Seminar Series

The Seminar Series, organised by OCCR research groups, is public and open to all interested parties.

Paper of the month

Discussion of concepts of weather persistence

The dynamics responsible for persistence and their potential evolution under climate change are a much-discussed topic in meteorology. Now, OCCR researchers Alexandre Tuel and Olivia Martius present existing concepts of weather persistence, associated methodologies and physical interpretations in a review paper in the journal Earth System Dynamics. In particular, they call attention to the fact that persistence can be defined as a global or as a local property of a system, with important implications in terms of methods and impacts.

Swiss Climate
Summer School 2024

The 22nd International Swiss Climate Summer School will take place from 1 to 6 September 2024 in Grindelwald, Switzerland. It focuses on the topic "Climate Change: From the Dawn of the Anthropocene to Options for the Future". The aim of this interdisciplinary summer school is to bring together young researchers with established scientists from different disciplines. Registration is now open.

Postdoc in 'Climate extremes and soil microorganisms’

The Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research invites applications for a Postdoc position in 'Climate extremes and soil microorganisms’.

Great honour

20 November 2023

Michael Sigl, head of the OCCR research group Palaeovolcanism and Climate Impacts, has been honoured with the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for 2024. This prestigious prize is awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of ice research or short-term climatic changes in the past, present and future. Michael Sigl's research focusses on the effects of past volcanic eruptions on society, among other things.

Erfolgreich lancierte Diskussion

31. Oktober 2023

Die vom OCCR mitorganisierte Tagung «Klimaschutz und Subventionen: Braucht es Reformen?» vom 20. Oktober 2023 war ein voller Erfolg. Der Anlass hat Subventionen in der klimarechtlichen Diskussion einem breiten Kreis bekannt gemacht. So nahm unter anderem die renommierte Radiosendung «Echo der Zeit» von Schweizer Radio SRF das Thema auf.

Phosphorous – too much in lakes, too little in the soil

27 October 2023

Over-fertilised waterways, impoverished soils: the use of phosphorous in agriculture is creating a dilemma, and it all began thousands of years ago. This has been verified by an analysis coordinated by the OCCR. An international team has made a reconstruction of how much phosphorous around the world has been washed from soils into lakes and stored there over the last few thousand years. Data from 108 lakes around the world enabled the researchers to make a global projection of phosphorous entry into lakes for the first time.

Global Climate of the Past Six Centuries

25 September 2023

On 10 November 2023 a mini symposium takes place regarding a new climate reconstruction, termed “Modern Era Reanalysis”. ModE-RA, is the outcome of the ERC Advanced Grant PALAEO-RA awarded to OCCR member Stefan Brönnimann

New professor for climate physics

22 August 2023

OCCR member Thomas Frölicher has been appointed by the Executive Board of the University of Bern as a full professor of climate and environmental physics as of 1 August 2024. He succeeds Thomas Stocker, who will retire in summer 2024. Thomas Frölicher is a specialist in ocean and climate modelling and has been an SNSF assistant professor at the University of Bern since 2017.

Mathias Zesiger hält Mobilar Lecture

25. September 2023

Am 22. November 2023 findet die traditionelle Mobilar Lecture statt. Mathias Zesiger von swisstopo spricht über «Rapid Mapping - Geodaten für die Bewältigung und Dokumentation von Naturereignissen». Er leitet beim Bundesamt für Landestopografie den Teilprozess Kriseninformation.

Could artificially dimming the sun prevent ice melt?

13 August 2023

With methods of so-called geoengineering, the climate could theoretically be artificially influenced and cooled. Researchers of the OCCR have now investigated whether it would be possible to prevent the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet by artificially "dimming the sun". The results, which have just benn published in Nature Climate Change, show that artificial influence does not work without decarbonization and entails high risks.

New book on palaeoecology

15 August 2023

OCCR member Willy Tinner is one of the editors of a new book entitled
“Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics of Europe”. Based on palaeoecological studies by many authors, this book gives an overview of the changing history of the European plant cover during the past 2.6 million years, characterized by numerous cold and warm periods. For the first time, a detailed synthesis is presented of the many findings on European vegetation dynamics, which are complex and increasingly difficult to summarize.

Global warming caused 60 percent of Swiss heat deaths in the summer of 2022

4 July 2023

Climate change is intensifying heat, leading to a significant increase in heat-related health problems. About 60 percent of the more than 600 heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022 in Switzerland can be attributed to human-induced global warming. This is shown by a study just published in “Environmental Research Letters” journal led by OCCR member Ana Vicedo.

Tree rings show: it has never been this warm in the last 1200 years

2 August 2023

OCCR member Georg von Arx is co-author of a paper just published in the journal Nature that could have far-reaching implications for understanding the climate of the past. The study, based on a new 1200-year time series using tree rings, shows that the medieval climate anomaly was cooler than previously thought. The authors used a new method to reconstruct temperatures from tree rings. They directly measured the cell wall thickness of the wood cells in the annual tree rings.

She makes dripstones talk

25 Mai 2023

Paleoclimatologist Franziska Lechleitner climbs into caves and examines stalagmites to unravel climatic changes of the past. Those, for example, that may have played a role in the collapse of the Mayan civilisation 1100 years ago.

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