Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

September 2024

General News

Past Events

Upcoming Events

People 

Publications  

 

General News

New Chair and Co-Chair for the Oeschger Center

The new leadership of the Oeschger Centre has been in office since 1 August 2024. Karin Ingold (Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group) is the new President and Stefan Brönnimann (Climatology group) is the new Vice President of the OCCR. In her welcome message on the OCCR website, the new president writes: “The OCCR's multidisciplinary approach allows us to tackle various critical issues, including ocean heatwaves, urban climate, hail, climate extremes, climate justice and numerous physical, natural and social tipping points. Our research is focused on advancing academic knowledge in interdisciplinary climate science and meeting the needs and demands of society.”
There have also been changes to the OCCR's Scientific Advisory Board. Hubertus Fischer (Past Climate and Biogeochemical Studies on Ice Cores Group group) has been a new member since 1 August.

New OCCR research clusters

cluster schema

At their retreat earlier this year, the leaders of the 40 OCCR research groups decided to organise research at the OCCR into six new thematic clusters and two platforms (technology, methods). The titles of these new organisational elements are

Clusters

  • Earth System Processes
  • Extremes, Tipping Points and (Managing) Risks
  • Climate Justice
  • Climate, Health and Cities
  • Biodiversity, Ecosystem Health
  • Societal Transition & Resilience

Platforms

  • Earth System and Climate Modeling
  • (Climate) Data Science and Analysis

Cluster workshops will be held before the end of this year to capture the science and profile and develop a roadmap of activities.

SNSF Lead Agency Grant

The Atmospheric Processes and Radiometry group has obtained an SNSF Lead Agency Grant for a project in collaboration with the University of Augsburg and the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen in which it has the consortia lead. The project is called GIGAWATT and will start in early 2025. It aims to set up a unique alpine observatory to monitor the atmosphere from the tropopause to the mesosphere, and it wants to measure winds and temperatures and study gravity wave dynamics at the MLT using tomographic techniques. It is planned to install a Swiss meteor radar and a FAIM all-sky camera with airglow camera in Zimmerwald. A total of three postdocs and one doctoral student will be funded as part of the project.

Effective solutions to regulate plastics

The Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance Group has secured funding for a new project of the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS). The project is entitled ‘Getting beyond the mess: Investigating effective solutions to regulate plastics’ and brings together researchers from the OCCR (project leader Marlene Kammerer), EAWAG, ETHZ, Empa and various institutions in Bhutan. Plastic is a problem because of the high CO2 emissions generated during its production, among other things. Excessive production, overconsumption and incorrect waste management cause health and environmental issues on a global scale. This is why a new multilateral agreement on plastics (UN Plastics Treaty) is currently being negotiated.  While initial attempts have been made to assess plastics policies worldwide, there is still a lack of systematic assessments and comparisons, particularly regarding barriers to implementation and stakeholder perspectives. This project aims to close this research gap.

New video for Climate Master’s

new video

The Graduate School of Climate Sciences at the OCCR is promoting its Master's programme with a new video. Current and former students play the leading role in the short film. Watch the video.

The new ProClim Flash is out

The latest edition of ProClim Flash, the Swiss magazine on climate and global change, has just been published, the main topic is climate change and health. As usual, the magazine contains a double page on the OCCR. ProClim is a forum of the Swiss Academy of Sciences and serves as an interface for communication between science, public administration, politics, economy and the public. Register for the ProClim network or subscribe to the different ProClim publications.

Past Events

Summer School 2024

Summerschool 2024

The 22nd Swiss Climate Summer School took place 1 – 6 September 2024 in Grindelwald. It was attended by 69 participants from 24 nations, and it focused on the theme “Climate Change: From the Dawn of the Anthropocene to Options for the Future”. 

Lecturers for keynotes and workshops included among others Myles Allen, Oxford U; Erich Fischer, ETH Zurich; Hubertus Fischer, U Bern; Thomas Frölicher, U Bern; Nicolas Gruber, ETH Zurich; Gabriele Hegerl, U Edinburgh; Reto Knutti, ETH Zurich; Valerie Masson-Delmotte, LSCE, and Axel Timmermann, U Busan. Many of them were companions on the long career of former OCCR President Thomas Stocker who retired this summer and has said goodbye as one of the pillars of the Summer School with this issue.

