European Geosciences Union
Division on Climate: Past, Present & Future
President: Didier Roche (cl@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Marc Luetscher
(marc.luetscher@isska.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 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 2018 Milutin Milankovic Medal is awarded to David A. Hodell for fundamental contributions to reconstructing and understanding past climate cycles and the causes of the mid-Pleistocene transition.
The 2018 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Hubertus Fischer for his innovative development and use of analytical techniques to measure chemical compounds and gas concentrations and their isotopic compositions in polar ice cores.
The 2018 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award is awarded to Christo Buizert for his innovative contributions on the bi-polar phasing of climate change from polar ice-core data using an exceptional combination of experimental and theoretical approaches.
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Annarosa Quarello Homogenization of GNSS-derived IWV time series
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Davide Panosetti Convergence behavior of convection-resolving simulations of summertime deep convection over land
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to D. Jimena Roncancio Benitez Evaluation of climate variability and temperature extremes in Colombia: Opportunities for the outlining of climate change and human health adaptive strategies.
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Erwin Rottler Alpine temperature changes: features and feedbacks
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Lucie Babel Sociological factors in geoscientific model construction
The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Nele-Charlotte Neddermann Seasonal predictability of European summer climate re-assessed
Name of proxy Earthworm calcite granules (ECG) Type of record Paleotemperature and paleoprecipitation reconstruction; radiocarbon dating Paleoenvironment Continental environments – loess/paleosol sequences Period of time investigated Mostly Last full Glacial cycle – from 112,000-15,000 years Before Present (BP) (or older depending on the preservation of the granules). How does it work? Earthworms are commonly found living in soil and feeding on organic matter at the soil surface. In carbonate soil, some of them secrete small granules (0.1 to 2 mm) …
Climate change has been described as “the biggest market failure in human history”1. Although fuel is costly, emitting the by-product CO2 is for free; yet it causes damages to society. In other words, those who benefit, by using the atmosphere as waste dump, do not pay the full costs, i.e. the adverse effects climate change has on societies on a global scale. Can this market failure be cured? Should humankind sacrifice some of its present welfare to prevent future climate …
Earlier this month, we hosted a record-breaking number of participants (over 16,000) at our annual EGU General Assembly in Vienna. The meeting included over 16,000 poster, oral and PICO presentations in over 650 sessions, as well as a number of popular short courses and side events. We are grateful to all participants, including conveners, the EGU Programme Committee, Copernicus Meetings, conference assistants, exhibitors, and ACV and EGU office staff, for making the meeting a success. If you participated in the meeting, we especially welcome your suggestions and feedback (deadline: 9 June), which will be instrumental in ensuring an even more successful General Assembly next year (3–8 May 2020, Vienna).
Of special highlight at the meeting was a session on ‘Science, Politics and European (dis)integration: A Conversation of Geoscientists with Ilaria Capua and Mario Monti’, which motivated the EGU to issue a declaration supporting a united Europe for the benefit of global scientific research.
In other news this month, the EGU launched a new journal, Geochronology, as well as a science-policy competition for early career scientists (deadline: 15 May). We also ran an extraordinary election, which saw Claudio Zaccone elected as SSS Division President.
Finally, we would like to remind you that we are currently accepting nominations for the 2020 EGU awards and medals, including for the new Angela Croome Award and Katia and Maurice Krafft Award. To promote the best deserving geoscientists from around the world and increase diversity in the group of EGU awardees and medallists, we encourage the EGU membership to consider gender, geographical, and cultural balance when nominating outstanding Earth, planetary and space scientists at various career stages. Please consider submitting a nomination by 15 June.