As governments intensify efforts to decarbonize their energy systems in response to climate change, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has (re-)introduced energy security as a potentially competing policy priority. A new study using original survey data from Germany and Switzerland investigates whether the public perceives energy security and energy transition as complementary or conflicting. The study is led by OCCR researcher Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen.

OCCR member Jens Terhaar is the lead author of the study ‘Atlantic overturning inferred from air-sea heat fluxes indicates no decline since the 1960s’, which was published in Nature Communications. It concludes that ocean circulation in the North Atlantic has not weakened in the last 60 years. These results contradict earlier assumptions.

A paper co-authored by several OCCR researchers and published in the journal Nature shows how a lawsuit is reshaping the role of agriculture in climate policy. They explain why, in March last year, a group of farmers turned to the Swiss courts to force the government to do more to act on climate change before their farms become unviable. The plaintiffs presented evidence that anthropogenic, climate-related drought and heat, increasing storms, hail and changes in the seasons have led to losses of 10–40% in annual turnover over the past three years.

An OCCR research group has published a study in The Science of the Total Environment that shows the traces of historical land use in today's landscape. The publication is based on sedimentary data from northern Greece covering the last 9000 years. Using palaeoecological proxies (pollen, spores, stomata, microscopic charcoal), the researchers were able to reconstruct the long-term dynamics of vegetation and thus evaluate the environmental factors controlling it.

An interdisciplinary study by various OCCR members addresses the intricate relationships between heat, humidity and health outcomes. The article published in ‘Environmental Research Letters’ introduces so-called ‘directed acyclic graphs’ (DAGs) as causal models to elucidate the analytical complexity in observational epidemiological studies that focus on humid-heat-related health impacts.

A study led by OCCR members Christian Pfister (Emeritus) and Stefan Brönnimann (Climatology group) shows that wine must quality based on expert judgement is suitable for reconstructing past summer temperatures, provided that the documentary evidence is critically evaluated. Where grape harvest data are lacking, must quality can be the most reliable high-resolution proxy for summer temperature. This is invaluable for determining dry summers and cold, wet seasons.