"Beating the Heat" Conference 2024

Beating the heat

On 11 September, the third edition of the ‘Beating the Heat’ conference co-organised by the OCCR took place at the VonRoll-Areal in Bern. More than 80 researchers, students and practitioners from Switzerland and neighbouring countries accepted Moritz Gubler's (Climatology group) invitation to share their findings from research projects, case studies and practical implementations.

They were offered exciting keynotes on the perspectives of federal institutions (Vincent Roth, FOEN), science (Moritz Burger and Julien Anet, University of Bern and MeteoSwiss) and practice (Thies Brunken, Uniola) as well as presentations and posters on this year's main topic ‘Challenges of climate change adaptation in cities’. The next edition of the conference will be held in Basel.

Upcoming Events

Paris Climate Agreement

On 2 October,16:30 a seminar with Jeff Colgan will take place at Silva Casa Auditorium, Hallerstrasse 6, Bern. Jeff Colgan is a ‘Richard Holbrooke’ Professor of Political Science and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab at the Watson Institute of Public and International Affairs at Brown University. The title of the seminar is “Has the Paris Climate Agreement Changed Corporate Behaviour?” This event is jointly organised by the OCCR, the World Trade Institute and the Wyss Academy (no registration required).

Mobiliar Lab Lecture

This year's Mobiliar Lab Lecture will take place on 5 November at 17:15 in lecture hall 001 of the Department of Geography at Hallerstrasse 12 (in German). Under the title ‘Records and black swans’, Prof. Dr Erich Fischer from ETH Zurich will talk about why record precipitation and other unprecedented extremes are on the rise (no registration required).

D·A·CH 2025 Meteorology Conference

D·A·CH is a triannual conference on Meteorology, Climatology and related topics, under the auspices of the German, Austrian and Swiss Societies for Meteorology (DMG; ÖGM; SGM). The D·A·CH 2025 Meteorology Conference is hosted by the Oeschger Centre and will take place at the ExWi building, University of Bern, from Monday, 23 to Friday, 27 June 2025. The conference aims to bring together academics and professionals from industry and administration. Abstract submissions and registrations can be made online at dach2025.ch from November. Save the date

Summer School 2025

The 23rd International Swiss Climate Summer School will take place from 24 to 29 August 2025 on Monte Verità, Ascona, Ticino. Its title is: Sustainable pathways to net zero. See the programme and registration details here.

ConTaSed 2025

The 3rd International Conference on Contaminated Sediments will take place in Bern from 2 to 4 September 2025. ConTaSed 2025 will focus on natural and synthetic pollutants, in particular emerging and persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, microplastics and natural toxins. Another focus will be on risk assessment, remediation and policy.

People

New professor for Experimental Climate Physics

Eliza Harris

Eliza Harris has joined the OCCR as a new professor for Experimental Climate Physics. She succeeds Markus Leuenberger, who will retire early next year, and will also become the new Director of the Research Stations Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat. Eliza is a biogeochemist interested in greenhouse gas cycles and in particular the nitrogen cycle but has also comprehensive experience in data sciences. She graduated from the University of Tasmania in Antarctic Sciences before completing her PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry in Mainz working on sulfur isotopes to understand SO2 oxidation.

During postdoctoral stays at MIT, Empa and later as Research Associate at the University of Innsbruck, she specialised in the use of (site specific) N2O analysis to understand the processes going on during biogenic N2O production. Over the last 3 years, she further developed her expertise in Data Sciences working as Senior Scientist at the Swiss Data Science Center in Zurich.

SNFS Consolidator Grant

Christoph Schwörer

Christoph Schwörer (Paleoecology group) is supported by the SNSF for his innovative project ‘Assessment of past and future responses of forests to the effects of climate change using ancient DNA (ARIaDNA)’. The project was awarded an SNSF Consolidator Grant totaling CHF 2.2 million and it will run for five years. ARIaDNA aims to find out whether and how plants have been able to adapt to rapid climate warming in the past. This should lead to a better understanding of how ecosystems react to climate change and help to develop new management strategies.

SNSF Ambizione Grant I

Hilla Gerstmann

Hilla Gerstmann has been awarded an Ambizione Grant and will become part of the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research. She holds a PhD in Atmospheric Dynamics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and is currently working as a Postdoc at the University of Lausanne and at ETH Zurich. Her Ambizione project is called "Forecasting midlatitude storm impacts beyond current predictability limits". The goal of the project is to improve the prediction of extreme winter storms in the North Atlantic and Europe over sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales - ranging from two weeks to two months.

By using state-of-the-art idealised climate models, statistical methods and machine learning, as well as risk assessment models, the project aims to identify key atmospheric factors and precursors that drive the frequency and intensity of mid-latitude storms.

