Sessions

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:

• "Exploiting large ensembles to understand the combined influence of ENSO and other climate drivers on the Southern Hemisphere extratropical circulation", Marisol Osman - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany / Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina
• "Tropical to extratropical interactions", Julie Arblaster - Monash University, Australia
• "Using past climate information and simulations can help projecting future climates", Masa Kageyama - Laboratoire des sciences du climat et l'environnement (IPSL-LSCE), France

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:

• "What have we learned about the carbon cycle in the past 10 years?", Pep Candell - CSIRO, Australia
• "Investigating the carbon cycle response in low emissions scenarios", Kirsten Zickfeld - Simon Fraser University, Canada - Remotely
• "Detecting the impact of extreme climate events on terrestrial biosphere carbon cycle from space", Junjie Liu - NASA JPL, USA - Remotely
• "Regime change in the mechanism of CO2 uptake in the Southern Ocean under high emission scenario", Precious Mongwe - CSIR, South Africa

Convenors: Sonia Seneviratne - ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Graeme Stephens - JPL Science - NASA, USA; Benoit Meyssignac - LEGOS, Université de Toulouse, France

Session description : Advances in understanding on changes in the global energy budget in the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land-cryosphere systems.

Keynote speakers:

• "Effective radiative forcing on climate, building from the IPCC AR6 Assessment" - Piers Forster - University of Leeds, UK
• "On the future of Earth radiation and energy imbalance measurements", Maria Z. Hakuba - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA - Remotely

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Water remains a blind spot in climate change policies" - Hervé Douville - Météo France, France - Remotely
• "Two decades of global water cycle variability – non-stationarity assessed by land remote sensing synthesis", Sujay Kumar - NASA, USA

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Ice sheet mass change and processes from satellite remote sensing and numerical modeling", Beata Csatho - University of Buffalo, USA
• "Thwaites Glacier and ‘doomsday’ I: The nature of the threat, the history, and recent research results", Ted Scambos - University of Colorado, USA
• "Thwaites Glacier and ‘doomsday’ II: New field and ship-based field results of ITGC, and the social challenges of remote teams in Antarctica", Leilani Henry - Being and Living Enterprises, USA
• "Coastal erosion management linked to climate change in West Africa", Donatus Angnuureng - University of Cape Coast, Ghana

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:

• "The importance of annual updates to the IPCC assessment of radiative forcing and other indicators", Piers Forster - University of Leeds; UK
• "Effects of SLCFs on climate: lessons learned from the IPCC AR6 and perspectives", Sophie Szopa - Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE-IPSL), France Remotely
• "Climate responses to regional aerosol emissions: First results from RAMIP", Bjorn H. Samset - CICERO, Norway

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.

Keynote speaker:

• "Anthropizing CESM's terrestrial water cycle", Thierry Wim -Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Remotely

Convenors: Daouda Kone - West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), Ghana; 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 speakers:

• "Future solutions for addressing impacts of a changing climate on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and life on earth", Robert Marchant - University of York, USA
• "Cattle herds movements affected by scattered land use patterns in the Sahel cause massive transhumance southward causing overgrazing impacts and social conflicts in West Africa", Brice Augustin Sinsin - Abomey Calavy University, Benin

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Thinking beyond the mean – How taking an extreme view on climate change empowers prediction", Chris Funk - Climate Hazards Center (CHC), USA
• "Rethinking Africa Climate Services: Opportunities for strengthening resilience and sustainability", Arame Tall - Climate Change Group, World Bank - Remotely
• "Non-linear climate change impacts on crop yields may misinform stakeholders", Alexander Ruane - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Health risks of climate change in the WHO AFRO region - what are our research priorities?" - Brama Kone - Swiss Centre for Scientific Research, Côte d'Ivoire - Remotely
• "Coordinated research on extreme precipitation in multiple urban systems", Fei Chen - NASA, USA

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.

Keynote speaker:

• "Understanding changes in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and the associated impacts on climate", Rong Zang - NOAA/GFDL, USA - Remotely
• "Atmospheric Circulation Adjustment Mediates Climate Changes between Tropics and Polar Region", Xichen Li - Institute of Atmospheric Physics, China
• "Global impact of recent Southern Ocean cooling", Sarah Kang - Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Attribution of Socio-economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Challenges and Opportunities" - Mark New - African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• "Challenges and opportunities in rapid event attribution", Friederike Otto - Imperial College London, UK Remotely

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.

