During the Quaternary Period, the last 2.6 million years of Earth's history, changes in environments, and climate shaped human evolution. In particular, large-scale features of atmospheric circulation patterns varied significantly due to the dramatic changes in global boundary conditions that accompanied abrupt changes in climate. Reconstructing these environmental changes relies heavily on precise and accurate chronologies. Dependent on records, time range, and research questions, different methods can be applied, or a combination of various dating techniques.
Varve counting and dendrochronology allow for the construction of high-resolution chronologies, whereas radiometric methods (radiocarbon, cosmogenic in-situ, U-Th) and luminescence aim at longer time scales and often are complementary or supportive.
In this session, contributions are particularly welcome that aim to (1) reduce, quantify and express dating uncertainties in any dating method, including high-resolution radiocarbon approaches; (2) use established geochronological methods to answer new questions; (3) use new methods to address longstanding issues, or; (4) combine different chronometric techniques for improved results, including the analysis of chronological datasets with novel methods, e.g. Bayesian age-depth modelling. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change.

Geochronological frameworks are essential for the study of landscape evolution. Over the last decades, geochronological techniques such as cosmogenic nuclides, thermochronology, radiocarbon and luminescence dating have improved in accuracy, precision, and temporal range. Recently, the development of new approaches, new isotopic/mineral systems and the opportunity to combine these techniques are expanding their range of applications. This session explores these advances and novel applications. These include studies of erosional rates and processes, sediment provenance, burial and transport times, bedrock exposure or cooling histories, landscape dynamics, and the examination of potential biases and discordances in geochronological data. We appreciate contributions that use dating tools which are established or in development, particularly those that quantify geomorphological processes with novel approaches and/or generic implications. We encourage studies that combine different techniques (e.g., CRN, luminescence, thermochronology, etc.) or data sets (e.g., field, remote sensing, numerical modelling), and/or highlight the latest developments and open questions in the application of geochronometers to landscape evolution questions.

Solicited presenter: Nathan Brown - UC Berkeley (USA)

Global climate and the carbon cycle are intimately linked through transfer of carbon (C) between the different reservoirs, including C held in the biosphere and atmosphere, dissolved in the oceans, and sequestered in the geosphere. Radiocarbon (C-14) is a key tool in the scientific effort for gaining insights into the global C cycle not solely for obtaining chronologies for records of past climate conditions, but increasingly as tracer that allows quantification of exchange rates between the major reservoirs of the C cycle. Next to a continuously expanding field of C-14 applications, analytical tools have matured over the last decades, including downscaling the sample size (< 20 µg C) and increasing the sample throughput.
Our session aims at bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers that advance and apply C-14 analyses covering a variety of topics, including: (1) Experimental and analytical advancements (e.g., sample preparation, increasing the sample throughput and decreasing sample size, broadening the range of compounds that can be isolated). (2) Contributions with a focus on novel insights into the carbon cycle and associated processes, e.g., storage times in soils, sediment dispersal, or climate driven C transfer between reservoirs. (3) Studies involving the exploration of bulk, molecular and isotopic information embedded in novel archives such as high altitude ice cores, Arctic deltaic lakes, and groundwater.

Session description:

Accurate and homogeneous long-term data records (i.e., data that are forced to look like a common reference) are essential for researching, monitoring, or attenuating changes in climate, for example to describe the state of climate or to detect climate extremes. Likewise, reanalysis needs accurate and harmonized data records (i.e., data records in which the unique nature of each sensor is maintained). Temporal changes, such as degradation of instruments, changes of instruments, changes of observation practices, changes of station location and exposure, and changes in growth variables of the proxy source cause artificial non-climatic sudden or gradual changes in data records. The magnitude and uncertainty of these changes impact the results of climate trend analyses. Therefore, data intended for applications, such as making a realistic and reliable assessment of historical climate trends and variability, require to be homogenized or harmonized consistently so as to obtain well calibrated data records including measurement uncertainties.

The above described factors influence the quality of different essential climate variables, including atmospheric (e.g., air temperature, precipitation, wind speed), oceanic (e.g., sea surface temperature, sea level), and terrestrial (e.g., albedo, snow cover) variables from in-situ observing networks, satellite observing systems, proxy-based reconstructions, palaeoclimate compilations, and climate/earth-system model simulations. Our session calls for contributions related to the:

• Calibration, quality control, homogenization/harmonisation and validation of either fundamental or essential climate data records.

