EGU General Assembly 2024

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the leading organisation for Earth, planetary and space science research in Europe. It fosters fundamental geoscience research, alongside applied research that addresses key societal and environmental challenges. The vision is to realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet.

It is a non-profit international union of scientists with about 18,000 members from all over the world. Membership is open to individuals who are professionally engaged in or associated with geosciences and planetary and space sciences and related studies, including students and retired seniors.

Registration/deadlines

01 November 2023: Start of call-for-abstracts and support application
01 November 2023: Start of townhall and non-commercial splinter meeting requests
01 December 2023: Deadline for support applications
10 January 2024: Outcome of support selection
10 January 2024: Deadline for receipt of abstracts
11-17 January 2024: Late abstracts submitted through convenors
17 January 2024: Deadline for townhall meeting requests
18 March 2024: Deadline for registering on reduced early rates
10 April 2024: Deadline for splinter meeting requests

For General information, registration, and submission of abstracts, please email: egu24@copernicus.org.

PAGES working group sessions

NP3.3
"Climate Variability Across Scales"
Climate Variability Across Scales (CVAS)
Conveners: Raphaël Hébert, Shaun Lovejoy, Vanessa Skiba & Qiong Zhang

Given the insufficiency of short-term observational data in revealing long-term Earth system dynamics, this session invites contributions that synergize paleoclimate data and modeling. Our aim is to advance the understanding, quantification, and prediction of climate variability across spatial and temporal scales, providing critical insights into past, present and future climate dynamics.

We invite research focusing on:
-Characterizing multi-decadal to millennial climate dynamics through the use of proxy data and (conceptual or realistic) model simulations
-Evaluating the impact of Earth’s subsystem - such as the ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere and land-surface - in shaping long-term climate variability, and relevant feedback mechanisms
-Proxy system modeling, proxy calibration and propagation of proxy uncertainty with a focus on multi-decadal and longer timescales to aid paleoclimate reconstructions and model-data comparisons
-The attribution of climate variability to internal and/or forced dynamics, including both natural (e.g. volcanic and solar) and anthropogenic forcing changes
-The spatial patterns and structure of long-term variability, including the methodological aspects of spatial field reconstructions
-Drawing insights from past long-term variability to formulate implications for the future

We encourage contributions from the PAGES working group on Climate Variability Across Scales (CVAS), the PMIP working group on Past2K and interglacial climate variability, and the PalMod project, but any contributions that improve our understanding of climate variability and its role in the Earth System across scales are most welcome. Through multidisciplinary dialogue, we aim to navigate the complexities of climate variability and contribute to future research and policy directions.

ITS2.9/CL0.1.10
Floods working group
"Flood trends in cultural riverine landscapes. Reconstruction and simulation of temporal and spatial patterns of past floods, atmospheric variability and human action"
Conveners: Lothar Schulte, Thomas Roggenkamp, Daniela Kroehling, Juan Antonio Ballesteros-Canovas, Rachel Lombardi

Climate change may regionally intensify the threat posed by future floods to societies. From a global change perspective, Holocene and historical floods and their spatial and temporal patterns are of particular interest because they can be linked to former climate patterns, a proxy for future climate predictions. Millennial and centennial time series include the very rare extreme events, which are often considered by society as 'unprecedented'. By understanding their timing, magnitude and frequency in conjunction with prevailing climate regime and human activities, we can overcome our lack of information and disentangle the so-called “unknown unknowns”.

The reconstruction and modeling of temporal and spatial flood patterns, related atmospheric variability and flood propagation in river basins under different environmental settings are the foci of this session supported by the PAGES Floods Working Group.
Because flood prone areas, particularly floodplains and wetlands, are in many regions hotspots of economic, social and cultural development (as evidenced, for example, by the location of cultural heritage sites), the historical role of human action in altering flood frequencies, hydro-sedimentary and environmental processes (e.g. contamination) is a priority topic. The key questions are where, when, and how floodplains have been heavily modified by land use, land reclamation, water management, industrialization, mining, etc., suggesting the onset of the Anthropocene?

