EGU General Assembly 2019

The EGU brings together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience.

Every year, many PAGES working groups hold sessions, splinter meetings, town hall meetings and side meetings at the event. Updates will be made as soon as available.

Important dates

Abstract submission: October 2018–10 January 2019
Support application: October–1 December 2018
Applications for town hall meetings: 17 January 2019

Abstracts

The deadline for abstract submission is 10 January 2019, 13:00 CET: https://egu2019.eu/abstracts_and_programme/how_to_submit_an_abstract.html

Travel support

The deadline for EGU Roland Schlich travel support is 1 December 2018, 13:00 CET: https://egu2019.eu/about_and_support/roland_schlich_travel_support.html

Further information

Go to the official website: https://www.egu2019.eu/

General contact: egu2019@copernicus.org

Hans Oeschger Medal

PAGES SSC Member Ed Brook will be awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal during the EGU. Brook receives this honor 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.

Read more (and attend his talk): https://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/hans-oeschger/2019/edward-j-brook/

Lewis Fry Richardson Medal

CVAS working group leader Shaun Lovejoy will be awarded the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal for pioneering and leading research on multifractal cascade dynamics in hydrology, climate and weather, leading to a new class of comprehensive stochastic, rather than deterministic, sub-grid models.

Read more (and attend his talk): https://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/lewis-fry-richardson/2019/shaun-lovejoy/

PAGES sessions

2k Network

CL1.17 Studying the climate of the last two millennia (co-sponsored by PAGES 2k)
Convener: Elizabeth Thomas; Co-conveners: Hugo Beltrami, Juan José Gómez-Navarro, Belen Martrat, Andrea Seim

This session aims to place recently observed climate change in a long-term perspective by highlighting the importance of paleoclimate research spanning the past 2000 years. We invite presentations that provide insights into past climate variability, over decadal to millennial timescales, from different paleoclimate archives (ice cores, marine sediments, terrestrial records, historical archives and more). In particular, we are focussing on quantitative temperature and hydroclimate reconstructions, and reconstructions of large-scale modes of climate variability from local to global scales.

This session also encourages presentations on the attribution of past climate variability to external drivers or internal climate processes, data syntheses, model-data comparison exercises, proxy system modelling, and novel approaches to producing multi-proxy climate field reconstructions. The session is co-sponsored by the PAGES 2k project (http://pastglobalchanges.org/science/wg/2k-network/intro).

CVAS

NP3.2 Scaling and nonlinear dynamics in the atmosphere, ocean and geosciences (including Lewis Fry Richardson Medal Lecture by Shaun Lovejoy)
Convener: Francois Schmitt; Co-conveners: Qiuming Cheng, Michel Crucifix, Stefano Pierini, Kira Rehfeld

This session will highlight scaling and nonlinear dynamics modeling, and the analysis of scaling properties of climate, atmosphere, ocean, and geophysical fields. Contributions dealing with models of various degrees of complexity around these topics are welcome. This session focuses on methods, observations, and data analyses aiming to identify such scaling ranges and characterize them using different methods and models.

This session also aims at bringing together climatologists and paleoclimatologists from the modelling and proxy-data acquisition communities in addition to scientists from the nonlinear geoscience community with the aim to develop tools for understanding, comparing and modelling time series and spatial distributions over wide scale ranges so as to better understand and quantify the climate variability in time and space while taking into account intrinsic uncertainties. Members of the PAGES working group on Climate Variability Across Scales (CVAS) are welcome.

Contributions that improve the quantification, understanding and prediction of climate variability in the Earth System across space and time scales are encouraged. This includes case studies, idealized or realistic modeling, synthesis, and model-data comparison studies that provide insights into past, present and future climate variability on local to global, and synoptic to orbital timescales.

Richardson medal lecture by Shaun Lovejoy. Invited talk "The stochastic climate model shows that underestimated Holocene trends and variability represent two sides of the same coin" by Gerrit Lohmann.

OC3

CL1.12/OS1.23 The role of ocean circulation in glacial-interglacial climates (co-organized)
Convener: Patrick Blaser; Co-conveners: Laurie Menviel, Andreas Schmittner, Peter Spooner

Global ocean circulation plays a key role in redistributing heat and in setting the oceanic carbon gradients, and thus modulates global climate on centennial to millennial time scales. With the emergence of new methods, greater spatial and temporal paleo-record coverage, and model simulations with numerous tracers, significant improvement has been made in the understanding of past oceanic changes and their impacts on global climate and the carbon cycle. New proxy approaches and increasing geographical coverage fill important gaps in the reconstruction of different ocean states and decrease uncertainty that arises from interpretations based on individual parameters and sites. Similarly, refined model approaches and increased computing capacity allow for the integration of important small- and intermediate scale processes as well as the direct inclusion of proxies in numerical models.

