Central IT Services
IT services are provided at MPI-M by the Central IT Services (CIS) group.
The most important services of the Central IT Services are:
- Procurement, setup and management of IT hardware and software for both users (laptops, PCs) and infrastructure (servers, networks, etc.)
- Central user administration
- Provision of an efficient network (LAN, WLAN)
- Central IT help desk as a contact point for all IT-related issues
- Provision of services to support daily work (e.g. version management, project management, websites, etc.)
- Ensuring secure IT operations (failover, backup, IT security)
Detailed documentation on the IT Group’s offerings can be found in the Wiki of the institute.
An account (username and password) is required to use most IT services. Usually, an account will be created for you as soon as you have a contract with MPI-M. If you are a guest at MPI-M and need an account, your group leader at MPI can request an account for you. Further details are described in the institutes Wiki.
If you have any questions or problems using the IT systems at MPI-M, please contact the IT help desk.
Please note that questions regarding the DKRZ systems (e.g. Levante or data archive) will be answered by the DKRZ user support.
Contact
Rainer Weigle
Group leader
Tel.: +49 (0)40 41173-373
rainer.weigle@mpimet.mpg.de
Helpdesk
Tel.: +49 (0)40 41173-361
help-it@mpimet.mpg.de
More Content
Warming of Land Masses Leads to Cooling in the Eastern Pacific
Climate researchers are challenged by the unexpected observation that the eastern Pacific has cooled despite global warming. Understanding and predicting Pacific warming patterns is particularly important, given their strong influence on global temperature and precipitation. There is general agreement that this cooling is a transient phenomenon, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain it, including the upwelling of cold water from deeper ocean layers and teleconnections from the Southern Ocean or the Atlantic. However, the drivers of this trend are not confined to the ocean; a new study by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) highlights an important role for land.
“The land has been a blind spot until now,” says MPI-M researcher Moritz Günther, who led the study.
Under climate change, land masses are warming faster than the ocean, creating a transient heating contrast. The team investigated how this heating contrast influences global warming patterns.
Unrealistic but insightful experiments
To this end, the researchers conducted various deliberately unrealistic experiments using the Earth system model MPI-ESM. They abruptly quadrupled the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere in strictly defined regions: over land only, over parts of the land only, or over the ocean only. This way, the researchers ensured that strong heating contrasts emerged in each case and that the climate system’s response to them was very pronounced. This made it easier to analyze the effects of the heating contrasts.
They found that when the “CO2 hammer” struck only the land, the land warmed rapidly, while the eastern Pacific initially cooled. However, if the CO2 hammer struck only over the ocean, this cooling did not occur. The team concludes that the faster warming over land can contribute to a cooling in the eastern Pacific.
Three processes drive the cooling
This effect unfolds through three processes: Firstly, in the scenario where CO2 increases only over land, more heat is deposited in the Northern Hemisphere, which has more land masses. As a result, the tropical rain belt shifts northward and the southerly winds at the equator intensify, enhancing evaporation and promoting the upwelling of cold water masses in the tropical Pacific, thereby cooling the ocean surface. Secondly, when land is heated, warm air masses in the western Pacific rise further westward—similar to a “La Niña” event. This intensifies the Walker circulation in the atmosphere over the tropical Pacific, which also promotes the upwelling of cold water masses in the eastern Pacific. Thirdly, there is an atmospheric bridge between the South American continent and the subtropical Pacific: When the air over the continent warms, a high-pressure system off the coast of Peru intensifies and brings cool, dry air into the eastern Pacific. These three cooling tendencies are further amplified by feedbacks, for example due to clouds, leading to the cooling of the eastern Pacific.
Time scale relevant to observed trend
In the experiment involving a fourfold increase in CO2 concentrations over land, the cooling period lasted only a few years before transitioning to warming. However, when the researchers allowed CO2 to increase gradually rather than instantaneously, the cooling signal persisted for decades. “This means that our findings could be relevant to the observed trend,” says Günther. The results may also help address a persistent climatological bias in precipitation, commonly referred to as the double ITCZ bias.
Original publication
Günther, M., Kang, S. M., and Kaspi, Y. (2026) Heating the land cools the eastern and equatorial Pacific. Science Advances 12, eaeb7004. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7004
Warming of Land Masses Leads to Cooling in the Eastern Pacific
Climate researchers are challenged by the unexpected observation that the eastern Pacific has cooled despite global warming. Understanding and predicting Pacific warming patterns is particularly important, given their strong influence on global temperature and precipitation. There is general agreement that this cooling is a transient phenomenon, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain it, including the upwelling of cold water from deeper ocean layers and teleconnections from the Southern Ocean or the Atlantic. However, the drivers of this trend are not confined to the ocean; a new study by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) highlights an important role for land.
“The land has been a blind spot until now,” says MPI-M researcher Moritz Günther, who led the study.
Under climate change, land masses are warming faster than the ocean, creating a transient heating contrast. The team investigated how this heating contrast influences global warming patterns.