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions using natural and documentary archives and instrumental data, which provide
i) knowledge from short-term to long-term development of cultural river-landscapes and human-environmental interaction,
ii) reconstruct and model temporal and spatial flood patterns related to atmospheric variability,
iii) develop (supra-) regional historical maps of extreme floods (MEF),
iv) highlight historical risk mitigation strategies of local (e.g. traditional) communities and assess the flood risk of cultural heritage sites, and
vi) collect evidences of the Anthropocene in floodplains.

These different foci and the interdisciplinary integration of information are critical for the provision of robust data sets and baseline information for future flood scenarios, impacts, disaster risk reduction and integrated river management.

Keywords: Anthropocene, Climate change - hydrologic impact, Climate change - societal impact, Flood hazard (Flood risk), Holocene
Inter- and Transdisciplinary Sessions suggestion led by: CL | Climate: Past, Present & Future
Co-organization suggestions: NH | Natural Hazards

SPM54
Pliocene and Miocene climate variability over glacial-interglacial timescales (PlioMioVAR)
"PAGES-PlioMioVAR - IODP legacy discussions"
Convener: Erin McClymont | Co-convener: Heather L. Ford

Several initiatives are developing to facilitate co-ordinated analysis of legacy core material and associated assets from the IODP and its predecessors. As part of the PAGES-PlioMioVAR initiative we here seek presentation and discussion of potential Pliocene-focussed legacy projects, which could be focussed by region, time interval, proxy etc.
The meeting is open to anyone interested in developing a legacy project, but spaces are limited so please express your interest by emailing the convenors.

The PlioMioVAR working group will also be hosting a meeting for members of the group.
SPM49: Convener: Heather L. Ford

CL1.2.3
Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL)
"Speleothem and karst records - Reconstructing terrestrial climatic and environmental change"
Conveners: Sophie Warken, Laura Endres, Rieneke Weij, Ezgi Unal-Imer, Monika Markowska

Speleothems are key terrestrial archives of regional to global paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes on sub-seasonal to orbital scales. They provide high temporally resolved records which can be accurately and precisely dated using a variety of proxies such as stable O and C isotopes and trace elements. Recent efforts have seen the rise in more non-traditional proxies such as fluid inclusion water isotopes, organic biomarkers, pollen, dead carbon fraction etc.. This advancement towards quantitative reconstructions of past precipitation, temperature, or other environmental variables and climate patterns, are key variables for data-model comparisons and evaluation. Beyond this, caves and karst areas additionally host an enormous suite of other valuable archives such as cave ice, cryogenic carbonates, clastic sediments, tufa, or travertine sequences which complement the terrestrial palaeorecord, and are often associated with important fossils or archaeological findings.
This session aims to integrate recent developments in the field, and invites submissions from a broad range of cave- and karst-related studies from orbital to sub-seasonal timescales.

In particular we welcome contributions from:
(1) (quantitative) reconstructions of past climatic and environmental variables to reconstruct precipitation, vegetation, fire frequency, temperature etc. across different climate zones,
(2) field- and lab-based developments of process-based methods to improve our application of proxy variables,
(3) process and proxy-system model studies as well as integrated research developing and using databases such as SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and AnaLysis).

We further welcome advancements in related and/or interdisciplinary areas, which pave the way towards robust (quantitative) interpretations of proxy time series, improve the understanding of proxy-relevant processes, or enable regional-to-global and seasonal-to-orbital scale analyses of the relationships between proxies and environmental parameters.

In addition, research contributing to current international co-ordinated activities, such as the PAGES working group on Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) and others are welcome.

