From knowledge to action: "10 Must Knows" as a guide to preserving biodiversity
03/25/2024 - From as yet undiscovered biodiversity to resilient forests and the impact of food consumption on nature: 64 experts have now published their knowledge and recommendations in the form of "10 Must Knows from Biodiversity Science" for 2024. The Leibniz Research Network Biodiversity's new report provides policymakers and society with concrete ways to effectively conserve and sustainably use biodiversity at the local, national, and European levels and thereby also mitigate climate change. With this publication, the researchers contribute current scientific facts to the debate on the German National Biodiversity Strategy, which is to be adopted before the next United Nations Biodiversity Conference in autumn 2024.
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Transforming energy, land use, production and consumption to safeguard Global Commons
03/22/2024 - Transforming energy, land use, production and consumption is key to safeguard Global Commons and to keep them within the safe space of the planetary boundaries. This is the result of the new Global Commons Stewardship report with contribution of researchers from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) and PIK Director Johan Rockström. It delivers an integrated assessment of the effects of those transformations and how they interact with each other.
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Climate change risk to price stability: Higher average temperatures increase inflation
03/21/2024 - Rising temperatures could drive food inflation up by 3.2 percentage points and overall inflation by 1.18 percentage points annually by 2035, according to a new study by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the European Central Bank. The impact spans across all nations, with hot regions and summers being most affected and suggests that future warming will worsen these effects.
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Not in my backyard? Wind turbines have little effect on US property values
03/19/2024 - The value of houses in the United States within a wind turbine’s viewshed drop only slightly and temporarily due to the disrupted view, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows. The effect is smaller the further away the recently installed turbines are, and fades over time. The researcher’s findings shed light on the dynamics between renewable energy infrastructure and local property values, providing valuable insights for sustainable and community-friendly energy development.
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Earth’s freshwater cycle out of stable state
03/04/2024 - Human activity has pushed variation in the planet’s freshwater cycle well outside of its pre-industrial range. An international research team, including scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and PIK Director Johan Rockström, found that the planetary boundary for freshwater was surpassed by the mid-twentieth century.
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Hurricanes and power grids: Eliminating large-scale outages with a new approach
03/01/2024 - Large scale-power outages caused by tropical cyclones can be prevented almost entirely if a small but critical set of power lines is protected against storm damages, a new study published in “Nature Energy” finds. Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK developed a new method that can be used to identify those critical lines and increase the system’s resilience. Based on a model of the Texas power grid on the US Gulf Coast, their analysis reveals how large-scale power outages actually occur and how to prevent them. The Texas power grid is frequently hit by hurricanes and weaker tropical storms, a risk that is expected to substantially increase under global warming.
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“An invaluable contribution to our planet’s welfare”: Johan Rockström awarded Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
02/29/2024 - Johan Rockström will be awarded with the 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, a prestigious prize for scientific achievements often regarded as the ’Nobel Prize for Environment’. The scientific Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK receives the honor for his pioneering work on the Planetary Boundaries framework, the science defining the safe operating space for humanity on Earth, which provides the boundaries for world development and a basis for human justice.
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BMBF State Secretary Judith Pirscher visits PIK
02/29/2024 - State Secretary Judith Pirscher from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) visited the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) to find out about current developments. The exchange with administrative director Bettina Hörstrup and scientific director Ottmar Edenhofer, centred on topics such as policy options and on the path to climate neutrality and the institute's development.
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Edenhofer on the presentation of the German government's Carbon Management Strategy
02/26/2024 - Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, recently presented key points for a Carbon Management Strategy and a draft law based on it to amend the Carbon Dioxide Storage Act as well as the key points for a Long-term Strategy for Negative Emissions to deal with unavoidable remaining emissions. Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), was invited to the launch of the concepts and analysed them from a scientific point of view.
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Citizens' Assembly on nutrition recommends steps towards a more sustainable diet
02/21/2024 - Free lunches for children, conscious shopping made easy with a mandatory government label and a mandatory passing on of edible food by food retailers - these are three key recommendations from the German Parliament's first Citizens' Assembly "Nutrition in Transition". On 20 February 2024, the committee presented its proposals to the Bundestag. The Citizens' Assembly's Scientific Advisory Board, which includes Hermann Lotze-Campen, Head of the Department “Climate Resilience” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK, analysed the results from their perspective.