• Development of new data records and their analysis (spatial and temporal characteristics, particularly of extremes).

• Examination of observed trends and variability, as well as studies that explore the applicability of techniques/algorithms to data of different temporal resolutions from multi-decadal to sub-daily.

• Rescue and analysis of centennial meteorological observations, with focus on data prior to the 1960s. In particular, we encourage wind studies dealing with the observed slowdown (last 30-50 years) and recent recovery (since ~2013) of near-surface winds.

• Advances in palaeoclimate and palaeoecology, with focus on data compilations; multi-proxy and multi-archive approaches; and data-model comparisons, for improving our understanding of past climate conditions.

Climate services challenge the traditional interface between users and providers of climate information as it requires the establishment of a dialogue between subjects, who often have limited knowledge of each-other’s activities and practices. Increasing the understanding and usability of climate information for societal use has become a major challenge where economic growth, and social development crucially depends on adaptation to climate variability and change.

To this regard, climate services do not only create user-relevant climate information, but also stimulate the need to quantify vulnerabilities and come up with appropriate adaptation solutions that can be applied in practice.

The operational generation, management and delivery of climate services poses a number of new challenges to the traditional way of accessing and distributing climate data. With a growing private sector playing the role of service provider is important to understand what are the roles and the responsibilities of the publicly funded provision of climate data and information and services.

This session aims to gather best practices and lessons learnt, for how climate services can successfully facilitate adaptation to climate variability and change by providing climate information that is tailored to the real user need.
Contributions are strongly encouraged from international efforts (GFCS, CSP, ClimatEurope…); European Initiatives (H2020, ERA4CS, C3S, JPI-Climate…) as well as national, regional and local experiences.

Globally, there is increased concern for the potential impacts of extreme climate events in terms of losses and damage to people, assets & infrastructure, property and society as a whole. Plenty of evidence provided by, e.g., the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the scientific literature, but also by the insurance sector, supports these concerns, indicating clearly that both, overall and insured losses and damages are on the rise, and that a major part of these developments can be attributed to climate change.
New multi-hazard and multi-risk models, catastrophe (CAT) models, tools, and services aimed at providing reliable and probabilistic climate information to a broad range of public and economic sectors are currently being developed in close collaboration with users. Innovations in this regard can provide the means to, e.g., better understand costs and benefits of adaptation and more accurately underwrite risk by insurance and re-insurance companies, who serve as key implementers in increasing societies’ resilience and recovery from extreme events. Such services are crucial in order to facilitate effective and evidence-based adaptation planning by for example cities, regional authorities and other sectors.
This session invites contributions that: (1) highlight the current state-of-the-art in climate change hazard and risk assessment related to extremes and high impact events such as floods, storms, droughts and heat waves, including compound events; (2) demonstrate the applicability and added-value of such analyses (or tools based thereupon) for stakeholders and practitioners with a particular focus on insurance and adaptation in different sectors; and (3) foster discussions on new scientific methodologies, good practices and emerging standards between scientists and practitioners across disciplines and application areas. Papers related to all aspects of climate hazard and/or (economic) risk assessment and attribution covering all geographical areas are welcomed, regardless of whether they are focused on single hazards (risks), multiple hazards (risks), or a combination or cascade of hazards (risks). Contributions related to projects funded under EU H2020, Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S), ERA4CS, JPI Climate and other larger scale climate service programmes are especially encouraged.
This session is endorsed by the European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA)’s Collaborative Programme on High Impact Events and Climate Change.

Weather and climate services involve the production, translation, transfer, and use of scientific information for decision-making. They include long term climate projections, monthly to seasonal forecasts and daily weather forecasts. They are particularly useful (i) for several climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water resources, health, energy, disaster risk reduction and (ii) in developing countries where vulnerability to climate change and weather shocks is high. This interdisciplinary session aims at showing tools, results, methodologies that could lead in fine to an operational improvement of WCS in developing countries. It focuses not only on models improvement but also on how to interact with end-users, assess WCS added value, broadcast information, avoid inequalities access, involve the private sector etc. The session will focus particularly on feedbacks and results from different case studies located in the global South.

