2013 — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Naturkundemuseum and PIK link history and future

03/08/2013 - Naturkundemuseum Berlin, Germany´s leading natural history museum, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have agreed to work closer together at a meeting in early March. When a delegation from the museum, led by its Director-General Prof. Dr. Johannes Vogel, visited PIK, a number of ideas for a closer cooperation were identified.

Call for Applications: Global Sustainability Summer School 2013

03/07/2013 - "Complex(c)ity – urbanization and energy transitions in a changing climate": this is the title of the 2013 Global Sustainability Summer School. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) now call for applications. The intense two-week programme explores global sustainability issues from a complex systems’ perspective with particular focus on urbanization, energy transition and climate change.

IPCC calls for expert reviewers

03/04/2013 - In the run-up to the publication of its fifth assessment report which will present the state of climate science next year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for expert reviewers to provide comments on the second order draft of the working group III contribution, which covers the mitigation of climate change. The scientists who are organizing this process ask for voluntary contributions from experts across all sectors, from scholars to business people or NGO representatives.

Schellnhuber to advise EU Commission’s President in new capacity

02/28/2013 - The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, yesterday in Brussels met the newly appointed members of his Science and Technology Advisory Council (PSTAC). Physicist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, will be part of this independent group of eminent experts. The Council is charged to provide foresight and recommendations that could be used to explore opportunities and make informed judgements based on the evidence and advice provided.

Earth League: International network established by leading research institutes

02/14/13 - Leading research institutes from more than 10 nations joined forces last week in London and launched the “Earth League”. As a global alliance of eminent scientific representatives from climate research, environmental sciences and economics, this distinguished network focuses on planetary processes and sustainability issues. The Earth League will meet once a year to provide robust background information for decision makers on the most urging challenges for the future.

Scenario 2040 for Germany: How climate change alters our daily life

02/08/2013 - “Two degrees Celsius more in Germany” – scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and sociologists analyzed what this might mean in detail. A book with the same title was just released by Fischer publishing house, addressing a broad public. Hot summers with average temperatures of more than 35 degrees Celsius are only one example of many potential impacts of climate change in Germany: “People in the cities will be affected as well as agriculture and forestry,” says PIK scientist and co-editor Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengarbe. The “Scenario 2040” outlines these impacts and illustrates how climate change alters our everyday life.

New faces in Board of Trustees and Scientific Advisory Board

01/29/2013 - The two supervisory bodies of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research both show a new line-up in 2013. The head of the executive board of the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), Hildegard Müller, is now a member of the board of trustees. “Climate research provides central insights for sustainable climate protection,” Müller says. “PIK has delivered important scientific contributions for years. The German Energy and Water Industries are committed to climate protection. They are holding to the goal they already adopted in 2009, to ensure a CO2 neutral energy supply by 2050, and hence to unite sustainable climate protection with affordable energy supply. They support the goals of the German energy system transformation.”

Early emissions peak more relevant than emissions reduction rate: study

01/14/2012 - Avoiding negative impacts of global warming depends more on starting early to let greenhouse-gas emissions decline than on the rate of reductions after the peak. This is one key outcome of the first global-scale assessment of climate change impacts across sectors, from coastal flooding to crop failure, now published in Nature Climate Change. The analysis suggests that a policy of remaining below a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise target could reduce impacts by 20 to 65 percent relative to a business-as-usual scenario.

Shareholder liability: key to energy systems transformation

01/08/2013 – Assigning full liability for environmental impacts to the shareholders of corporations would reduce the rigidity of the fossil-nuclear energy economy and help establish an alternative energy system, a new study shows. Without such changes of regulation, a dynamic lock-in pattern of the energy economy dominates: Capital flows to the established corporations and technologies instead of flowing to nascent alternative and more sustainable ones, this pattern is known as the ‘success to the successful mode’. The paper by Jérôme Dangerman of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, will be published this week in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).