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Climate change impacts across sectors: frontier science workshop

03/06/2015 – A global community of scientists that aim at bringing research on climate change impacts to a new level met in Austria this week. More than 130 institutes are now member of the unique Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP). The participants discussed insights from their thorough model evaluation, including hindcast. Comparing the model output with real processes in history provides crucial information about strengths and weaknesses of models, and how to make use of them. Moreover, pathways to a longer-term coordinated impact assessment effort have been discussed.

New forecasting method: Predicting extreme floods in the Andes mountains

10/14/2014 - Predicting floods following extreme rainfall in the central Andes is enabled by a new method. Climate change has made these events more frequent and more severe in recent decades. Now complex networks analysis of satellite weather data makes it possible to produce a robust warning system for the first time, a study to be published in the journal Nature Communications shows. This might allow for improved disaster preparedness. As the complex systems technique builds upon a mathematical comparison that can be utilised for any time series data, the approach could be applied to extreme events in all sorts of complex systems.

US Government Accountability Office seeks exchange with climate scientists

02/23/2015 - The Government Accountability Office of the US Congress (GAO) considers climate change impacts such as floodings or droughts to be a financial risk. To study the German perspective on this issue, it sent a high-ranking delegation to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) as well as to some other institutions in Europe. This will result in a report on how to improve climate services in the US.

IPCC scientist appointed professor

02/10/2015 - The head of the Technical Support Unit of the IPCC’s Working Group on climate change mitigation, hosted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), has now been appointed as Professor for Science-Policy and Sustainable Development at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. The scientist, Jan Minx, also serves as head of the new working group “Applied Sustainability Science” at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), and he remains a guest scientist at PIK. Both the Working Group on mitigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and MCC are led by PIK’s chief-economist Ottmar Edenhofer.

The Global Calculator: new tool for climate information launched

02/06/2015 - Informing businesses, governments and non-governmental organizations about options for cutting CO2 emissions and the trade-offs for energy and land is the ambition of a new web platform called the Global Calculator. An international team led by the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change and co-funded by the European Union’s Climate-KIC launched the tool last week. Scientists that contributed to the community effort came from institutions such as the London School of Economics, the International Energy Agency, the Chinese Energy Research Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and its spinoff Climate Media Factory (CMF).

„Two Big Bangs“: PIK Research Days

02/04/2015 - Current and future research projects have been debated at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research last week – while also looking back at outstanding events of last year. The Research Days each year are a meeting of virtually all members of the institute, two days packed with lectures and discussions. This time topics ranged from the next world climate summit in Paris at the end of this year, to advancing computer simulation models of the climate system as well as the energy sector, something to achieve until the end of this decade.

Clean technology can partially make up for weak CO2 pricing

02/02/2015 - Clean technology support can to some extent make up for weak CO2 pricing and hence help keep the two degrees target within reach, a new study shows. Even if the world climate summit in Paris later this year is successful in striking a climate deal, it might not bring about sharp greenhouse-gas cuts in the near-term. However, emission targets could be strengthened by complementary policies, such as support for renewables, a ban on new coal-fired power plants, and an initially modest global minimum price on CO2. If such a policy package – each component of which has already been enacted in some countries – were to be put into practice globally now, this could also pave the way for a clean economy with faster long-term CO2 reductions after 2030.

Schellnhuber speaks at World Economic Forum in Davos

01/23/2015 - The World Economic Forum in Davos, assembling hundreds of government and business leaders, invited the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, to speak. He joined a panel on climate risks with the Secretary-General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the President of the financial services and rating company Standard & Poor's , and the President of the Rockefeller Foundation. The audience included scientists like Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University and policy-makers such as Christiana Figueres of the UNFCCC.

World Economic Forum in Davos

National academy acatech appoints Ottmar Edenhofer

01/16/2015 - In recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements, climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer has been elected a member of the German National Academy for Science and Engineering, acatech. Edenhofer is deputy director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), and Professor at Technische Universität Berlin. He already chairs the Energy Platform of the European Council of Academies of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering (Euro-CASE), of which acatech is a part. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Edenhofer led the working group on mitigation which published its highly influential Fifth Assessment Report last year.