European Geosciences Union
Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future
President: Didier Roche (cl@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Irka Hajdas
(hajdas@phys.ethz.ch)
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.
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.
The 2019 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Edward J. Brook for producing greenhouse-gas records from polar ice cores in unprecedented resolution that permitted the precise north-south synchronisation of climate signals and the identification of past variations in great detail.
The 2019 Milutin Milankovic Medal is awarded to Jacques Laskar for fundamental contributions to the investigation of orbital climate forcing, and for the development of long-term, reliable astronomical solutions important for the whole palaeoclimate community.
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Aline Mega Highly variable surface-water conditions off southern Portugal during mid-Pleistocene Marine Isotope Stages 20 to 26 (790 – 970 ky)
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Bernat Jiménez-Esteve Nonlinearity in the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric response to a linear ENSO forcing
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Iulia-Madalina Streanga A calibration study of Sr/Ca ratios and δ18O to sea surface temperature and salinity in the West Pacific Warm Pool
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Livia Manser Neogene evolution of paleoenvironments in the North American Great Plains from a stable isotope study
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Nicholas Leach Current level and rate of warming determine emissions budgets under ambitious mitigation
The 2019 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to Amanda C. Maycock for significant and original contributions to the understanding of the influence of stratospheric processes on climate at temporal scales from seasons to centuries.
Note by the editors: In the unique period our world is currently facing, we have decided to open our blog to hear the voices of our young climate scientists from around the globe. This is an opinion piece provided by two early career climatologists from Argentina and the Netherlands. I just arrived at home with a bunch of groceries from the supermarket after encountering some very empty shelves. I have bought lots of tinned food that should provide enough for …
What is historical climatology? Historical climatology is an interdisciplinary research field between paleoclimatology and the historical sciences, that explores the archives of societies to examine the climate of the past. Archives of society mean all man-made remains of the past in contrast to archives of nature. The latter represent physical remains of natural processes such as tree rings and sediments.1 Man-made remains of the past are paintings, buildings or written documents like books, letter and accounts. In this blog post, …
The recent coronavirus outbreak (i.e., nCovID-19; Fig. 1) has caused global panic, along with widespread travel bans, home quarantines and country-wide lockdowns. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared nCoVID-19 as a pandemic as of March 11th, 2020 (WHO, 2020). To tackle this global health crisis, scientists are attempting to synthesize a vaccine, while countries are trying to mitigate the number of infections by isolating infected patients and vulnerable populations. However, nCovID-19 is not the only zoonotic disease that has caused …
The Dead Sea is dead. Nothing can live there except for specialized microbes. The water with a salinity multiple times higher than seawater prevents a colonization by higher life forms. However, it does not prevent the input of organic material that can tell us stories about the past. A unique sediment record The Dead Sea, located at the lowest elevation on Earth – currently about 430 m below sea level, is the largest lake of the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean). The …
EGU2020: Sharing Geoscience Online, the Union’s first completely virtual meeting, is destined for the record books! In April, shortly after the in-person General Assembly was cancelled, EGU Programme Committee Chair Susanne Buiter described Sharing Geoscience Online as “an exciting opportunity to demonstrate if our members are interested in new models of interacting.”
The statistics show that EGU members resoundingly responded to what Buiter called a “moment of truth,” with more than 26,000 participants from 134 countries taking part in Sharing Geoscience Online’s 701 scientific sessions. The vast majority of the discourse occurred through the exchange of live text chats, which had a median of 92 (and a maximum of 796) participants per chat and featured more than 200,000 posted messages.
Sharing Geoscience Online also included ten livestreamed Great Debates and Union Symposia, half a dozen live and pre-recorded short courses, and several virtual press conferences. These were watched live by 7,000 people and have received an additional 19,000 views to date on the EGU YouTube channel, where they’ll remain available for your viewing pleasure.
Authors uploaded presentation materials to nearly two-thirds of the event’s 18,036 abstracts, and these plus the more than 6,000 comments made to them have been archived on EGUsphere, the Union’s new interactive digital repository.
Sharing Geoscience Online also featured a number of fun traditions, including inspiring artwork created by EGU’s two (virtual) artists in residence and kids’ “volcanic paint” masterpieces. The week also closed with the traditional Friday unveiling of the annual Imaggeo photo competition winners.
The virtual gathering did not include the annual EGU awards ceremony; the recipients of the 2020 honours will be recognised alongside next year's awardees during EGU 2021. All nominations for the 2021 medals and awards are due on 30 June 2020.
Sharing Geoscience Online would not have been possible without the large and dedicated group of volunteers who enabled the shift “from Vienna to virtual” in six short weeks. EGU extends its heartfelt thanks to all Sharing Geoscience Online participants and conveners and everyone who helped create this opportunity to connect the global geoscience community during unprecedented times. Your efforts are truly appreciated!