Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

March 2022

General News 

Events 

People 

Publications  

 

General News

Good news: The OCCR budget remains unchanged

The OCCR has received a first draft of the performance mandate (Leistungsauftrag) from the university management. The most important part of this agreement from the perspective of the OCCR members is the budget. It will remain unchanged for the next four years. This is good news as it provides planning security and enables continuous support of projects, workshops, lectures, events and people affiliated to the OCCR.

Three ERC Starting Grants for OCCR members

ERC grants

The OCCR was exceptionally successful in the calls for ERC Starting Grants in 2021. Three out of four grants awarded to researchers at the University of Bern went to OCCR members. Historian Heli Huhtamaa will receive funding for the project "Climatic impact and human consequences of past volcanic eruptions". The marine scientist Charlotte Laufkötter was awarded for the project "Mechanistic model simulations of the marine biological carbon pump". And ecologist Madhav Thakur received a Starting Grant for "Food Webs and Biodiversity Change in an Extreme World".

New research groups

The OCCR has two new research groups.
Maddy Takur, who has already been an associate of the OCCR, is now represented with his own research group. He is an assistant professor and the head of the Terrestrial Ecology Division of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution. On his personal website he writes: “I test theories of community ecology against global change factors using experiments, observations and syntheses.”
Isabelle Stadelmann will also have her own OCCR research group. She has been part of the OCCRs Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group. She is an associate professor and holds the Chair of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Political Science. Her main research interest is in comparative public policy.

ERC awardees want to stay at the OCCR

How do Swiss researchers react to the pressure from the European Union? As a reminder, the European Research Commission has told the Switzerland-based awardees they can only receive the ERC Starting Grant if they move to an institution in the EU. The background to this decision is the dispute between the EU and Switzerland over the Bilateral Agreements.
OCCR researchers have clearly decided to stay in Bern - and they explained their reasons for this decision in various media interviews: “This would mean relocating myself and finding the most suitable institution in another country, and then starting from scratch,” Heli Huhtamaa is quoted in an article by Science. Heli told the magazine that she will forgo the ERC award and collect an equivalent national funding. Indeed, the Swiss government launched a backup system for funding successful applicants who want to stay.
Madhav Thakur received offers from Swedish universities as well as from Italy and Spain. For him, however, it was clear from the beginning that he wanted to stay at the University of Bern, he told the Berner Zeitung. "The thought of switching to another university never really occurred to me.” In Berne, he said, he had great colleagues and a good environment for his research.

How much water does Swiss agriculture need?

Swiss agriculture

The Climate and Agriculture group has secured funding from the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The new project is called SwissIrrigationInfo.
Its objectives are to compile available data on agricultural water use and derive recommendations for future data collection.

It will use methods based on remote sensing and modelling to estimate water use for irrigation, and to lay the groundwork for developing decision support tools for sustainable, farsighted resource planning.

Events

16-17 June 2022: Young Researchers Meeting 2022

The Young Researchers Meeting is an annual two-day workshop for PhDs and PostDocs, organized by the OCCR. This year, it is dedicated to career planning, with keynotes, experience talks, individual work, and inputs on decision-making, personal profile, or strategies for both academia and industry careers. The meeting takes place in Aeschi bei Spiez on 16 - 17 June 2022 Save the dates; the program and registration will soon be out.

26 April 2022: Apéro Series for young researchers

OCCR apero series

The "Apéro" event series aims to improve networking among the young researchers at the Oeschger Centre. In earlier days of the OCCR, the meetings, which consist of short presentations of PhD projects and an aperitif, were held regularly with success, then they were somewhat forgotten. Now the "Apéro Series" concept is being revived.

The kick-off will be given by the PhD students of the Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group. They invite all OCCR PhDs and PostDocs to meet them at the Institute of Political Science on 26 April 2022. More detailed information will follow in due time.

