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.
As of 19 February 2021, the US officially re-joined the Paris Climate Agreement, a landmark international accord to limit global warming by 2°C (and ideally to 1.5°C) compared to pre-industrial levels. The Paris Climate Agreement aims to bring the world together to avoid catastrophic warming that will impact us all and to build resilience to the consequences of climate change that we are already starting to see. Philipp Pattberg, a professor of transnational environmental governance and policy at VU University …
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Dear readers of the EGU Climate: Past, present and future blog. We hope you are having a good start to the New Year. Last year we faced a multitude of challenges due to the pandemic. Hopefully, by the end of 2021, the vaccination campaign will help combat the pandemic, and allow us to go back to some semblance of normality; fingers crossed! About Climate scientists Climate scientists investigate Earth’s Climate at local, regional and global scales utilizing a wide variety …
With the abstract deadline at 13th January, we would like to highlight some of the fantastic sessions that are offered in the climate division in 2021. Due to the large amount of offered sessions, we focus in this overview on EDI sessions. EDI stands for equality, diversity, and inclusion and the EDI logo highlights sessions that include conveners from multiple countries and institutes, different career stages, and more than one form of gender identity. More info can be found here. …
In February The Loupe celebrates this month’s three successful missions to Mars, including the unique science and symbolism of the first Arab mission to the Red Planet. Because the data from this mission will be openly shared, it lets all scientists embark on an exciting journey to explore the secrets of our neighbouring planet’s atmosphere together. This issue features three EGU divisions: Geosciences Instrumentation and Data Systems (GI), Planetary and Solar System Sciences (PS), and Solar-Terrestrial Sciences (ST).
The Loupe also highlights everything you need to know about the vEGU21 scientific sessions, 5 key new initiatives the Union implemented in 2020, and two blogs with lighthearted tips for a greener EGU21 and some lessons you can take from this year’s virtual General Assembly to make your in-person conferences greener.
In addition to the latest Journal Watch and GeoRoundup of February EGU journal highlights, this issue also looks at what Union leaders hope they can achieve in the next few years and tackles the ‘rotten’ topic of how Europe should deal with its waste.