CL1.2.5
PAGES-PMIP Working Group on Quaternary Interglacials (QUIGS)
Glacial/Interglacial variability over the last 1.5 Myr

Convener: Eric Wolff | Co-conveners: Christo Buizert, Jenn Campos-Ayala, Margareta Hansson, Inès Ollivier

Over the last 1.5 Myr, the rhythm of Earth’s glaciations changed from a 40 kyr to a 100 kyr periodicity, crossing the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT).
This transition does not follow directly from Milankovitch theory. Against the background of ongoing deep ice drilling projects and blue ice studies
in Antarctica, we encourage the broader paleo community to show their latest results on the glacial dynamics of the 40 kyr and 100 kyr worlds, and the MPT.
We invite presentations on proxy studies of paleo-environmental conditions and processes, as well as model studies providing insight into the dynamics and
drivers of the Earth climate system.

AS3.13
Volcanic Impacts on Climate and Society (VICS)
"Volcano-climate impacts and the stratospheric aerosol layer"
Conveners: Graham Mann, Myriam Khodri, Matthew Toohey, Claudia Timmreck

Volcanic aerosol clouds from major tropical eruptions cause periods of strong surface cooling in the historical climate record and are dominant influences within decadal surface temperature trends. Advancing our understanding of the influence of volcanoes on climate relies upon better knowledge of:

(i) the radiative forcings of past eruptions and the microphysical, chemical and dynamical processes which affect the evolution of stratospheric aerosol properties and

(ii) the response mechanisms governing post-eruption climate variability and their dependency on the climate state at the time of the eruption.

This can only be achieved by combining information from satellite and in-situ observations of recent eruptions, stratospheric aerosol and climate modelling activities, and reconstructions of past volcanic histories and post-eruption climate state from proxies.
In recent years the smoke from intense wildfires in North America and Australia has also been an important component of the stratospheric aerosol layer, the presence of organic aerosol and meteoric particles in background conditions now also firmly established.

This session seeks presentations from research aimed at better understanding the stratospheric aerosol layer, its volcanic perturbations and the associated impacts on climate through the post-industrial period (1750-present) and also those further back in the historical record.

Observational and model studies on the stratosphere and climate impacts from the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga are also especially welcomed.

We also welcome contributions to understand the societal impacts of volcanic eruptions and the human responses to them. Contributions addressing volcanic influences on atmospheric composition, such as changes in stratospheric water vapour, ozone and other trace gases are also encouraged.

The session aims to bring together research contributing to several current international co-ordinated activities: SPARC-SSiRC, CMIP7-VolMIP, CMIP7-PMIP, and PAGES-VICS.

PAGES partners, sponsors, endorsed/affiliated group sessions

CL1.2.4
Research and training network on understanding Deep icE corE Proxies to Infer past antarctiC climatE dynamics (DEEPICE)
"State-of-the-art in ice core sciences"
Conveners: Rachael Rhodes, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen, Lison Soussaintjean, Piers Larkman, Thomas Blunier

The half-century since the first deep ice core drilling at Camp Century, Greenland, has seen increased spatial coverage of polar ice cores, as well as extensive development in methods of ice sample extraction, analysis and interpretation. This growth and innovation continues as we address pressing scientific questions surrounding past climate dynamics, environmental variability and glaciological phenomena. New challenges include the retrieval of old, highly thinned ice, interpretation of altered chemical signals, and the integration of chemical proxies into earth system models. We invite contributions reporting the state-of-the-art in ice coring sciences, including drilling and processing, dating, analytical techniques, results and interpretations of ice core records from polar ice sheets and mid- and low-latitude glaciers, remote and autonomous methods of surveying ice stratigraphy, proxy system modelling and related earth system modelling. We particularly encourage submissions from early career researchers from across the broad international ice core science community. This session is supported by the European DEEPICE training network for early career scientists.
Keywords: Antarctica, Earth system modelling, Ice Cores, Paleoclimate - reconstructions, Proxy data
Co-organization suggestions: CR5 | Instrumental and paleo-archive observations, analyses and data methodologies in the cryospheric sciences

CL2.3
World Climate Research Program (WCRP)
"High impact climate events and storylines: from physical understanding to impacts and solutions"
Convener: Timo Kelder| Co-conveners: Erich Fischer, Henrique Moreno Dumont Goulart, Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Karin van der Wiel

Recent extreme events with intensities unprecedented in the observational record are causing high impacts globally. The northern hemisphere summer of 2023 saw exceptional heat in North America, Europe and China. Sea surface temperatures across the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean reached record levels while the Antarctic sea ice was record low. Marine heatwaves affected almost the entire tropical north Atlantic.

