endeavors and maintaining work-life balance to challenges they have faced during their career path and the pandemic. Venugopal (Venu) Reddy Thandlam (Ph.D. …
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The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is the body tasked to propose a formal definition for the Anthropocene as a geological time unit. Join us at the EGU2021 General Assembly on Wednesday 28th April at 14:15-15:00 CEST for a series of presentations on the Anthropocene in session SSP2.6. The Anthropocene concept Geologists cope with the enormity of 4.5 billion years of Earth history by dividing it into named geological time units which have globally specific starts and ends. Each unit’s characteristics …
More than 11 years ago, I joined the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium as a teaching assistant. The 2007-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), a worldwide collaborative effort aiming at better understanding our polar regions, had just finished, and the scientific community was concerned about the sudden drop in the summer Arctic sea ice extent that had occurred two years before (2007). This event had literally taken everyone by surprise! The same year, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of …
In May’s issue of the Loupe we are recognising the incredible efforts of our members and volunteers in bringing vEGU21 to fruition and looking ahead to the upcoming year, with new volunteer members of the Early Career Scientist teams, and the fast approaching deadline for the Award and Medal nominations. This issue features two EGU divisions: Geodynamics (GD) and Earth Magnetism and Rock Physics (EMRP).
The Loupe also shares a report by 2021 Science Policy pairing scheme scientist Renée Bichler about her experiences doing a virtual Science Policy pairing scheme placement with MEP Maria Spyraki, and hears from the Earth Magnetism and Rock Physics Division Early Career Scientist Saioa Arquero about her Division’s plans for the future.
In addition to the latest Journal Watch and GeoRoundup of May EGU journal highlights, this issue also highlights the Science Policy events calendar to help you find your next opportunity to build your science policy network.