The following Conference Session topics comprise the 40 oral and poster sessions that will take place from Monday to Thursday at the Conference. There will be five parallel oral sessions each morning and afternoon. Each session will be 2 hours long, with a combination of invited speakers and speakers selected from the abstracts submitted. Posters will be hung on the day of the relevant session and online all week as well as before the conference. For the program at a glance, click here.
To get the description of a session, click on its title.
Theme 1: Advances in Climate Research
Convenors: Mat Collins - University of Exeter, UK; Lisa Alexander - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Nicola Maher - University of Colorado, USA
Session description: Focus on advances in understanding the characteristics and processes responsible for natural climate variability on intra-seasonal, seasonal-to-annual, annual-to-decadal, decadal to centennial, and centennial to millennial timescales.
Keynote speakers: Marisol Osman - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany / Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina (ECR); Julie Arblaster - Monash University, Australia; Masa Kageyama - Laboratoire des sciences du climat et l'environnement (IPSL-LSCE), France
Convenors: Noël Sébastien Keenlyside - Bergen University, Norway; Willem Landman - University of Pretoria, South Africa; Marisol Osman - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Germany / Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina; June-Yi Lee - Pusan National University, South Korea
Session description: Showcasing progress and challenges in understanding the predictability of Earth’s climate at time horizons from weeks to decades, and advances in the development of climate prediction systems including novel approaches such as those using AI/ML.
Convenors: Andy Turner - University of Reading, UK; Suryachandra Rao Anguluri - Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, India; Paola Andrea Arias Gomez - University of Antioquia, Colombia; Tereza Cavazos - Center of Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada, Mexico
Session Description : Advances in understanding, predicting and modeling monsoonal systems in the current and future climate.
Convenors: Thando Ndarana - University of Pretoria, South Africa; Tiffany Shaw - University of Chicago, USA; Marcia Zilli - University of Oxford, UK
Session description : Advances in understanding processes and variability of eddies, storm tracks and jets from mesoscale to planetary scale at all latitudes and levels in the atmosphere and ocean. Studies related to dynamical mechanisms of the storms and jet response to climate change will be included.
Keynote speakers: Amanda Maycock - Leeds University, UK; Sukyoung Lee - Penn State University, USA; Thando Ndarana - University of Pretoria, South Africa
Convenors: Helene Seroussi - Dartmouth Engineering, USA; Timothy Naish - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Session description : Antarctic and Arctic regions
Advances in understanding and modelling atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial processes and interactions governing climate variability and change in polar regions. This includes sea-ice and permafrost.
Convenors: Thomas Stocker - University of Bern, Switzerland; Katrin Meissner - University of New South Wales, Australia; Krishna Achuta Rao - Indian Institute of Technology, India
Session description: Advances in assessment, understanding, modeling and impact of potential rapid and/or irreversible changes (sometimes known as “tipping points”) in the climate system potential irreversible changes in ice sheets, sea-ice, forests, permafrost, AMOC and coral reefs etc.
Convenors: Eleanor Blyth - UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK; Anna Sörensson - Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina; Aihui Wang - Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), China
Session description: Processes involving land-air interactions, including the cycling of energy, water, carbon and momentum and boundary-layer dynamics and feedbacks. Four regional themes will be explored: (i) wet-tropical systems including rainfall-recycling and the impact of deforestation, (ii) processes that dominate semi-arid regions including small and large-scale atmospheric response to soil moisture dynamics, (iii) temperate systems including the important of agriculture and forestry on the physical climate system, and (iv) cold climate systems including the importance of snow cover. There will also be a focus on four emerging issues: (a) the role of vegetation and irrigation on monsoon systems, (b) key processes around wetlands, permafrost, peat soils and methane production, (c) understanding the response of ecosystems to slow changes in temperature, water and CO2 levels and (d) a focus on the impact of climate extremes and related phenomena such as fire on the atmosphere land interactions.
