Globally, about 22 million square kilometres (Mio km²) of forest have been removed between AD 800 and 2015. This deforestation might double until 2100 under the most pessimistic land-use scenario. To understand how deforestation affects climate, carbon and water fluxes is very important in view of anticipated climate change mitigation and…

Prof. Bjorn Stevens, director and head of the department “The Atmosphere in the Earth System” at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), and his colleagues Pier Siebesma (Delft University of Technology), Sandrine Bony (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique), and Christian Jakob (Monash University) have edited a new book called “Clouds and…

On 5 November 2020 the European Research Council (ERC) announced the groups of scientists, who are awarded a Synergy Grant in the 2020 call for proposals. MPI-M congratulates Prof Victor Brovkin, group leader in the department „The Land in the Earth System“ at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), to a grant for his proposal „Quantify…

One of the hot topics in climate research is the evolution of the global mean temperature of the last several thousand years, the period from the so-called early and mid-Holocene, some 9000 to 8000 years ago, to the late Holocene, the time where we live in. Geological reconstructions of the global mean annual temperature evolution during this…

In two recent studies, scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) analyzed the feedback between CO₂ and climate using Earth System models (ESM) in the Climate Modelling Intercomparison project, phase 6 (CMIP6). The authors Prof. Victor Brovkin, Dr. Tatiana Ilyina, Prof. Julia Pongratz, and Dr. Thomas Raddatz found that the…

Dr Tobias Becker, scientist in the department „The Atmosphere in the Earth System“ at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), won a prestigious Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. From October 2020, he will conduct research for two years together with Dr Irina Sandu at the European Centre for…

A group of scientists mostly from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) studied the representation of tropical precipitation by models participating in the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Projects (CMIP). Their analysis of output from models spanning twenty years of development over three CMIP phases, found little general improvement…

A new study in Climate Dynamics by Andreas Lang and Uwe Mikolajewicz from the Department "The Ocean in the Earth System" at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) shows that the intensity of extreme storm surges on the German North Sea coast is projected to increase under rising greenhouse gas emissions. With the help of numerical…

Researchers around the globe are using numerical climate models in an attempt to find answers to the question: How would global warming change our world? Earth’s climate is extremely complex and difficult to model. Each climate model has its specific strengths and weaknesses. In order to estimate the bandwidth of possible future climate…

Dres Maria Rugenstein and Jeremy Caves Rugenstein came to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) as Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellows in early 2019. Now they will take on professorships at Colorado State University, USA. Maria Rugenstein will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science, and Jeremy Caves…