6 May 2022: Climate Change, Digitalization, and Sustainability

The OCCR research group Climate Change and the Law: Challenges in Practice and Legal Theory organizes a workshop on climate change, digitalization, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It will take place in Bern on 6 May 2022. The event is called "Linking Climate Change, Digitalization, and Sustainability: Bringing Early Career Academics to Turn Foresights into Action in Times of Crisis". PhDs (at the late stage of their research) and PostDocs from social sciences (especially international law) are invited to present their research. For details contact OCCR member Aylin Yildiz.

18 May 2022: Event on floods

The Mobilar Lab's traditional spring event will take place on 18 May 2022. Details are not yet known but the organizers promise a  very special  event… So if you are just curios or specially interested in floods save the date. More information will follow on the Mobiliar Lab website in mid-March.

23 May 2022: Heat in the city

Together with the city of Bern and the energy provider ewb, the OCCR is organizing a networking event on the topic of heat in the city. The event is meant for employees of the city administration and politicians. The half-day meeting is entitled "Bern responds to climate change: research and practice" and will take place on 23 May 2022.

Federal Square Bern, Switzerland
Federal Square Bern, Switzerland

16 September 2022: Beating the Heat rescheduled

The conference on urban climate and impacts organized by the OCCRs Climatology group had to be rescheduled. It will now take place on 16 September 2022 in Bern. The conference is called “Beating the Heat”. It will offer an opportunity to present findings from past and on-going research projects, and it aims to provide a platform for networking and strengthening the exchange of the Swiss research and service community, with a focus on the multifaceted interactions between cities, climate (change), and human health. See the conference website for the program and registration procedure.

Save the dates

28 June 2022:

Dana Fisher, Professor of Sociology University of Maryland, USA will hold “Blockkurs” (teaching by topic) on network analysis for MSc and PhD students at the University of Bern.

30 June 2022:

Naomi Oreskes, Professor of History and Sciences Studies, Harvard University, USA will give a public talk at the University of Bern and will meet with the students of the Graduate School of Climate Sciences.

12 September 2022:

Fall plenary of the OCCR.

14 February 2023:

Spring plenary of the OCCR.

People

Karin Ingold is the new president of ProClim

Karin Ingold

Karin Ingold PI of the Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group and Vice President of the OCCR has been elected as president of ProClim. ProClim is a forum for climate and global change, which seeks to facilitate both integrated research activities and the necessary linkages among scientists, policymakers, economy, and the public.

ProClim is concerned with the full palette of global change issues: the physical climate system, biogeochemical processes, and the human dimensions of global change. ProClim is part of the Platform Science and Policy (SAP) of the Swiss Academies of Sciences (SCNAT). Strategically, ProClim is led by a steering committee.

No. 1 in the media

OCCR member Ana Vicedo-Cabrera (Climate change and health group) was the lead author of the climate paper most featured in the media in 2021. This is reported by "Carbon Brief", a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. The study on heat-related mortality attributable to climate change was picked up in 865 online news stories by 617 media outlets. The study was also mentioned by 69 blog posts and 1286 tweets.

Sought-after volcano specialist

Michael Sigl, PI of the Past volcanism and climate impact group, was a sought-after interlocutor for the media after the eruption of the volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai on 13 –  15 January 2022 in the South Pacific. Following the eruptions, he gave various interviews to journalists from Der Bund, Tages-Anzeiger, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Science magazine, placing this eruption into context with global and regional volcanic activity in the past, present and future. See all the articles at the press coverage section of the OCCRs website.

Panel on Swiss food system

Lukas Fesenfeld, who is a PostDoc with the Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group, coordinates an expert panel that looks at the transformation of the Swiss food system. The interdisciplinary scientific panel is developing a basis for discussion as well as recommendations for action for Switzerland to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The expert panel was initiated by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Switzerland (SDSN), a UN initiative for science-based implementation of the global goals. It will publish its recommendations next autumn.