Keynote speakers: Francina Dominguez, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; Chris Taylor, UKCEH, UK; Dai Yongjiu , School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, China.
Convenors: Meghan Cronin - NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), USA; Precious Mongwe - Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa; Luciano Pezzi - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil
Session description : Processes involving air-sea interaction and air-sea ice interaction affecting regional and global climate, including surface energy fluxes, chemical interactions and dynamical interactions.
Keynote speakers: Lisa Miller - DFO Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS), Canada; Sarah-Anne Nicholson - Southern Ocean Carbon-Climate Observatory (SOCCO), CSIR, South Africa; Richard Cornes - National Oceanography Centre (NOC), UK
Convenors: Delphine Farmer - Colorado State University, USA; Alex Archibald - University of Cambridge, UK
Session description : Advances in understanding changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere and interactions between changing composition and climate. This includes processes governing stratospheric ozone, atmospheric aerosols, and interactions with climate, but not air pollution.
Convenors: Masa Kageyama - Laboratoire des sciences du climat et l'environnement (IPSL-LSCE), France; Cristiano Chiessi - Universidade de Sao Paolo, Brazil; Kira Rehfeld - Tuebingen university, Germany
Session description : Advances in the evaluation of climate sensitivity, feedbacks and regional climate change based on paleoclimate data. Improving the understanding of climate variability and response to external forcing on different time scales using paleoclimate data. Using paleoclimate modeling and data to improve climate parametrizations.
Keynote speaker: Yassine Ait Brahim - VI Polytechnic University, Morocco
Convenors: Bjorn Stevens - Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Germany; Ruby Leung - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA; Tianjun Zhou - Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Session description : Advances in global and regional climate and Earth System modelling, including the benefits of increasing resolution, improved parametrizations and ensembles for exploring uncertainty. Including novel techniques with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Convenors: Toste Tanua - GEOMAR, Germany; Han Dolman - Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ), The Netherlands; Magdalena Balmaseda - ECMWF, UK; Juan Ruiz - Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina
Session description : Advances in observing the climate system, including new space-based and Earth-based platforms, new technologies, and new data sets, and advances in data assimilation and reanalysis, with a particular focus on climate science requirements and opportunities. Including novel techniques with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Theme 2: Human Interactions with Climate
Convenors: Galen McKinley - Columbia University, USA; Pedro Monteiro - Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Ana Bastos - Max-Planck-Institut für Biogeochemie, Germany.
Session description : Advances in understanding of the land and ocean carbon cycle perturbation over the historical period and into the 21st century and beyond.
Keynote speakers: Pep Candell - CSIRO, Australia ; Precious Mongwe - CSIR, South Africa ; Junjie Liu - NASA JPL, USA ; Kirsten Zickfeld - Simon Fraser University, Canada.
Convenors: Sonia Seneviratne - ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Graeme Stephens - JPL Science - NASA, USA
Session description : Advances in understanding on changes in the global energy budget in the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land-cryosphere systems.
Convenors: Jan Polcher - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD-IPSL), France; Moussa Diakhaté - Université Amadou Mahtar Mbow (UAM), Senegal; Marie-Amelie Boucher - Université de Sherbrooke, Canada; Dewi Kirono - CSIRO, Australia
Session description : The water cycle is under the combined influence of anthropogenic climate change and human water management aimed at optimising our resources. This session aims to explore recent progress in our understanding of these two drivers, their interactions and how they will impact water availability in the coming decades or how they have shaped the evolution of water resources in the past. The session should also cover efforts to quantify the water cycle as this is the basis for detecting and estimating the magnitude of human impacts. Abstracts covering these topics in the various components of the Earth system are solicited. The session aims to be multi-disciplinary and welcomes contributions from the various scientific disciplines dealing with the hydrological cycle.
