Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

News 2021

Eccellenza Fellowship

22 November 2021

OCCR member Charlotte Laufkötter has received a highly competitive Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship by the Swiss National Science Foundation. "Eccellenza enables researchers to conduct an independent project at assistant professor level with their own team", reads an SNFS media release. In her Eccellenza project, Charlotte Laufkötter will investigate the ocean's biological carbon pump.

City heat effect despite rain

2 November 2021

We have already become accustomed to hot summers, which is why last summer seemed particularly cool. For the researchers of "Urban Climate Bern", however, the season was not out of the ordinary. In other words: This summer's measurements also document the consequences of climate change.

Mental patients suffer more from climate change

15 October 2021

A new study by the OCCR draws attention to a previously neglected group that suffers particularly from climate change: psychiatric patients. In this interview, the three main authors of the study explain why mentally ill people are particularly vulnerable.

New Vice-President

11 October 2021

Karin Ingold was elected by the OCCR Scientific Committee as the new Vice-President of the Oeschger Centre. She is a professor of political science and heads the OCCR group "Policy Analysis with a Focus on the Environment". Her main research interests are: Policy Analysis, Policy Process Theory, Instrument Design, Environmental Policy and the Application of Social Network Analysis.

Learning from extreme events

23 September 2021

For once, the traditional autumn event of the Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks did not take place in a lecture hall, but at the scene of an extreme event, in the centre of Zofingen, a small Swiss town which was severely damaged by a torrential thunderstorm rain in 2017.

Climate and Society in Europe

2 September 2021

OCCR members and professors emeriti Christian Pfister and Heinz Wanner are the authors of “Climate and Society in Europe – The Last Thousand Years”. For the first time, a historian and a climatologist with knowledge of climate history have worked closely together to create a unique book, combining climate reconstructions based on documented data in their human-historical context with temporally highly resolved analyses of climate and glaciers. The book is published by Haupt, Berne.

The first farmers of Europe

31 August 2021

A research team from the OCCR has managed to precisely date pile dwellings on the banks of Lake Ohrid in the south-western Balkans for the first time: they came into being in the middle of the 5th millennium BC. The region around the oldest lake in Europe played a key role in the proliferation of agriculture.

Diving campaign in Albania

5 July 2021

The OCCR group Prehistoric Archaeology is currently conducting a diving campaign near Lin on the Albanian shore of Lake Ohrid. The work is part of the multidisciplinary project EXPLO. The focus of the current fieldwork is on archaeological remains of a pile-dwelling settlement. The research promises new insights into the first farming societies in the Southern Balkans from the 6th millennium BC onwards.

Picture of measurements in the high mountains

Scientific Image Competition

29 April 2021

OCCR member Lukas Munz is one of the winners of the SNSF Scientific Image Competition 2021. Using a telescope he photographed his research partner during measurements. This snapshot in the high mountains was awarded the first prize in the category "The Women and Men of Science". For the jury, the austere frame of the picture underlines the "importance of mutual trust" under extreme conditions."

Swiss climate politics

22 April 2021

Numerous OCCR members are among the over one hundred climate researchers who have joined the campaign for the CO2 law being voted on in Switzerland on 12 June, 2021. In their statement they write: "We must act NOW. With the widely supported CO2 Act, we are taking an important step in the right direction. Therefore we scientists are saying YES to the CO 2 Act."

Interview on the topic with Thomas Stocker (in German)
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Climate change and water

18 March 2021

Various OCCR members have contributed to the report "Effects of climate change on Swiss water bodies", published by the Federal Office for the Environment. Its main message is that climate change will have a major effect on the seasonal availability of water. The hydrological scenarios Hydro-CH2018 show that in some regions, this key resource will sometimes become so scarce or so warm that humans will have to limit its use and nature will suffer.

See video statement.
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Picture of the nuclear power plant Beznau

Extreme flooding

23 February 2021

Various OCCR researchers helped prepare the recently published report (in German) Extreme Flooding Aare-Rhine (EXAR). The study makes risk assessment possible even for very rare events. Detailed hazard analyses were carried out for five sites, including the Mühleberg, Gösgen and Beznau nuclear power plants. The findings provide authorities and plant operators with a sound basis to better protect critical infrastructure against extreme flooding.

Understanding future climate risks

27 January 2021

With global warming, extreme events like heatwaves and droughts of unimaginable proportions are becoming a possibility. Olivia Romppainen, co-organizer of an international conference on the subject, explains why we need a better understanding of these combined weather and climate events – so-called compound events.

Climate change and the seasons

13 January 2021

The BernClim observation network is celebrating its 50th anniversary. To mark the occasion, there's a new brochure out in German: "Klimawandel und Jahreszeiten". It was produced by a team of researchers here at OCCR, and it highlights the importance of phenological observations while showing how climate change affects the seasons.