Please note that the Hans Oeschger Medal lecture will be part of this session.

Increasing evidence underlines the importance of understanding the natural atmosphere and ocean variability, including the ocean-atmosphere-ice interaction, at decadal to millennial time scales during both glacial rapid climate transitions, eg. the Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events, Heinrich events, but also in the interglacial periods.

It remains a matter of debate, to which extent solar and volcanic forcing or internal ocean oscillations account for these climatic shifts which, among others, involve significant changes in the cryosphere, including both Arctic sea ice, glaciers and the Greenland Ice Cap.

The melting of ice has a large impact on the radiative energy budget and sea level, the meltwater discharge may affect oceanic circulation, and could cause significant changes in storminess and precipitation patterns.

The sensitivities and natural variation in key Earth System Components in the Arctic can be best studied on natural experiments from the geological past as many of these processes and feedbacks operate on time scales too long for instrumental observations, and they are crucial to constrain from the perspective of a warming climate.

In this interdisciplinary session we invite contributions from a range of disciplines and across time scales, including observational data, proxy data, model simulations and forecasts.
The session is co-hosted by the ERC SyG project ice2ice and the Germany-Canada project ArcTrain.

Invited Speakers:
Julia Gottschalk, Institute of Geology & Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern.
David Ferreira, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading.