A major international conference entitled “Our Common Future Under Climate Change” will take place from 7-10 July 2015 in Paris, France, ahead of the UNFCCC 21st Conference of the Parties that is expected to adopt a new climate agreement.
The science conference, sponsored by ICSU, Future Earth and UNESCO, will discuss the IPCC findings and new research since the publication of AR5 with a strong focus on solutions, as well as considering climate adaptation and mitigation in the broader context of global environmental change.
The conference will be structured around four broad themes:
1. State of knowledge on Climate Change
2. Scenarios Exploring Our Common Future
3. Responding to Climate Change Challenges
4. Collective Action and Transformative Solutions
The conference chaired by Professor Chris Field is organised by a broad partnership of French institutions (CIRED, CNRS, IDDRI, INRA, IPSL, IRD) and international institutions (ICSU, UNESCO, Future Earth). It is expected to bring together over 1,000 scientists and other stakeholders.
For more information, please visit the conference website: www.commonfuture-paris2015.org/
Registration
Register by 8 June: http://www.commonfuture-paris2015.org/Registration.htm
Program
The detailed program is now available at: http://cfcc.event.y-congress.com/ScientificProcess/Schedule/index.html?setLng=en#
Some of the sessions PAGES' members and working groups are involved in include:
Large Parallel Sessions: Day 1 - State of Knowledge on Climate Change
Climate variability and change over the last millennia
Large Parallel Session L1.1 - 14:30-16:00 Tue 7 July in UNESCO Fontenoy - ROOM IV
Co-Conveners: V. Masson Delmotte (IPSL/LSCE, Gif-sur-Yvette - France); G. Hegerl (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh - UK)
Paleoclimate information and climate simulations.
Climate variations during the last millennia expand the short perspective provided by direct instrumental records in order to characterize the full range of internal variability associated with ocean-atmosphere dynamics, including the recurrence patterns of extreme events and hydroclimate variations. Local, regional and hemispheric climate reconstructions from a variety of natural archives together with climate simulations are combined to explore the climate response to solar and volcanic forcing from a diversity of case studies, including the coupled climate – carbon cycle interplay. Finally, archeological and historical information also document the impacts of regional climate variability on past societies, their vulnerability and resilience.
Parallel Sessions: Day 1 - State of Knowledge on Climate Change
Climate variability and external forcings of the Common Era with special focus on the role of volcanic eruptions
Parallel Session 1103 - 16:30-18:00 Tue 7 July in UNESCO Bonvin - ROOM XIII
Lead Conveners: A. Robock (Rutgers University, Department of Environmental Sciences, New Brunswick - USA)& M.A. Sicre (CNRS LOCEAN, Sorbonne universités, Paris - France)
An unprecedented joint paleo-data and -modeling community effort has recently been undertaken by the IGBP-PAGES 2k Network to compile and interpret high-resolution paleo climate records over the past 2000 years (CE, Common Era). From this analysis of climate variability and sensitivity to external forcings, volcanic eruptions have emerged as major drivers of climate.
In this session, we welcome contributions on climate variability during the Common Era, using observations, proxy- or modeling-based approaches, or a combination of both. We also encourage discussions on new developments for data selection and climate reconstruction techniques, and new standards for data sharing and archival, with an emphasis on research addressing the role of volcanic forcing in modulating climate variability. Studies aiming at incorporating effects of volcanic eruptions and other external forcing mechanisms in climate prediction models as well as addressing the effects of volcanic events and their climate impact on society, including impacts on agriculture, and social disruption, and how similar eruptions could impact current society.
Global warming hiatus
Parallel Session 1122 - 17:00-18:30 Tue 7 July in UPMC Jussieu - Amphi 15
Conveners: C. Jeandron and A. Berger
Although the last decade is the warmest since 1850, the rate of atmospheric warming from 1998 to 2012 has significantly slowed- down. This key event has received no definitive explanation yet, in spite of the large number of possible causes that have already been adduced. Our study is the only one which considers the additional phenomena which arose at the beginning of the 21th century almost simultaneously to the appearance of this hiatus in the warming trend of the atmosphere: acceleration in the disappearance of the summer arctic sea ice, increase of the rate of ice sheets and glacier melting and of the steric component of sea level rise.
Parallel Sessions: Day 2 - Landscapes of our common future
From the Holocene to the Anthropocene : The history of human-environmental interactions
Parallel Session 1101 - 15:00-16:30 Wed 8 July in UPMC Jussieu - ROOM 103
Lead Convener: F. Sylvestre (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, CEREGE, Aix-en-Provence - France)
Convener: Thomas Hoffman (University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany)
Humans began to transform the Earth system several thousand years ago. At the same time, cultural and technical developmentswere strongly conditioned by environmental change, including climate change. Paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic studies canprovide information on the transition of systems from natural variability (in the absence of major anthropogenic perturbation) tosystems influenced and modified by humans.An improved understanding of the integrated history of human-environment interactions and their legacy effects on futureenvironmental changes is vital to the design of management strategies for a sustainable future.
PAGES' Gloss, LandCover6k, and Aquatic Transitions working groups are involved in this session.