SNSF Ambizione Grant II

Fabrice Lacroix

Fabrice Lacroix has joined the OCCR as an SNSF Ambizione Fellow in the Geocomputation and Earth Observation group. The awarded project will assess future changes of the pan-Arctic Nitrogen feedback. The project focuses on determining the impacts of increased nitrogen release from permafrost thaw for pan-Arctic vegetation growth, as well as for the emission of the important greenhouse gas N2O. The project aims to advance state-of-the-art terrestrial biosphere modelling in the field of Arctic change while incorporating data provided from current field campaigns.

The interdisciplinary environment of the OCCR provides the perfect framework for the connection of different research areas touched by the project.

Theodor Kocher Prize

Lukas Fesenfeld

Lukas Fesenfeld (Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group) receives the Theodor Kocher Prize of the University of Bern.  The award will be presented to him at this year's Dies Academicus. The prize, endowed with 50,000 Swiss Francs, is awarded to young researchers at the University of Bern for outstanding and innovative scientific achievements in a specialised area or field.
Lukas holds a doctorate from ETH Zurich. He has been a Senior Researcher at the OCCR since 2020.

His scientific interests include the governance of global food system transformation. From 2021 to 2023 he was the principle investigator for the project The Political Economy of Meat System Transformation, funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies.

Haller Medal

Sandra Brügger

Former OCCR PhD Sandra Brügger has been awarded the Haller Medal of the University of Bern. The award will be presented to her at this year's Dies Academicus. Sandra is pursuing her scientific career with determination. After her doctorate she moved on to the USA as an SNSF Postdoc.Mobility fellow. The paleoecologist has been researching in Switzerland again since 2022. She received an SNFS Ambizione grant for her project ‘FrozenEcosystems - Understanding Siberia's past with a combination of state-of-the-art and next-

generation ice core methods’ and is now project leader in the Geoecology research group in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel.

Special honour from the Royal Statistical Society

Jonathan Koh Boon Han

Jonathan Koh Boon Han (Mathematical and Applied Statistics group) received a special honour at the Royal Statistical Society 2024 conference in Brighton. His paper ‘Extreme-value modelling of migratory bird arrival dates: Insights from citizen science data' was “read” in the discussion meeting on the analysis of citizen science data in one of the plenary sessions of the RSS conference). The RSS discussion session is a long-standing tradition where sessions consist of statistical papers selected by the society for discussion.

Climate history from Bern in Hungarian

book cover

OCCR Emeriti Christian Pfister and Heinz Wanner are celebrating success with their 2021 book Climate and Society in Europe - The Last Thousand Years. After an English version has been available for some time, a translation into Hungarian has just been published. The book is called "Klíma és társadalom Európában. Az utolsó ezer év" and was translated by Hungarian climate and environmental historian Lajos Racz. A French version will also be available soon.

Researchers who have recently joined the OCCR:

Sina Chiara Aregger is a new PhD student with the Paleoecology group. She did a Master in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern with a thesis entitled „Climate and human forcing of montane vegetation dynamics during the past 15,600 years in the Simmental, Northern Swiss Alps“. The title of her PhD project is “Past and future vegetation, land use, and climate dynamics in Ossola and neighboring areas”.

Alec Baird is a new Postdoc with the Plant Genetics and Development group. He did a PhD on integrative plant physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests are in evolution of leaf functional diversity, allometry of leaves, leaf physiological adaptation to climate, and developmental constraints to leaf form and function within and across species. Alec has joined the OCCR with a Postdoctoral fellowship from the SNFS.

Markella Bouchorikou is a new PhD student with the Earth System Modelling - Atmospheric Dynamics group. She did a Master in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern with a thesis entitled "The Calanda Fire, 1943: Modelling a fire case study with WRF." The working title of her PhD project is: “Reconstructing of Hydroclimate Variability in Southwest Asia: High-Resolution Paleoclimate Modeling and Climate Proxy Integration”.

Martin Felder is a new PhD student with the Quaternary Geology and Paleoclimatology group. He did a Master in Earth Sciences at ETH Zürich with a thesis entitled "Reconstruction of high-alpine paleoenvironment using lake sediments of the Jöri Lakes in Graubünden, Switzerland".  The working title of his PhD project is: “Multiple interglacial sequences in a Darwin-type barrier-reef lagoon: Implications for paleoclimate, sea-level changes and subsidence since the Middle Pleistocene”.