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Electrification or hydrogen? Both have distinct roles in the European energy transition
02/16/2024 - A key step to achieving climate neutrality in the European Union is to rapidly shift from fossil fuels to electric technologies powered by renewable energies, a new study shows. At the same time, hydrogen produced from electricity will also be indispensable in hard-to-electrify sectors such as aviation, shipping and chemicals. By 2050, electrification and hydrogen are the key strategies to reach climate neutrality based on renewable power. Future EU transformation scenarios modeled by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK investigate the roles of electrification and hydrogen and find that shares of 42-60% for electricity and 9-26% for hydrogen-based energy are required in total energy consumption by 2050.
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From Planetary Boundaries to Global Commons: “PIK Research Days” with latest science update
02/15/2024 – From planetary boundaries and tipping points to global commons and the economic implications of climate change, from methods like integrated assessment modeling or machine learning to the science-policy interface: The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research gathered for its traditional in-house conference, the “PIK Research Days”. The two-day event was packed with talks, panel discussions and elevator pitches about current and planned research.
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Amazon rainforest at the threshold: loss of forest worsens climate change
02/14/2024 - The Amazon rainforest could approach a tipping point, which could lead to a large-scale collapse with serious implications for the global climate system. A new Nature study by an international research team including scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research (PIK) reveals that up to 47 percent of the Amazonian forest is threatened and identifies climatic and land-use thresholds that should not be breached to keep the Amazon resilient.
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Increasing nitrogen fertilization could pollute rivers and worsen water scarcity
02/06/2024 – In the 2050s, one-third of the world's rivers could be affected by water scarcity or be polluted by nitrogen. This is the result of a study by an international team of scientists, including researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and led by scientists of Wageningen University. They assessed the scarcity of clean water under ongoing climate change and show how water pollution from intensified agriculture and untreated sewage could limit clean water supply.
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Transforming food systems could create multi-trillion dollars of economic benefits every year
01/29/2024 - Transforming food systems around the world would lead to socio-economic benefits summing up to 5 to 10 trillion USD a year, shows a new global policy report produced by leading economists and scientists of the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC). The most ambitious and comprehensive study of food system economics so far underlines that food systems are currently destroying more value than they create and that an overhaul of food system policies is urgently needed. On the other hand, the cost of transformation would be much lower than the potential benefits, offering a better life to hundreds of millions of people.
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Destabilising interactions in the Earth system: How climate tipping elements interact
01/26/2024 - Beyond 2°C of global warming, the risk of one climate tipping element triggering other tipping processes in the Earth’s climate system strongly increases. This is the result of a new study by an international team of scientists. They mapped out the current state of literature on the interactions between tipping elements and find that most of them are destabilising, further weakening the climate system.
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Path to clean energy: EU City Calculator
01/24/2024 – A new digital tool designed to help cities to become climate neutral has been launched, with the support of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The EU City Calculator is a free, open source online application, allowing local councils and other stakeholders to visualise and simulate low-carbon scenarios for their towns and cities.
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B-EPICC final conference: Reducing the gap between climate research and its application
01/23/2024 - From 22nd January, guests from the B-EPICC partner countries Brazil, Ethiopia, Peru, Tanzania and India are coming together at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research for the final conference week of the “Brazil East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities” project (B-EPICC). The international project identified how results from state-of-the-art climate impact research can be applied to national and local needs, particularly regarding agriculture, hydrology, biodiversity, and migration issues in the partner countries.
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Planetary Commons: Fostering global cooperation to safeguard critical Earth system functions
01/22/2024 - Tipping elements of the Earth system should be considered global commons, researchers argue in a new paper published in the renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Global commons cannot - as they currently do- only include the parts of the planet outside of national borders, like the high seas or Antarctica. They must also include all the environmental systems that regulate the functioning and state of the planet, namely all systems on Earth we all depend on, irrespective on where in the world we live. This calls for a new level of transnational cooperation, leading experts in legal, social and Earth system sciences say. To limit risks for human societies and secure critical Earth system functions they propose a new framework of planetary commons to guide governance of the planet.