Convenors: William Lipscomb - UCAR, USA; Petra Langebroek - Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Norway; Natalya Gomez - McGill, Canada
Session description : This will include current and future changes in ice sheets dynamics, sea level rise and their impacts on natural and human systems.
Convenors: Sandrine Bony - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD-IPSL), France; Steven Sherwood - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Masahiro Watanabe - University of Tokyo, Japan
Session description : Advances in understanding the physical feedbacks which shape the climate response to radiative forcings, and their combination to determine transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity. The role of clouds in the climate system is a particular focus.
Keynote speakers: Adrian Tompkins - ICTP Trieste, Italy; Trude Storelvmo - University of Oslo, Norway; Nadir Jeevanjee - NOAA/GFDL, USA
Convenors: Roland Séférian - Météo France, France; Chris Smith - University of Leeds, UK
Session description : The effective radiative forcing has emerged as the key metric of evaluating human and natural influence on the climate. Several components remain uncertain, particularly regionally heterogenous forcings such as aerosols and short-lived, chemically active greenhouse gases including methane. This session aims to conduct a community discussion on the assessment of anthropogenic and natural radiative forcings and their interaction with historical and future scenarios. Contributions investigating how historical and future radiative forcing could interface with climate mitigation pathways and other components of climate system uncertainty including climate sensitivity and carbon budgets are welcome.
Keynote speakers: Piers Forster - University of Leeds; UK; Sophie Szope - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE-IPSL), France
Convenors: Julia Pongratz - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany; David Lawrence - UCAR, USA; Anna Ukkola - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia
Session description : Role of changes in land cover and land use on the Earth system. This includes changes in biophysical and biogeochemical cycles and includes direct human alteration of the continental water cycle.
Convenors: Daouda Kone - Ivorian Association for Agricultural Sciences (IAAS), Ivory Coast; Gensuo Jia - CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics, China
Session description : Assess impact of climate change (including extremes) on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, risks of ecosystem shifts, dieback and irreversibility.
Keynote speaker: Carolina Adler - Mountain Research Initiative & GEO Mountains, Switzerland
Convenors: Chris Lennard - University of Cape Town, South Africa; Addisu Semie - Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; Elisabeth Vogel - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia
Session description : Assess impact of climate change (including extremes) on human systems with a focus on water resources, agriculture and food supply, etc.
Convenors: Kristie Ebi - University of Washington, USA; Sari Kovats - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK; Negin Nazarian - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia
Session description : Quantifying the impact of global climate change on human health, developing methods for climate change risk assessment for population health, and modelling urban trends, demographic change, urban climates on health, wellbeing and productivity.
Convenors: Julie Arblaster - Monash University, Australia; Isla Simpson - UCAR, USA; Xiuqun Yang - Nanjing University, China
Session description : Contributions that assess climate and weather changes with an emphasis on understanding the underlying climate physics that generate such events. This covers changes in large scale atmospheric or oceanic circulation, as well as regional/local circulation changes such as storms and eddies.
Convenors: Izidine Pinto - University of Cape Town, South Africa; Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Joyce Kimutai - Kenya Meteorological Department, Kenya
Session description : Contributions that attribute climate change and weather and climate extremes to external factors on regional and/or global scales; attribution of impacts to climate change. Developing and evaluating methodology for climate change attribution and extreme events attribution; communication and application of attribution studies for societal benefit.
Convenors: Tannecia Stephenson - The University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica; Arona Diedhiou - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France; Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla - African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Rwanda
Session description : Assessment of climate change at regional level, including regional drivers and response. Focus on changes in dynamics, variability, predictability, and uncertainty. Studies with a focus on Africa are encouraged.
Convenors: Ines Camilloni - Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina; Peter Irvine - University College London, UK; Romaric C. Odoulami - University of Cape Town, South Africa
Session description : Contributions focusing on high mitigation scenarios, overshoot and impact on the dynamics of the Earth System and reversibility of changes. Also contributions on direct climate interventions such as solar radiation modification (SRM), Carbon dioxide Removal (CDR), marine cloud brightening (MCB) and potential impacts on climate response but also on society and ecosystems; ethical implications of climate interventions.
