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2012

Advancing computer simulations of climate change mitigation costs: EU project hosted by PIK scientists

12/28/2012 - Computer simulations of energy systems, the economy and land use are key for assessing the impacts of climate mitigation strategies. Policy-makers therefore rely on these assessments to decide between different options on the basis of robust information. The ADVANCE project – the acronym stands for Advanced Model Development and Validation for the Improved Analysis of Costs and Impacts of Mitigation Policies – sets out to achieve a substantially better understanding and representation of some rather complex phenomena in the interaction between climate policy and the economy. It is coordinated by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and funded with 6 million Euro by the European Commission.

"The best way to predict the future is to shape it": Schellnhuber at the World Climate Summit COP 18

The opening film of the COP 18 world climate summit in Doha, Qatar, featured many things, but just one scientific institution - the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Here's the part featuring our institute, including an interview with PIK's director Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber, on climate science and climate policy. "The best way to predict the future," he says, "is to shape it."

Doha World Climate Summit: Schellnhuber gives talk to high-ranking representatives of states

12/06/2012 - “Don’t ask what global climate protection can do for your country; ask what your country can do for climate protection…” – it was by rephrasing former US president John F. Kennedy’s famous words that Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), addressed the highest-ranking representatives of states in Doha. He had been asked to present the keynote at the gala dinner on Tuesday night that opened the high-level segment of the world climate summit COP18 – an unsual honour for a scientist.

Website on climate impacts in Germany starts in pilot phase

12/01/12 - For the first time, the new website “KlimafolgenOnline” presents information on regional impacts of climate change all over Germany for local decision makers. The project from the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and WetterOnline is starting its pilot phase and is now open to interested users. Information is provided for experts from forestry to building with resolutions as fine as 10x10 kilometers. The website is also presented at the current climate summit COP18 in Doha.

„You cannot negotiate with nature“: Leading scientists on COP18 in Doha

11/26/2012 - Media worldwide asked leading scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) for comments and interviews on the world climate summit COP18 that started today in Doha, Qatar. Despite the widespread scepticism that the meeting of representatives of nearly 200 states will achieve much progress, PIK’s director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber stressed that much is at stake for the international community if global warming goes on unabated. “You cannot negotiate with nature,” Schellnhuber told the Chinese news agency Xinhua. “While we are quarreling, nature will just march on."

MCC opening: „A new kind of dialogue at the science-policy interface“

11/16/2012 - The newly founded Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) gets operational. With already 13 scientists up and working, and 17 more to be employed within the next months, plus support staff, MCC aims at becoming a new factor in the sustainability science scene. "This institute is venturing to provide scientific assessments that actually help policy-makers in taking knowledge-based decision in the field of climate and economics - and we will do so by trying to establish some new kind of dialogue at the science-policy interface," director Ottmar Edenhofer said in front of 200 guests from science, politics, and business, at the opening event last week. Global commons might well become “the decisive scarcity of the 21st century,” guest speaker Robert Stavins of Harvard University pointed out.

A warning system for the planet

11/16/2012 - Earth’s ecosystems provide benefits like food or drinking water that are of crucial importance for the well-being of humankind. But although accumulated assessments indicate increasing system failures threatening livelihoods and lives, so far no centralized system exists to monitor and report ecosystem status and changes. Aiming at a better understanding of the consequences of ecosystem service and biodiversity loss, a team of scientists, including Kirsten Thonicke and some of her colleagues from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), propose “A Global System for Monitoring Ecosystem Service Change” in a paper recently published in the science magazine “BioScience”.

Potsdam hosts first World Climate Impacts Conference

11/15/2012 - The first World Climate Impacts Conference, IMPACTS WORLD 2013, will be held next year in Potsdam, Germany. "Our climate future will be largely determined by the choices we make in the next couple of decades – everything between 2°C and 10°C global warming by 2300 is possible,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research which is organising the event together with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). “Impacts science has come of age now and can finally draw the dramatic sectoral and regional pictures associated with specific increases in the Earth’s mean surface temperature”.

Artists as chroniclers of climate

11/12/2012 - From thick snow flurry in snow-covered villages to the white rooftops of Paris – the Arp Museum in Remagen, Rhineland-Palatinate, is currently showing distinguished winter landscapes of impressionism in the exhibition “Lichtgestöber”. Scientific advisers to the exhibition are, among others, Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengarbe und Peter C. Werner from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In the show that will be on display until April 14th 2013 about 55 works by artists like Courbet, Monet, van Gogh, Gauguin, Pissarro, Liebermann, Slevogt or Corinth focus on winter in all its facets.