Research stays abroad

Several members of the Prehistoric Archaeology group are planning longer stays abroad.
PI Albert Hafner will join the ‘Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies’ at Yale University, USA as a visiting fellow from August 2022 to January 2023. He will be part of the research group “Environmental History at Yale”. PhD Marco Hostettler will complete a research stay at Uppsala University, SE as part of his PhD project. PhD Andrej Maczkowski has the opportunity to do a research stay in 2022 at the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) at the University of Arizona, USA through the UniBe Doc.Mobility grant scheme.

SNSF Doc.CH funding

Simon Montfort, who is a PhD with the Policy Analysis and Environmental Governance group, receives SNSF Doc.CH funding for his PhD project. Doc.CH is aimed at promising researchers who wish to write a doctoral thesis on a topic of their own choice in the humanities and social sciences in Switzerland. In his project, Simon will investigate the factors that influence the political feasibility of ambitious climate policy across sectors, such as energy, transport, or food systems in three studies: a systematic review on causal mechanisms with supervised machine learning, a quantitative analysis on policy replacement and a case study on the Swiss climate policy process. He aims to provide relevant insight for policy makers, the public and academics.

Top of her class

Chantal Hari

Chantal Hari graduated at the top of her class at the Graduate School of Climate Sciences and won a “2021 Oeschger Young Scientist’s Prize” for her achievement. The title of her MSc thesis reads: "An Evaluation of Meteorological Observations by Samuel Studer (1807-1818)". Now, as a doctoral student, she’s conducting research on the impact of climate change on biodiversity. Read the profile story on Chantal on the OCCR Website.

Second best of his class

Luc Hächler

Luc Hächler graduated second best in his class among the students of the Graduate School of Climate Sciences and was awarded a “2021 Oeschger Young Scientist’s Prize”. He wrote a MSc thesis called “High-resolution record of primary productivity and anoxia in the context of the environmental history of Lago di Mezzano, Central Italy, since the Late Glacial” and he sees his professional future as a geoinformation analyst. Read the profile story on Luc on the OCCR Website.

Researchers who have recently joined the OCCR:

Markus Adolff is a new PostDoc with the Earth System Modelling – Biogeochemical Cycles group. He holds a BSc and a MSc in Meteorology from the Hamburg University. He did his PhD on paleo-biogeochemical modelling at the University of Bristol and worked for a year as a PostDoc on reconstructing Eocene carbonate deposition at the University of Birmingham.

Martin Aregger is a new PhD with the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research. He holds a MSc in Climate Sciences from the University of Bern, and his research focus is on the detection and sizing of hail in polarimetric radar data. He is as well interested in the validation of the state-of-the-art forecasting models regarding their ability to accurately reproduce hail.

Coral Salvador is a new PostDoc with the Climate change and health group. She holds a degree in Biology and a MSc in Neuroscience from the Complutense University of Madrid. Coral did her PhD at the University of Vigo with a thesis focused on the impact of drought on mortality in the Iberian Peninsula. This thesis was a pioneering study in Europe, and it was among the winning theses in the university's extraordinary doctoral awards.  In her current research, she evaluates the impact of climatic and environmental events on specific aspects of human health. In her work, she puts a special emphasis on vulnerable groups such as children, elderly people, or pregnant women.

Chantal Hari is a new PhD with the Climate Scenarios for Sustainable Development group. She did a MSc in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern with a thesis titled “An Evaluation of Meteorological Observations by Samuel Studer (1807-1818)”. Her research focus at the Wyss Academy is on investigating linkages between climate, biodiversity, and land use, with an overarching goal to generate future projections for climate, biodiversity, and land use changes with a focus on the Academy’s Regional Stewardship Hubs.

Jonathan Koh is a new PostDoc with the Mathematical and Applied Statistics group and the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research group. He completed his PhD at EPF Lausanne with a thesis entitled “Spatiotemporal modelling of extreme wildfires and severe thunderstorm environments”. Jonathan holds a MSc in Quantitative Finance from the ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich. His broad research focus is on Extreme Value Theory (EVT), a branch of probability and statistics that deals with the analysis of extreme and rare events. His narrower research interest lies in developing tools from the intersection of EVT, spatial statistics, machine learning and forecasting verification, to help solve problems in the environmental sciences.