Citizen science (the involvement of the public in scientific processes) is gaining momentum across multiple disciplines, increasing multi-scale data production on biodiversity, earthquakes, weather, climate, health issues and food production, amongst others, that is extending the frontiers of knowledge. Successful participatory science enterprises and citizen observatories can potentially be scaled-up in order to contribute to larger policy strategies and actions (e.g. the European Earth Observation monitoring systems), for example to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate as citizen stewards in decision making, helping to bridge scientific disciplines and promote vibrant, liveable and sustainable environments for inhabitants across rural and urban localities.
Often, citizen science is seen in the context of Open Science, which is a broad movement embracing Open Data, Open Technology, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Source, Open Methodology, and Open Peer Review to transparently publish and share scientific research - thus leveraging Citizen Science and Reproducible Research. Both open science and citizen science pose great challenges for researchers to facilitate effective participatory science. To support the goals of the various Open Science initiatives, this session looks at what is possible and what is applied in geosciences. The session will showcase how various stakeholders can benefit from co-developed participatory research using citizen science and open science, acknowledging the drawbacks and highlighting the opportunities available, particularly through applications within mapping, technology, policy, economy, practice and society at large. Learning from bottom-up initiatives, other disciplines, and understanding what to adopt and what to change can help synergize scientific disciplines and empower participants in their own undertakings and new initiatives.

We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:
Which approaches can be used in Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences?
What are the biggest challenges in bridging between scientific disciplines and how to overcome them?
What kind of participatory citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?
What kind of critical perspectives on the limitations, challenges, and ethical considerations exist?

There are many ways in which machine learning promises to provide insight into the Earth System, and this area of research is developing at a breathtaking pace. If unsupervised, supervised as well as reinforcement learning can hold this promise remains an open question, particularly for predictions. Machine learning could help extract information from numerous Earth System data, such as satellite observations, as well as improve model fidelity through novel parameterisations or speed-ups. This session invites submissions spanning modelling and observational approaches towards providing an overview of the state-of-the-art of the application of these novel methods.

This session aims to bring together researchers working with big data sets generated from monitoring networks, extensive observational campaigns and detailed modeling efforts across various fields of geosciences. Topics of this session will include the identification and handling of specific problems arising from the need to analyze such large-scale data sets, together with methodological approaches towards semi or fully automated inference of relevant patterns in time and space aided by computer science-inspired techniques. Among others, this session shall address approaches from the following fields:
• Dimensionality and complexity of big data sets
• Data mining in Earth sciences
• Machine learning, deep learning and Artificial Intelligence applications in geosciences
• Visualization and visual analytics of big and high-dimensional data
• Informatics and data science
• Emerging big data paradigms, such as datacubes

All areas in the Earth sciences face the same problem of dealing with larger and more complex data sets that need to be analyzed, visualized and understood. Depending on the application domain and the specific scientific questions to be solved, different visualization strategies and techniques have to be applied. Yet, how we communicate those complex data sets, and the effect that visualization strategies and choices have on different (expert and non-expert) audiences as well as decision-makers remains an under-researched area of interest. For this "PICO only" session, we not only invite submissions that demonstrate how to create effective and efficient visualizations for complex and large earth science data sets but also those that discuss possibilities and challenges we face in the communication and tailoring of such complex data to different users/ audiences. Submissions are encouraged from all geoscientific areas that either show best practices or state of the art in earth science data visualization or demonstrate efficient techniques that allow an intuitive interaction with large data sets. In addition, we would like to encourage studies that integrate thematic and methodological insights from fields such as for example risk communication more effectively into the visualization of complex data. Presentations will be given as PICO (Presenting Interactive COntent) on large interactive touch screens. This session is supported by ESiWACE2. ESiWACE2 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 823988.

Comprehensive evaluations of Earth Systems Science Prediction (ESSP) systems (e.g., numerical weather prediction, hydrologic prediction, climate prediction and projection, etc.) are essential to understand sources of prediction errors and to improve earth system models. However, numerous roadblocks limit the extent and depth of ESSP system performance evaluations. Observational data used for evaluation are often not representative of the physical structures that are being predicted. Satellite and other large spatial and temporal observations datasets can help provide this information, but the community lacks tools to adequately integrate these large datasets to provide meaningful physical insights on the strengths and weaknesses of predicted fields. ESSP system evaluations also require large storage volumes to handle model simulations, large spatial datasets, and verification statistics which are difficult to maintain. Standardization, infrastructure, and communication in one scientific field is already a challenge. Bridging different communities to allow knowledge transfers, is even harder. The development of innovative methods in open frameworks and platforms is needed to enable meaningful and informative model evaluations and comparisons for many large Earth science applications from weather to climate.