This session welcomes contributions on the role of the ocean circulation in Pleistocene climate and glacial-interglacial climate transitions. This comprises proxy and model assessments of ocean heat and carbon content, circulation strength and other climatic and biogeochemical parameters, including details on their regional variation, given they are relevant for understanding global processes. Furthermore, we encourage contributions of reconstructions that seem contradictory to the prevailing view insofar as their discussion may hint towards processes or pitfalls that are under appreciated and thus potentially important for future research.

SISAL

CL1.18/AS4.28/BG1.63/HS11.19/NP4.10/SSP2.10 Challenges, potential and results from large-scale compilations of palaeoclimate data (co-organized)
Convener: Franziska Lechleitner; Co-conveners: Yuval Burstyn, Laia Comas-Bru, Kira Rehfeld, Sophie Warken

As the number of palaeoclimate data from glacial, marine, and continental archives is growing continuously, large-scale compilation and cross-comparison of these data is the imperative next phase in paleoclimate research. Large data sets require meticulous database management and new analysis methodologies to unlock their potential for revealing supra-regional and global trends in palaeoclimate conditions. The compilation of large scale datasets from proxy archives faces challenges related to record quality and data stewardship. This requires record screening and formulation of principles for quality check, as well as transparent communication.

This session aims to bring together contributions from paleoclimatic studies benefiting from the existence of such large data sets, e.g., providing a novel perspective on a proxy and the represented climate variables from the local to the global scale. We want to bridge the gap between data generation and modelling studies. In particular, comparing such large proxy-based datasets with climate modelling data is crucial for improving our understanding of palaeoclimate archives (e.g., bias effects and internal processes), to identify signal and noise components and their temporal dynamics, and to gain insight into the quality of model data comparisons.

We encourage submissions on data compilations, cross-comparison and modelling studies utilizing data repositories and databases (e.g., SISAL, PAGES2k, ACER, EPD), including, but not limited to: -Comparative studies using one or several archives (e.g., including tests of temporal and spatial synchronicity of past regional to global climate changes) -Proxy system models (and their tuning) -Model data comparisons (including isotope enabled models or local calibration studies) -Integrative multi-proxy/multi archive approaches at multiple study sites -Large scale age model comparisons and record quality assessment studies, including methods aimed at cross validation between different records and variable spatial and temporal scales.

QUIGS

CL1.09/CR1.10/NP4.7 40k to 100 k: climate before and after the MPT (co-sponsored by BE-OI) (co-organized)
Convener: Eric Wolff; Co-conveners: Michel Crucifix, Erin McClymont

The mid-Pleistocene Transition is a crucial changes in climate dynamics, leading us into our current regime of long, asymmetric glacial cycles. However, evidence about the differences in how climate behaved before and after the MPT remains sparse and we also lack evidence to decide between theories that aim to explain the MPT. Here we hope to gather new datasets that compare climate on either side of the MPT or that offer new evidence about glacial cycles before it. Modelling and conceptual work about the causes of the MPT are also wlecome. Finally we would like to hear about work that paves the way for new projects (including those related to the plans to obtain pre-MPT ice cores within Europe (BE-OI) and elsewhere).

VICS

AS3.27/CL2.16 Observations and modelling of stratospheric aerosol and volcanic influences on climate and atmospheric composition (co-sponsored by CMIP6-VolMIP, SPARC-SSiRC) (co-organized)
Convener: Graham Mann; Co-conveners: Myriam Khodri, Claudia Timmreck, Matthew Toohey, Davide Zanchettin

Variations in stratospheric aerosol - arising primarily from sporadic volcanic eruptions - are an important contributor to climate variability. Major volcanic eruptions have led to pronounced decreases in global surface temperature over seasonal-to-decadal timescales. The transition from the unusual 1998-2002 period of a “fully decayed to quiescence” stratospheric aerosol layer, into a more typical period of modest volcanic activity temporarily offset a substantial proportion of the subsequent decadal forcing from increased greenhouse gases.

Advancing our understanding of the influence of volcanoes on climate relies upon better knowledge of the radiative forcings of past eruptions and the microphysical, chemical and dynamical processes which affect the evolution of stratospheric aerosol properties. This can only be achieved by combining information from satellite and in-situ observations of recent eruptions, stratospheric aerosol modelling activities, and reconstructions of past volcanic histories from proxies.

This session seeks presentations from research aimed at better understanding the stratospheric aerosol layer and its volcanic perturbations through the post-industrial period (1750-present) and also those further back in the historical record. This year contributions addressing volcanic influences on atmospheric composition, such as changes in stratospheric water vapour, ozone and other trace gases are also particularly encouraged. The session also aims to highlight research on volcanoes and climate contributing to current international SPARC-SSiRC, CMIP6-VolMIP, CMIP6-PMIP, and PAGES-VICS co-ordinated activities.