Rise and fall of the Maya in response to climate change

11/09/2012 - The role of climate change in the development and disintegration of classic Maya civilization, ranging from AD 300 to 1000, has been controversial for decades because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological sequences. In an article now published in Science, an international and interdisciplinary team of scientists including Norbert Marwan from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) presents a precisely dated, high resolution regional climate record for the past 2000 years that for the first time shows how the Maya political systems developed and disintegrated in response to climate change.

Monsoon might fail more often due to climate change

11/06/2012 - India might face more frequent monsoon failure in the future, according to a study by Jacob Schewe and Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The paper published in Environmental Research Letters shows that severe failure of Indian summer monsoon rainfall is projected to become more frequent over the next 200 years under a climate change scenario.

Greetings from Damocles: artists visit environmental scientists

10/26/2012 - The worldwide highly recognized Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson is the new Artist in Residence at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Starting in november, for several weeks he will have the opportunity for encounters with scientists – he is already the fourth artist who visits the institute through a project together with the Berlin artists program of DAAD, ÜBER LEBENSKUNST.

“Orchestra of Change”: Schellnhuber joins board of trustees of NaturTon Foundation

10/12/2012 - The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, becomes a member of the board of trustees of NaturTon Foundation. The charitable foundation was founded in 2009 by musicians of the Staatskapelle Berlin. Their initiative „Orchestra of Change“ combines cultural and environmental commitments. „Science can reach the minds of men, but music reaches the heart,“ PIK-director Schellnhuber says. „The writing of thousands of scientific papers cannot stimulate enough momentum, therefore it is good for science and music to work together.“

„Clouds, wind and weather“ is green book of the year

09/26/2012 - For its “lasting impact on ecological awareness in Germany”, PIK-scientist Stefan Rahmstorf´s children´s book “Clouds, wind and weather“ was elected green book of the year 2012 last night. The price is awarded by the German Environment Foundation and the editorial team of “Jahrbuch Ökologie”.

From summer droughts to winter floods: climate impacts in Germany

09/26/2012 - Global climate change has local impacts from the Baltic Sea to the Alps, from Rhineland to the sands of Brandenburg. For the first time, these impacts can be shown in a comprehensive and consistent manner for the sectors they will particularly affect, including agriculture, forestry, water management and energy supply. About 170 guests from business, politics, administrations, science and associations attended the presentation of findings by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin early this week.

German National Academy Leopoldina debates Global Change

09/24/2012 - The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina focuses on the challenges of Global Change at their annual meeting this weekend. Three scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have been invited to give their presentations: director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber talked about global boundaries, chief-economist Ottmar Edenhofer about global climate policy and energy policy, and Stefan Rahmstorf – co-chair of the research domain Earth System Analysis – elaborated on sea-level rise and weather extremes.

„Record sea-ice melt a warning sign“: top German Arctic researchers

09/19/2012 - This summer’s record low of Arctic sea-ice is a warning sign, some of Germany’s leading ice researchers stated in a joint press conference in Hamburg today. Never before since the beginning of satellite observations – and very probably even since 1500 years or more – the sea-ice cover shrunk to such small area. “The record melt measured some weeks ago has thus been exceeded significantly again, leaving the 2012 record 23 percent below the previous record just five years before,” said Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Climate Media Factory wins environment prize

09/11/2012 - The Climate Media Factory was awarded with the environment prize “Green Tech Media Award” in the category Communication. The prize was given to the collaboration project between the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the University of Film and Television “Konrad Wolff” (HFF) for their “unique constellation of climate researchers and media professionals”. The awards ceremony at Berlin´s Tempodrom was celebrated as an environment gala with more than 1.000 exclusively invited guests from economy, science, politics, culture and media, among them German actors like Christiane Paul, Nora Tschirner or Hannes Jaenicke.

Strategies for financing the global energy transformation

09/06/2012 - Who is paying for the transformation of our energy systems? And how can this transformation be globalized? The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) today submitted a policy paper entitled “Financing the Global Energy-System Transformation” to the Federal Minister of the Environment, Peter Altmaier. According to the paper, it needs decisive politics and a reduction of risks to enable a successful transformation of the energy systems and more energy efficiency.

Building trust: summer school in China

Water management under conditions of climate change is the focus of a second Chinese-German summer school. Together with the National Climate Centre in Beijing, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has invited altogether 40 young scientists from both countries to debate ideas and problems. “China is an important partner for climate research. We see a lot of potential for joint projects,” says Frank Wechsung of PIK. “Mutual trust is essential here, and this is something that summer schools can help built up within the next generation of researchers.”