Keynote speaker:

• "Regional climate change assessments - where we are and future outlook", Erika Coppola - ICTP, Italy
• "A decade of CORDEX-Africa: Achievements, challenges and opportunities", Chris Lennard - University of Cape Town, South Africa
• "Global warming impacts on tropical cyclones: climate-scale statistics and event case studies", Chunyong Jung - Argonne National Laboratory, USA -

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "The potential and limits of carbon dioxide removal for climate mitigation", Glen Peters - CICERO, Norway - Remotely
• "Developing an Earth System framework integrating Climate Interventions (CDR and SRM) in CESM baseline, mitigation and adaptation scenarios, with fully resolved carbon cycle and stratosphere", Peter Lawrence - UCAR, USA
• "Identifying climate impacts under different stratospheric aerosol injection strategies", Alice Wells - University of Exeter, UK
• "Potential impact of solar radiation management geoengineering on water deficit risk over major Central African river basins", Thierry Fotso-Nguemo - Climate Change Research Laboratory (CCRL), National Institute of Cartography, Cameroon

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 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:

• "Climatic impact-driver (CID) Framework for Regional Impact and Risk Assessment", Saiful Islam AKM - Institute of Water and Flood management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh
• "Changes in climate extremes: Achievements and Challenges", Gabi Hegerl - The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
• "Co-production of impact-based forecasts and warnings for high impact weather in a changing climate", Brian Mills - Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada - Remotely

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Causal and explainable machine-learning models for hazard-induced displacement", José María Tárraga - University of Valencia, Spain
• "A simple hybrid statistical dynamical downscaling method to address the challenge of providing tailored regional climate change information", Julien Boé - Cerfacs, France Remotely
• "The Objective Seasonal Forecasting Approach over Eastern Africa: Benefits, Challenges and Future Prospects", Masilin Gudoshava - IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre, Kenya

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "On the operationalisation of climate services" - Carlo Buontempo - ECMWF, Germany
• "Climate information for climate action: the important role of scientific research", Lisa Alexander - UNSW Sydney, Australia
• "Climate change information for climate services to support adaptation in Africa", Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla - AIMS Africa, Rwanda

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:

• "Co-construction of knowledge for addressing climate change impacts and adaptation in Sénégal, West Africa", Amadou Thierno Gaye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, Senegal
• "Projections or reality for decision makers: either/or, or both?", Judy Lawrence - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
• "Improving climate resilience of society using well-designed weather impact scenarios", Bart van den Hurk - DELTARES, The Netherlands

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Principles for co-producing climate services: practical insights from FRACTAL", Alice McClure - Climate System Analysis Group, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• "Transformation through transdisciplinarity", Heide Hackmann - University of Pretoria, South Africa
• "Co-production in Climate Services", Lucy Mtilatila - Malawi Government Information and Services, Malawi - Remotely

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.

Keynote speaker:

• "Institutional capacity building on spatial and temporal climate change analysis using CORDEX regional climate models over South Asia", Mandira Singh Shrestha - ICIMOD, Nepal
• "From Research to Practice: Integrating Climate Information into Agricultural Extension Systems in East, Southern, and West Africa", Amanda Grossi - Columbia University, USA

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Assessing the ability to meet basic needs under mitigation pathways - considerations of fairness and climate justice in future climate scenarios", Keith Williges - University of Graz, Austria
• "Climate Scientists as climate negotiators for UNFCCC processes", Palmira Cuéllar - UnADM, Mexico

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Whose values count? The power of principled metrics in shaping investments in climate resilience" - Emma Visman - Save the Children International, UK
• "A Mixed-methods approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of weather and climate information." - Brian Chiputwa - CIFOR-ICRAF, Kenya

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).

Keynote speakers:

• "Climate storylines as a way of bridging the gap between model simulations and decision-relevant regional climate information", Ted Shepherd - University of Reading, UK
• "Life beyond Planet CMIP", Dáithí Stone - NIWA, New Zealand - Remotely
• "The logic and ethics of Earth System Modeling: Adaptation, resilience, and investigations of interventions", Monica Morrison - UCAR, USA

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Rainfall Rescue: extending instrumental UK rainfall reconstructions", Ed Hawkins - University of Reading, UK - Remotely
• "Designing a pan-African climate observation system to deliver societal benefit through climate action: The KADI project", Matthew Saunders - Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• "Exploring the robustness of air sensors for understanding the impacts of location-specific agricultural practices on local air quality", Collins Gameli Hodoli - University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "Attribution of weather and climate extremes and climate change impacts: A regional perspective", Sihan Li - University of Sheffield, UK - Remotely
• "A zonal contrast in future changes in Sahel precipitation", Paul-Arthur Monerie - University of Reading, UK
• "Informing climate risk using the historical record and regional attribution results", Gabi Hegerl - University of Edinburgh, UK

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 : Bruce Hewitson - Capetown University, South Africa

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.

Keynote speakers:

• "F(r)iction and Friendship: partnerships in Africa between the global north and south", Bruce Hewitson - Capetown University, South Africa
• "International best practices for climate risk resilience in African developing countries", Oratilwe Khoza - University of the Free State, South Africa