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EU climate Advisory Board: EU needs to significantly accelerate its emission reductions
01/18/2024 - More efforts are needed across all sectors to achieve the EU climate objectives from 2030 to 2050, states a new report by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC). Specifically, the report “Towards EU climate neutrality: progress, policy gaps and opportunities” identifies main gaps in the EU’s post-2030 climate policy, with providing a stable investment outlook for renewables and the revision of the EU energy taxation as pressing issues.
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Covid-19, climate change, armed conflicts: world’s crises can lead to interconnected polycrisis
01/17/2024 – The world is currently experiencing a worsening polycrisis, caused by an entanglement and nonlinear amplification of many of the world’s crises, like the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and armed conflicts such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is the result of a new paper authored by an international team of scientists, including PIK Director Johan Rockström. The researchers establish a substantive definition for a polycrisis and deliver a theoretical framework to better understand and address the entangled driving mechanisms behind contemporary global crises.
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Resonant planetary waves contributed to Pacific Northwest Heat Dome event of 2021
01/17/2024 - Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented heat waves with severe repercussions for human society. However, the causes for the extremity of some of these heat events are not yet understood. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now show, that the severe 'heat dome' incident in the north-western region of the US in 2021 was partly caused by the quasi-resonant amplification of planetary waves, a theory originally developed by the late renowned PIK scientist Vladimir Petoukhov. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS today, the findings hold the potential for more skillful predictions of potentially devastating future weather extremes.
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4 of the 10 climate science papers most referred to in news and social media authored by PIK researchers
01/10/2024 - 4 of the top 10 peer-reviewed climate science papers most referred to in news and social media in 2023 featured authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), a ranking by the website Carbon Brief based on Altmetric scores reveils. Altmetric tracks how often research papers from academic journals are mentioned in online news media, blogs or on social media platforms. The metric is an indicator for public perception of scientific publications.
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More rain, fewer droughts – rainfall effects from targeted forestation can reduce climate change
01/10/2024 - By prioritizing increases in rainfall, forestation programs may not only mitigate global climate change itself but also reduce its concrete negative effects such as droughts. That is the conclusion of a new study by a team of researchers including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
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Fred Hattermann appointed as Honorary Professor in Eberswalde
01/09/2024 - Fred Hattermann, Working Group Leader of 'Hydroclimatic Risks' at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has been appointed to a Honorary Professorship of Climate Change and Hydrology by the Department of Forestry and Environment at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development end of last year.
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Real progress, yet transition away from fossil fuels too vague: PIK Assessment on COP28 closing
12/13/2023 - After two weeks of negotiations, the UN climate summit COP28 in Dubai closed. More than 70.000 people from all over the world took part in the conference focused on the first Global Stocktake of climate plans and further steps for international climate action from 30 November to 13 December. Among them were PIK Directors Ottmar Edenhofer and Johan Rockström.
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500+ pages, 200+ researchers: Global Tipping Points Report delivers comprehensive assessment of tipping point risks and societal opportunities
12/06/2023 - Tipping points pose some of the biggest risks to our planet’s life-support systems and the stability of our societies. In an unprecedented effort by the scientific community, researchers have now published a comprehensive report on Earth system tipping points and their potential impacts and opportunities for societal change. More than 200 scientists from around the world contributed to the ‘Global Tipping Points Report’. The report with more than 500 pages provides an authoritative guide to the state of knowledge on tipping points, explores opportunities for accelerating much needed transformations, and outlines options for a new governance of tipping point risks and opportunities.
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CO2 emissions at record high in 2023
12/05/2023 - Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use will amount to 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023, a record high that exceeds the 2022 level by 1.1% - the latest Global Carbon Budget report finds. This is a long way off the significant reductions that are needed to reach the Paris Agreement climate goals.
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits PIK and GFZ
12/04/2023 - During a visit to Potsdam's Telegrafenberg early Monday morning, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Brandenburg's Research Minister Manja Schüle spoke with researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). The discussion in the Historical Library centred on the potential and challenges of geothermal energy and underground hydrogen storage.
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10 New Insights in Climate Science at COP28: Rapid fossil fuels phase-out crucial for minimising 1.5°C overshoot
12/03/2023 - Today, global experts in social and natural sciences have unveiled the annual 10 New Insights in Climate Science report. The report represents the efforts of 67 leading researchers, including several scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), to synthesize the latest insights in climate change research in order to help inform negotiations at the ongoing COP28 and policy implementation through 2024 and beyond.
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