Some of these events would have been nearly impossible without human-made climate change and broke records by large margins. Further, compound behaviour and cascading effects and risks are becoming evident, such as the spike in food prices induced by the effects of the war in Ukraine on top of concurrent drought across regions with subsequent crop failure. Finally, continuing warming does not only increase the frequency and intensity of events like these, or other until yet unprecedented extremes, it also potentially increases the risk of crossing tipping points and triggering abrupt changes. In order to increase preparedness for high impact climate events, it is important to develop methods and models that are able to represent these events and their impacts, and to better understand how to reduce the risks.

This session aims to bring together the latest research on modelling, understanding, development of storylines and managing plausible past and future high impact climate events and their impacts. We are interested in rare and low-probability heavy precipitation events, droughts, floods, storms and temperature extremes from time scales of hours to decades, including compound, cascading, and connected extremes, high-impact event storylines, as well as the effect of tipping points and abrupt changes driven by climate change, societal response, or other mechanisms (e.g., volcanic eruption).

We welcome a variety of methods to quantify and understand high-impact climate events in present and future climates, such model experiments and intercomparisons; insights from paleo archives; climate projections (including large ensembles, and unseen events); attribution studies; and the development of storylines. We invite work on tipping elements/tipping points; abrupt changes; worst case scenarios; identification of adaptation limits; and the opportunities and solutions to manage the greatest risks.

The session is further informed by the World Climate Research Programme lighthouse activities on Safe Landing Pathways and Understanding High-Risk Events.

Splinter meetings

PAGES International Project Office
PM51
All that you ever wanted to ask PAGES (Past Global Changes)
Convener: Marie-France Loutre
Co-convener: Iván Hernández-Almeida
Date and Time: Wednesday 17 April 16:15-18:00 local time
Room: 2.43

PAGES welcomes all those interested in past global changes. You are much welcome to come and ask questions, whether it is about PAGES activities, how to organize one, how to attend one, or about the special events, such as the open science meeting (OSM in 2024 in Shanghai) or the topical science meeting. All the questions about PAGES will be welcome. We hope to make you more familiar with PAGES.

FLOODS
SPM35
PAGES Floods Working Group Kick-off Meeting 2024-2026
Conveners: Lothar Schulte
Co-conveners: Daniela Kroehling, Juan Antonio Ballesteros-Canovas, Rachel Lombardi, Michael Kahle

The Floods Working Group (FWG) of the Past Global Changes project (PAGES) aims to bring together all the scientific communities reconstructing past floods (historians, geologists, geographers, biologists, etc.) and those studying current and future floods (hydrologists, modellers, statisticians, etc.) to coordinate, synthesize and promote data and results on the natural variability of floods. The splinter meeting at the EGU 2024 is the 2024 annual meeting of the FWG and the kick-off meeting of the third phase 2024-2026 of the working group. During the meeting, the steering committee will propose and discuss the scientific activities planned for the next three years: pilot projects, special issues, topic sessions and workshops and a new call for the Open-access flood metadata base. The splinter meeting is open to FWG Group members, early-career researchers and anyone interested.

PlioMioVAR
SPM54
PAGES-PlioMioVAR - IODP legacy discussions
Convener: Erin McClymont
Co-convener: Heather L. Ford

Several initiatives are developing to facilitate co-ordinated analysis of legacy core material and associated assets from the IODP and its predecessors. As part of the PAGES-PlioMioVAR initiative we here seek presentation and discussion of potential Pliocene-focussed legacy projects, which could be focussed by region, time interval, proxy etc.
The meeting is open to anyone interested in developing a legacy project, but spaces are limited so please express your interest by emailing the convenors.

Further information

To check current updates or stay connected to social media visit: https://www.egu24.eu/