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.
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.
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 …
Loess is a silt-sized, aeolian sediment that was produced in large quantities in past geological eras of mid-latitude Europe and Asia, among others (Fig. 1). It is used in Quaternary science to infer about past climatic and environmental conditions. Generally, layers of loess formed during cold and dry periods, while soils formed within/on top the loess during warmer and wetter periods. These soils get buried again under a new loess layer once the warmer period is over. Since these soils …
One of the most profound consequences of past climate changes are the geologically rapid (<100,000 year) changes in global topography. For thousands of years, large ice sheets, similar to what currently exists in Greenland and Antarctica, waxed and waned on North America and Europe. Only 20,000 years ago, if you were sitting in the middle of Canada or Sweden, you would be under thousands of meters of ice (Figure 1). Changes of the Earth’s surface at this scale had many …
Availability of good quality data is essential to deduce meaningful information in all disciplines of science and technology. This statement is especially relevant in climate research, which is under constant scrutiny from sceptics. In order to better understand the Earth system response to the ongoing anthropogenic global warming, we require global observations of climate indicators at very high spatiotemporal resolutions. In a perfect world, every country provides a dense observation network and shares its data openly for research. Yet political …
This year’s EGU General Assembly features a complete conference experience, from ten keynote sessions and a Jobs and Careers Centre to a Kids Art activity and #ActualLivingScientist initiative. vEGU21 will also include many ways to connect with colleagues and friends, including networking events on Gather.town and a Games Jam.
To help guide you through this new virtual experience, we’ve pulled together the resources you need to get the most out of vEGU21. These include our Top 10 tips for promoting good online engagement – for both conveners and participants – plus tips to balance your experience so you’re ready for all the vPICO sessions the second week. There’s also a blog to let you know how to create an accessible (and effective) presentation.
Last but not least, we’d like you to meet three wonderful people who are helping communicate all this information to you. We hope you have a fun and fulfilling meeting!.