Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology: Search

337.

Climate Protection: Deep Decarbonization by 2050 Currently Not Plausible

Today the Hamburg-based Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS) publishes a new, essential study on climate futures. The study represents the first systematic attempt to investigate whether a climate future with net-zero carbon emissions is not only possible but also plausible. The authors examine plausibility from a technical-economic perspective, but also with regard to the societal changes necessary for such a future. They conclude that deep decarbonization by…

338.

ESM2025: Earth System Models for the future

ESM2025, an ambitious European project on Earth System Modelling, coordinated by Météo France-CNRM, is now official. The project started on 1 June 2021 and is funded with 11 Mio € from the European Commission's H2020 programme. ESM2025 relies on an international team of 19 European institutes (from seven European countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) and an Australian university.

339.

One step closer to a new generation of Earth System Models

NextGEMS, an ambitious European project to develop a new generation of Storm-resolving Earth System Models (SR-ESMs), is now official. On May 28, 2021 the EU and 26 partners from 13 European countries and one from Africa (Senegal) signed the grant agreement that will fund NextGEMS as a four year, 11 Mio €, Horizon 2020 project, starting on September 1, 2021. The project — coordinated by Prof. Bjorn Stevens at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and Dr. Irina Sandu, the team…

340.

FESSTVaL: a field campaign targeted to the detection of small-scale weather phenomena

Like a magnifying glass, FESSTVaL will peer into the internal structure of small-scale weather phenomena, with a particular emphasis on summertime rain storms. The field campaign will take place from mid-May through August, around the Meteorological Observatory Lindenberg - Richard-Aßmann-Observatory of the German Meteorological Service (DWD), in the district Oder-Spree near Berlin, and will deploy around 250 supplementary instruments to monitor the atmosphere and the land surface.

341.

Could the deglaciation of Snowball Earth have started in the mid-latitudes?

A new study, led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), investigates the question which conditions could have triggered the terminal deglaciation of a hard Snowball Earth. Philipp de Vrese, Tobias Stacke, Jeremy Caves Rugenstein, Jason Goodman and Victor Brovkin found that the thawing of a fully glaciated planet could have started at comparatively low atmospheric CO2-levels as a result of low surface albedos in the mid-latitudes due to a combination of high dust…

342.

Response of high-latitude ecosystems to temperature overshoot scenarios

High-latitude soils contain almost twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and the fate of this frozen organic matter under ongoing climate change is not well understood. Two recent studies led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) are focused on the response of high-latitude ecosystems to temperature overshoots – climate pathways that are becoming more and more likely if we are to stabilize global temperatures at a desirable level. Philipp de Vrese, Victor Brovkin,…

343.

Relative humidity is key in quantifying Earth’s changing climate sensitivity

In a new paper by Stella Bourdin, Lukas Kluft and Bjorn Stevens the authors found a dependence of climate sensitivity on the given distribution of relative humidity. Lead author Stella Bourdin visited the department “The Atmosphere in the Earth System” at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology for an internship when she was a masters student from École Centrale Paris and is now a PhD candidate within the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE/IPSL, Paris-Saclay…

344.

The Gender Equality Plan of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology: Equal opportunities for MPI-M employees

The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) has renewed its Gender Equality Plan (GEP) to further facilitate equal opportunities for all genders and to support compatibility for family life and career. The GEP of MPI-M is an institute specific policy, which responds to guidelines set forth by the Max Planck Society. In it, targets and actions are identified, pooled and coordinated to advance equality of opportunity. The renewed GEP was drafted by the gender equality officers Andrea…

345.

Ozone, air chemistry, Earth-system science, environmental modeling — researcher portrait Guy Brasseur

Collage: Brasseur in front of ozone molecules

The recently published book “The Ozone Layer, From Discovery to Recovery” is a fascinating reading from the discovery of ozone in the 19th century through the late 20th century international agreements to protect humanity from the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere. The author portrays the evolution of scientific knowledge on air quality issues and stratospheric chemistry and dynamics (Brasseur, 2020a). The book is easy to read and understand, just like a science history novel. The author…

346.

Climate response to emissions reductions due to COVID-19: Initial results from CovidMIP

In a new publication in Geophysical Research Letters led by Chris D. Jones from the Met Office Hadley Centre, in Exeter, UK, a group of 49 scientists from different institutions including Wolfgang Müller, Tatiana Ilyina, Claudia Timmreck, Hongmei Li, and Michael Botzet from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), addressed one of the currently most timely questions, how reduced emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases during the lockdown restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in…

347.

Documentation of JSBACH published

Title by C.H. Reick employing a painting by Dieter Reick (2003).

Today, JSBACH is the land component of the two Earth System models at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), MPI-ESM and ICON-ESM. Work on it started in the early 2000s. At that time, Ernst Maier-Reimer was already routinely using his HAMOCC model of ocean biogeochemistry in the ocean-atmosphere coupled model MPI-OM/ECHAM (in those days worldwide known as "the" MPI model). To close the global carbon cycle and thereby make the MPI model a true Earth System model, only the necessary…

348.

Climate effect of trade-wind clouds – bridging the gap between hectometer and kilometer simulations

In a new study Jule Radtke, Dr Cathy Hohenegger and Prof Thorsten Mauritsen have investigated the representation and climate feedback of trade-wind clouds in high-resolution simulations while degrading the horizontal resolution from hectometre (large-eddy resolving) to kilometre (convective storm resolving) scales. They found that the cloud feedback is positive when simulated with kilometre but near zero when simulated with hectometre horizontal resolution.