Theme 3: Co-produced Climate Services and Solutions
Convenors: Jana Sillmann - University of Hamburg, Germany; Tim Raupach - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Shampa - Bangladesh University Of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh; Olivia Romppainen-Martius - Geographisches Institut, Switzerland
Session description: In this session we welcome contributions that give the latest scientific insights and highlight knowledge gaps on observations and simulations of extreme events and hazards in the context of a changing climate. Extreme events include long-duration events (heatwaves, droughts), short-duration events (heavy precipitation, tropical and extratropical cyclones, storms) and cascading and compounding events. Hazards include past, current, and future hazards, and the factors (e.g. vulnerability, exposure, adaptive capacity) that make a hazard a hazard. We also encourage contributions related to warning and forecasting of hazards and extreme events, including early warning and forecast skill across temporal and spatial scales, impact-based forecasting, and climate information essential for early warnings.
Keynote speakers: Sally Potter - Te Pū Ao - GNS Science, New Zealand; Saiful Islam AKM - Institute of Water and Flood management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh; Gabi Hegerl - The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Convenors: Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes - Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain; Caio Augusto dos Santos Coelho - Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos, Brazil; Chi Huyen Truong - Himalayan University Consortium, Mountain Knowledge and Action Networks, Nepal
Session description : Distillation/downscaling methods and approaches. Managing contradictions in downscaled information. Integrating global/regional / local scale information. Regional information for compound events.
Convenors: Elisabeth Thompson - Met Office, UK; Alexander Ruane NASA, USA
Session description : Developing unambiguous and communicable climate information for decision-making. Designing services informed by stakeholder context. Climate information (past, present and future) on derivative variables (thresholds, extremes, compound climate responses, regional tipping points, etc.). How to characterize what is plausible, defensible and actionable information for climate services. Communicating meta-data and transparent methodologies for more robust climate application.
Convenors: Douglas Maraun - University of Graz, Austria; Marjolijn Haasnoot - DELTARES, The Netherlands
Session description : Climate projections are uncertain because of unknown future forcings, model inadequacies and irreducible internal variability. This holds in particular for extreme events, tipping points and more generally low likelihood high impact events. Their occurrence may be plausible, we may even know that they are really possible, and we may have strong evidence that they become more likely with higher global warming. But these events are often not well captured by climate models and the associated uncertainties might be difficult to quantify. Despite uncertainty - or because of uncertainty – considering such events is relevant for adaptation decision making because of the high impacts and potentially transformative adaptation measures which take time to plan and implement. In this session, we aim to discuss uncertainties in climate projections, various approaches used to represent these uncertainties and the relevance and approaches to deal with them in adaptation decision making.
Keynote speakers: Bart van den Hurk - DELTARES, The Netherlands; Amadou Thierno Gaye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, Senegal
Convenors: Daniela Jacob - Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Germany; Asunción Lera St.Clair - Digital Assurance Research Center, Norway; Simon Marsland - CSIRO, Australia ; Roché Mahon - Caribbean Regional Climate Center, Barbados ; Mzime Murisa - START International, Zimbabwe
Session description : Growing climate impacts are leading to an ever-increasing demand for relevant climate knowledge and translation to inform decision and policy contexts. The climate knowledge user community has diverse needs across many different scales and cultures coupled with complexity of power relationships among societies, especially when comparing resource rich and poor nations. The science-policy interface requires transdisciplinary approaches to develop climate services through knowledge codesign, coproduction, and codelivery informing anticipatory adaptation to future challenges. We welcome perspectives on this rapidly developing and important area.
