In a new study, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have investigated what caused African humid periods to vary in duration and strength in the past. They found that changes in the Earth´s orbit are the most important factor and that there is a critical threshold that affects the onset of a greening Sahara. This threshold for…

A new supercomputer named “Levante” was inaugurated at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) on 22 September 2022. For the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, it represents the essential research infrastructure for climate modeling. The supercomputer is virtually the laboratory and main tool of the researchers and thus of utmost importance…

Prof. Klaus Hasselmann, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and Nobel Laureate in Physics 2021, was honored with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin on September 2, 2022. He receives the award for his services to climate research.…

Dr. Peter Landschützer, scientist in the department "The Ocean in the Earth System" at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and head of the group "Observations, Analysis and Synthesis", will be the new research director at the Belgian Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ; Flanders Marine Institute) in Ostend. Starting in September 2022,…

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) awarded the Roddam Family Medal for the best PhD thesis in 2020 to Dr. Chetankumar (“Chetan”) A. Jalihal, who has been working in the department “The Ocean in the Earth System” at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) since August 2020, first in a scholarship, now as a postdoctoral scientist. He…

A curious symmetry in the distribution of tropical precipitation is that it rains as much over land as it does over the ocean, in both cases about 3 mm/day. This seems to suggest that the properties of the surface, being land or ocean, do not affect the partitioning of precipitation between the two — a surprising thought given that the land, in…

The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) has lost a great friend. Prof. William Lawrence (“Larry”) Gates, climate researcher, and long-term friend of our institute, died on 27 June 2022, at the age of 93.

Dr. Tatiana Ilyina, scientist and leader of the group “Ocean Biogeochemistry” at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), was awarded her Habilitation (the highest qualification level in the German university system) on 30 June 2022. The MPI-M congratulates warmly.

The book “From decoding turbulence to unveiling the fingerprint of climate change: Klaus Hasselmann—Nobel Prize Winner in Physics 2021” has recently been published by Springer.
 

Nine of the world´s leading climate scientists are calling for major international investment to develop a new generation of climate models that can answer fundamental questions about the predictability of future precipitation and related extreme events.