Unrealistic but insightful experiments
To this end, the researchers conducted various deliberately unrealistic experiments using the Earth system model MPI-ESM. They abruptly quadrupled the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere in strictly defined regions: over land only, over parts of the land only, or over the ocean only. This way, the researchers ensured that strong heating contrasts emerged in each case and that the climate system’s response to them was very pronounced. This made it easier to analyze the effects of the heating contrasts.
They found that when the “CO2 hammer” struck only the land, the land warmed rapidly, while the eastern Pacific initially cooled. However, if the CO2 hammer struck only over the ocean, this cooling did not occur. The team concludes that the faster warming over land can contribute to a cooling in the eastern Pacific.
Three processes drive the cooling
This effect unfolds through three processes: Firstly, in the scenario where CO2 increases only over land, more heat is deposited in the Northern Hemisphere, which has more land masses. As a result, the tropical rain belt shifts northward and the southerly winds at the equator intensify, enhancing evaporation and promoting the upwelling of cold water masses in the tropical Pacific, thereby cooling the ocean surface. Secondly, when land is heated, warm air masses in the western Pacific rise further westward—similar to a “La Niña” event. This intensifies the Walker circulation in the atmosphere over the tropical Pacific, which also promotes the upwelling of cold water masses in the eastern Pacific. Thirdly, there is an atmospheric bridge between the South American continent and the subtropical Pacific: When the air over the continent warms, a high-pressure system off the coast of Peru intensifies and brings cool, dry air into the eastern Pacific. These three cooling tendencies are further amplified by feedbacks, for example due to clouds, leading to the cooling of the eastern Pacific.
Time scale relevant to observed trend
In the experiment involving a fourfold increase in CO2 concentrations over land, the cooling period lasted only a few years before transitioning to warming. However, when the researchers allowed CO2 to increase gradually rather than instantaneously, the cooling signal persisted for decades. “This means that our findings could be relevant to the observed trend,” says Günther. The results may also help address a persistent climatological bias in precipitation, commonly referred to as the double ITCZ bias.
Original publication
Günther, M., Kang, S. M., and Kaspi, Y. (2026) Heating the land cools the eastern and equatorial Pacific. Science Advances 12, eaeb7004. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7004
Warming of Land Masses Leads to Cooling in the Eastern Pacific
Climate researchers are challenged by the unexpected observation that the eastern Pacific has cooled despite global warming. Understanding and predicting Pacific warming patterns is particularly important, given their strong influence on global temperature and precipitation. There is general agreement that this cooling is a transient phenomenon, and several mechanisms have been proposed to explain it, including the upwelling of cold water from deeper ocean layers and teleconnections from the Southern Ocean or the Atlantic. However, the drivers of this trend are not confined to the ocean; a new study by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) highlights an important role for land.
“The land has been a blind spot until now,” says MPI-M researcher Moritz Günther, who led the study.
Under climate change, land masses are warming faster than the ocean, creating a transient heating contrast. The team investigated how this heating contrast influences global warming patterns.
Unrealistic but insightful experiments
To this end, the researchers conducted various deliberately unrealistic experiments using the Earth system model MPI-ESM. They abruptly quadrupled the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere in strictly defined regions: over land only, over parts of the land only, or over the ocean only. This way, the researchers ensured that strong heating contrasts emerged in each case and that the climate system’s response to them was very pronounced. This made it easier to analyze the effects of the heating contrasts.
They found that when the “CO2 hammer” struck only the land, the land warmed rapidly, while the eastern Pacific initially cooled. However, if the CO2 hammer struck only over the ocean, this cooling did not occur. The team concludes that the faster warming over land can contribute to a cooling in the eastern Pacific.
Three processes drive the cooling
This effect unfolds through three processes: Firstly, in the scenario where CO2 increases only over land, more heat is deposited in the Northern Hemisphere, which has more land masses. As a result, the tropical rain belt shifts northward and the southerly winds at the equator intensify, enhancing evaporation and promoting the upwelling of cold water masses in the tropical Pacific, thereby cooling the ocean surface. Secondly, when land is heated, warm air masses in the western Pacific rise further westward—similar to a “La Niña” event. This intensifies the Walker circulation in the atmosphere over the tropical Pacific, which also promotes the upwelling of cold water masses in the eastern Pacific. Thirdly, there is an atmospheric bridge between the South American continent and the subtropical Pacific: When the air over the continent warms, a high-pressure system off the coast of Peru intensifies and brings cool, dry air into the eastern Pacific. These three cooling tendencies are further amplified by feedbacks, for example due to clouds, leading to the cooling of the eastern Pacific.
Time scale relevant to observed trend
In the experiment involving a fourfold increase in CO2 concentrations over land, the cooling period lasted only a few years before transitioning to warming. However, when the researchers allowed CO2 to increase gradually rather than instantaneously, the cooling signal persisted for decades. “This means that our findings could be relevant to the observed trend,” says Günther. The results may also help address a persistent climatological bias in precipitation, commonly referred to as the double ITCZ bias.
Original publication
Günther, M., Kang, S. M., and Kaspi, Y. (2026) Heating the land cools the eastern and equatorial Pacific. Science Advances 12, eaeb7004. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7004