Convenors: Tufa Dinku - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA; Pablo Borges de Amorim - Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) , Brazil; Amanda Grossi - Columbia Climate School, USA
Session description : Understanding what constitutes good capacity development. Accommodating heterogenous development needs. Developing scientists’ capacity to understand decision context. Developing regionally appropriate good practices guidance. Institutional and individual capacity development. Developing regional research activities for experiential learning. Transdisciplinary collaboration.
Convenors: Adriaan Perrels - Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland; Cocou Jaures Amegnaglo - University of Ghana, Ghana
Session description : Policy dialogue: common space for scientists and policy developers. Science diplomacy for climate action and sustainable development. Future climate scenarios and regional mitigation. Regional forcing, socio-economic drivers of regional climate change. Regional climate responses to mitigation actions (such as negative emissions, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), solar radiation modification (SRM) etc), including quantitative impact analyses. Regional climates and process responses under climate overshoot. Earth system response to strong mitigation with negative emissions. Climate services and systemic change. Informing science-based adaptation strategies.
Convenors: Andrew Robertson - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA; Anna Steynor - Met Office, UK; Geneva List - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA
Session description : Metrics of information robustness, and of appropriate communication and adoption. Assessing the relationship between information uncertainty and decision consequence. Ethics and values, accountability, misunderstanding and contradiction between services, and avoiding maladaptation. Defining and assessing added value in decision contexts. Context specific barriers to information access use and understanding. Global north-south interactions in provider-client dynamics. Socio-economic benefits of climate services. Prioritizing investments in climate services.
Convenors: Piotr Wolski - University of Cape Town, South Africa; Monica Morrison - UCAR, USA; Abu Syed - Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), Bangladesh
Session description : Gaps between information generated from model simulation experiments (i.e., CMIP/MIPs) and regional/local information needs (i.e., adaptation, resilience, impacts studies). Differences in scale—temporal and spatial—and understanding of drivers of impacts—dynamics versus thermodynamic focus. Model adequacy and skill relative to actionable climate questions. Addressing differences between developer perceptions of usefulness and information usability. Knowledge translations and presentation (quantitative versus qualitative) of model output and disparate values between producers and users (e.g., inductive risk considerations).
Convenors: Abdou Ali Cra - AGRHYMET Regional Center, Niger; Martin Visbeck - GEOMAR, Germany
Session description : Quality and contradictions; discovery, access and data sparse regions. Observations to test mitigation approaches. Observations for attribution studies.
Convenors: Amadou T. Gaye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal; Kamoru Abiodun Lawal - Nigerian Meteorological Agency, Niger; Rupert Stuart-Smith - University of Oxford, UK
Session description : Attribution of multi-annual to decadal changes in climate system. Attribution of regional extremes. Institutional capacity / access to attribution. Linking attribution information and the decision maker. Attribution of climate impact drivers.
Convenors: Ángel G. Muñoz - Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain; Franck Eitel Ghomsi - University of Yaounde, Cameroon; Yong Luo - Tsinghua University, China
Session description : Developing early warning systems. Impact and risk probability. Integration with quantitative impact analyses (contributions to IPCC AR7 and Global Stocktake). Climate triggers for anticipatory adaptation.
Convenors: Judith Mulwa - GSMA, Kenya; Christopher Hewitt - World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Switzerland; Carlo Buontempo - ECMWF, UK
Session description : The global (framework for) climate services at regional and local scales. Roles of National Meteorological Services, commercial, academic and institutional climate services. Dynamics of global-north-south relationships in climate services. Open-source climate science / Open Access publications. Tools and resources (including IPCC AR6 Regional Atlas), and transparency on strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. Improving communication and diffusion of information. Sustainability of capacity.
Convenors : Julie Arrighi - Red Cross, USA
Session description : The power of learning from humility, honesty and admitting failure. How climate services can go wrong. Contested power dynamics. Mis-communicating certainty. Misunderstandings and confusion. Assumptions and biases. Cross-cultural complications. Fostering a community of collaboration versus competition.