Dorra Gharbi is a new Postdoc with the Paleoecology group. She completed a PhD in Aerobiology at the University of Malaga, Spain. Earlier, she received an engineering degree in Natural Resources Management and an MSc in Plant Breeding. Her research is about aerobiology (pollen and fungal spores analysis), their relationships with air pollution and meteorology, phenology and climate change influence. Dora is part of a new research project funded by Innosuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency. The project "MARVEL–Emerging data services based on real time pollen monitoring” is a collaboration between partners from industry (Swisens AG) and research (METAS, FHNW, UniBE). The primary aim of the project is to provide allergy sufferers worldwide with real-time information and short-term forecasts of allergenic pollen in the air. For this, the project will combine a new measurement device with artificial intelligence to identify and quantify airborne pollen.

Hendrik Grosselindemann is a new PhD student with the Ocean Modelling group. He did a Master in Climate Physics at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany with a thesis entitled “Long-term variability of Agulhas Leakage and its embedding into the global overturning”.

Gautier Juret-Rafin is a visiting PhD student with the Environmental History and Historical Climatology group. He does his PhD in climate history at the University of Grenoble-Alpes (France) and will join the OCCR for the full academic year of 2024 / 2025. His PhD thesis is entitled “Brescia  and the Climate Between 1680 and 1720: A Study at the Intersection of Historical and Literary Sources”. This thesis aims to analyse the influence of climate on local human societies in Northern Italy, examining social, religious, economic, and psychological interactions. Gautier will be pleased to collaborate with the Euro-Climhist team and will be happy meeting fellow researchers in the OCCR community.

Alejandro Hermoso is a new Postdoc with the Earth System Modelling: Atmospheric Dynamics group. He will be part of the Horizon-ClimTIP project. Alejandro will perform dynamical downscaling of atmospheric variables over tropical regions, under future global warming and under tipping elements. For this, a set of global models will serve as boundary conditions and the regional simulations will be used to simulate the climate in a better quality than the global models, to better understand atmospheric processes and test whether bias correction methods in machine-learning programs can be improved with dynamical regional downscaling.

Catalina Medina is a new PhD student with the Atmospheric Processes and Radiometry group. She is an Electrical Engineer from University of Chile and holds a MSc degree from the same University in the topic of Astronomical Instrumentation. Before getting to Bern her research was on radio astronomy instrumentation and on sensor networks for geophysics, glaciology and weather measurements. Her PhD research will focus on the optics and calibration of microwave remote sensing instruments, i.e. optical design and calibration of microwave radiometers for atmospheric remote sensing.

Veronica Nooijen is a new scientific staff member with the Agriculture, Water and Climate Change group. She holds a MSc in Forest and Nature Conservation from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

Philipp Schmid is a new PhD student with the Atmospheric Processes and Radiometry group. He received a MSc degree in physics from EPF Lausanne.  In collaboration with the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss), he investigated wet radome effects in operational weather radars for his master thesis. Before the start of his PhD project, he developed automated calibration routines for weather radar target simulators at Palindrome Remote Sensing GmbH in Landquart. His PhD project is about the monitoring of the solar radio flux and its use for the calibration of the operational weather radars of MeteoSwiss.

Vjeran Visnjevic is a new Postdoc with the Ice Sheet Dynamics group. He holds a MSc in Geophysics from the University of Zagreb and did his PhD at the University of Lausanne. Before joining the OCCR he worked as a Postdoc at the University of Tübingen. During his Postdoc position, Vjeran will employ state-of-the-art ice sheet models to improve the representation of ice-bed interfaces (e.g. basal sliding, freeze-on) constrained by the isochronal record in Antarctic drainage sectors.

A warm welcome to all of you!

Researchers who have recently left the OCCR:

Natacha Le Grix who was a PhD with the Ocean Modelling group will continue her research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool.

Stéphanie Musy who was a PhD with the Environmental Isotopes and Gases group. He has a new position at the University of Basel and ETH / EAWAG, Stéphanie is investigating the hydrological system around Mount Fuji in Japan using novel tracers and real-time on-site monitoring.

Evelien Van Dijk who was a Postdoc with the Past volcanism and climate impact group and worked in the ERC Consolidator Grant Project THERA. In her future job she will carry out risk analyses of volcanic eruptions in past, present and future periods, but in her new position as a Postdoc in the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark, it will have a stronger focus on societal impact.
 
All the best for your future career!

Recent journal publications by OCCR members

See all the publications by OCCR members.