Short courses

CVAS

SC1.11/CL6.01/NP10.3 Scales and Scaling in the Climate System (co-organized)
Convener: Shaun Lovejoy; Co-conveners: Christian Franzke, Thomas Laepple

The climate is highly variable over wide ranges of scale in both space and time so that the amplitude of changes systematically depends on the scale of observations. As a consequence, climate variations recorded in time series or spatial distributions, which are produced through modelling or empirical analyses are inextricably linked to their space-time scales and is a significant part of the uncertainties in the proxy approaches. Rather than treating the variability as a limitation to our knowledge, as a distraction from mechanistic explanations and theories, in this course the variability is treated as an important, fundamental aspect of the climate dynamics that must be understood and modelled in its own right. Long considered as no more than an uninteresting spectral “background”, modern data shows that in fact it contains most of the variance. We review techniques that make it possible to systematically analyse and model the variability of instrumental and proxy data, the inferred climate variables and the outputs of GCM’s. These analyses enable us to cover wide ranges of scale in both space and in time - and jointly in space-time - without trivializing the links between the measurements, proxies and the state variables (temperature, precipitation etc.). They promise to systematically allow us to compare model outputs with data, to understand the climate processes from small to large and from fast to slow. Specific tools that will be covered include spectral analysis, scaling fluctuation analysis, wavelets, fractals, multifractals, and stochastic modeling; we discuss corresponding software.

SC1.40/AS6.1/CL6.04 Weather, Macroweather, Climate: big and small, fast and slow, our random yet predictable atmosphere (co-organized)
Convener: Shaun Lovejoy; Co-convener: Costas Varotsos

Clouds come in all sizes, from millimetric wisps up to planetary undulations: a casual glance discloses structures within structures within structures that are constantly changing, evolving from milliseconds to the age of the earth. The structures’ collective behaviour results in variability that is so large that standard methods are utterly inadequate: in 2015, it was found that they had underestimated the variability by the factor of a million billion. Taming such extreme variability requires physical laws that operate over enormous ranges of scales from small to large, from fast to slow. These scaling laws answer the question: “how big is a cloud?”, and they explain the origin of events that are so extreme that they have been termed “black swans”. They define a new “macroweather” regime that sits in between the weather and climate, finally settling the question: “What is Climate”? while posing another: is agriculture and hence civilization itself, the result of freak macroweather? Scaling laws are often “universal”, so it isn’t surprising that the red planet turns out to be the statistical twin of our blue one. This new understanding of the statistics - including the black swans – enables us to close the scientific part of climate debate by statistically testing and rejecting the skeptics’ Giant Natural Fluctuation hypothesis. The scaling laws can also be used to make accurate monthly to decadal (macroweather) forecasts by exploiting an unsuspected but huge memory in the atmosphere-ocean system itself. The same scaling approach significantly reduces the large uncertainties in our current climate projections to 2050 and 2100. This short course reviews the nonlinear geoscience behind this new understanding.

Splinter meetings

PALSEA: A splinter meeting will be held on Wednesday 10 April from 08:30–10:15 in Room 2.61 for "The World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines" for the sea-level community at EGU working on the Last Interglacial (LIG). The meeting will focus on the inception of the World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS). Scientists working on LIG sea-level indicators are welcome to provide feedback on an open-access online database that is in development in collaboration with the PALSEA community, with the financial support of the ERC Starting Grant "WARMCOASTS". Email organizer Alessio Rovere: arovere@marum.de

Working group meetings

OC3: The group will hold a joint meeting with IPODs on Tuesday 9 April from 19:00-20:00 in Room 2.17. In this meeting we will discuss the current status and new achievements of the of the OC3 group, as well as further steps for the finalization of the database and collaboration with the IPODS group. Members of the OC 3 and IPODs community as well as interested researchers are welcome to join. Contact Janne Repschlaeger: j.repschlaeger@mpic.de

PALEOLINK: This PAGES 2k Network project will hold a meeting on Thursday 11 April from 08:30-10:15 in Room 0.16. This meeting is a follow-up of the workshop held in Murcia in February 2019. As such, we will review and discuss the four initiatives proposed during such workshop. Still, we are open to anyone noz previously involved but interested in joining the initiative and willing to contribute with new ideas and datasets. PALEOLINK promotes the creation of an open network of collaborations, so anyone interested in the topics covered by this initiative are invited to participate. Contact Juan José Gómez-Navarro: jjgomeznavarro@um.es

Additional catch-ups/dinners

This year the EGU speleothem dinner will be held on Tuesday 9 April from 19:30 at the traditional Austrian restaurant, Müllerbeisl (1010 Wien, Seilerstätte 15). Food will be ordered on the night so there is no need for menu choices.

If you would like to join the meal, please contact Gina Moseley (Ingeborg Hochmair Professor, Institute of Geology, University of Innsbruck) via email by 20 March: Gina.Moseley@uibk.ac.at