Christoph von Matt is a new scientific collaborator with the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research. His main scientific focus is on quantifying the co-occurrence of different drought types in Switzerland under current and future climate conditions. Christoph uses projections from regional climate models and hydrological models. He holds a MSc in Geography from the University of Bern.

Sidharth Sivaraj a new PhD with the Climate change and health group. He is a recipient of the ‘Dr. Alfred Bretscher Fellowship’. Sidharth completed his MSc in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern with a thesis entitled “Constraining the occurrence probability of compound hot and dry summers in CMIP5 models by using an observational constraint on the dependence between temperature and precipitation”. The working title of his PhD project is: “Assessment of the compounding effect of humidity and heat on human health from an epidemiological perspective”.

Daniel Steinfeld is a new PostDoc with the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research and in the Climatology group. He did his MSc in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern and his PhD in Atmospheric Dynamics at ETH Zurich. The focus of his research was on atmospheric and climate dynamics, aimed at analyzing physical processes that govern large-scale circulation and high-impact weather phenomena such as atmospheric blocking and windstorms. As a PostDoc, he will focus on hazardous forest fires in present and future climate in Switzerland.

Qing Sun is a new PostDoc with the Earth System Modelling – Biogeochemical Cycles group. Qing obtained a MSc in Agricultural Water-Soil Engineering at the China Agricultural University and did her PhD in Plant Sciences at ETH Zürich. In her new position, Qing will be investigating the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in terrestrial ecosystems using the LPX-Bern dynamic global vegetation model. Her work aims to understand the biogeochemical cycles under climate change, and it will contribute to the intercomparison studies of the Global Carbon Project.

Maria Eliza Turek

Maria Eliza Turek is a new PostDoc with the Climate and Agriculture group. She holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, with a specialization in environmental soil physics. Maria is particularly experienced in process-based crop modelling, soil hydraulic properties, soil water availability, and digital soil mapping. Her main research focus is on climate impacts on agroecosystem services, modelling of soil water dynamics, environmental engineering, and soil science.

Lena Wilhelm

Lena Wilhelm has started a PhD in the Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research. She obtained a MSc in Earth and Climate System Science at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, with a thesis entitled "Meteorological conditions for strongly warming contrails and statistics of contrails instantaneous radiative forcing". Her PhD project is on "Interannual and decadal variability of hail in Switzerland".

Aylin Yildiz

Aylin Yildiz is a new PostDoc with the Climate Change and the Law: Challenges in Practice and Legal Theory group. Her expertise is in sustainability (especially climate change and disasters), human mobility (migration, displacement, and planned relocation) and trade.
She joined the World Trade Institute (WTI) at the University of Bern in 2017 as a PhD in law and wrote her thesis on human mobility, human development, and environmental changes. Her thesis was titled “The International Protection of Persons Mobile in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change”.

A warm welcome to all of you!

Researchers who have recently left the OCCR:

Tito Arosio, who did his PhD with the Environmental Isotopes and Gases group is currently looking for a new position.
 
Matthias Aschwanden, who started a PhD project with the Ocean Modelling group, has quit his position due to health issues.
 
Eirini Boleti, who was a PostDoc with Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research, has joined the Swiss Re reinsurance company.
 
Alessio Ciullo, who was a PostDoc with Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research, has joined ETH Zurich as a PostDoc.
 
Christophe Espic, who did his PhD at the Laboratory for the Analysis of Radiocarbon with AMS (LARA) has joined the company "Envicontrol" in Belgium as a lab technical supervisor.
 
Andrey Martynov, who was a PostDoc with Mobiliar Group for Climate Impact Research, has joined the Geological Institute of the University of Bern as an IT specialist.
 
 
All the best for your future career!

Recent journal publications by OCCR members

See all the publications by OCCR members.