The purpose of this Open Science 2.0 session is to bring experts together to discuss innovative methods for integrating, managing, evaluating, and disseminating information about the quality of ESSP fields in meaningful way. Presentations of these innovative methods applied to Earth science applications is encouraged. The session should generate some interest in communities and research projects building and maintaining these systems (e.g. ESMVal, Copernicus, Climaf, Freva, Birdhouse, MDTF, UV-CDAT, CMEC - PCMDI Metrics Package, Doppyo, MET-TOOLS, CDO, NCO, etc.). The session allows room for the exchange of ideas. An outcome of this session is to connect the scientists, develop a list of tools and techniques that could be developed and provided to the community in the future.

NEMO (Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean) is a state-of-the-art modelling framework of the ocean that includes components for the ocean dynamics, the sea-ice and the biogeochemistry, so as a nesting package allowing to set up zooms and a versatile data assimilation interface (see https://www.nemo-ocean.eu/).
NEMO is used by a large community in Europe and world-wide (~200 projects, ~100 publications each year) covering a wide range of applications : oceanographic research, operational oceanography, seasonal forecast and climate projections.
NEMO is in particular used in 6 Earth System Models within CMIP6 and in Copernicus Marine Services (CMEMS) model-based products.

This session will provide a forum to properly address the new scientific advances in numerical modelling of the ocean and their implication for NEMO developments associated with:
• Ocean dynamics at large to coastal scales, up to 1km resolution ;
• Ocean biogeochemistry
• Sea-ice
• New numerical schemes associated to energy conservation constraints
• High performance computing challenges and techniques

The session will cover both research and operationnal activities contributing to new analysis, ideas and developments of ocean numerical models.
Presentations of results based on new NEMO functionalities and new NEMO model configurations are welcome.

Public information:
Registration for virtual session: https://framaforms.org/virtual-egu-os48-session-1587740583

Statistical post-processing techniques for weather, climate, and hydrological forecasts are powerful approaches to compensate for effects of errors in model structure or initial conditions, and to calibrate inaccurately dispersed ensembles. These techniques are now an integral part of many forecasting suites and are used in many end-user applications such as wind energy production or flood warning systems. Many of these techniques are flourishing in the statistical, meteorological, climatological, hydrological, and engineering communities. The methods range in complexity from simple bias correction up to very sophisticated distribution-adjusting techniques that take into account correlations among the prognostic variables.

At the same time, a lot of efforts are put in combining multiple forecasting sources in order to get reliable and seamless forecasts on time ranges from minutes to weeks. Such blending techniques are currently developed in many meteorological centers.

In this session, we invite papers dealing with both theoretical developments in statistical post-processing and evaluation of their performances in different practical applications oriented toward environmental predictions, papers dealing with the problem of combining or blending different types of forecasts in order to improve reliability from very short to long time scales.

This interdisciplinary session welcomes contributions on novel conceptual approaches and methods for the analysis of observational as well as model time series from all geoscientific disciplines.

Methods to be discussed include, but are not limited to:
- linear and nonlinear methods of time series analysis
- time-frequency methods
- predictive approaches
- statistical inference for nonlinear time series
- nonlinear statistical decomposition and related techniques for multivariate and spatio-temporal data
- nonlinear correlation analysis and synchronisation
- surrogate data techniques
- filtering approaches and nonlinear methods of noise reduction
- artificial intelligence and machine learning based analysis and prediction for univariate and multivariate time series

Contributions on methodological developments and applications to problems across all geoscientific disciplines are equally encouraged.

Snow plays an essential role in the climatic and environmental challenges of the 21st century. The snow cover represents a key source of global water supply and climate regulation, and has shown high sensitivity to a warming climate. The amount of collected snow information is also constantly increasing due to novel automated methods for cheaper and easier measurements, especially imagery. During the last decades, instrumentation and measurement techniques, especially remote sensing, have advanced fast, providing significant amount of new information about the extent and properties of snow (e.g. snow water equivalent, (SWE), albedo, reflectance, microstructure, and impurities). In addition, novel technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and webcams provide new opportunities and challenges. Optimization and agreement on sampling strategies are important to get spatially distributed data at different scales, and ensure broad use of the acquired data. Data management has become an important issue after general open data policy, where data sets should be available and usable for other users. A large variety of NWP and hydrological models or operational applications routinely make use of snow data to improve their performance. Forecasting snow related hazards in Europe is mostly performed at the country or regional level, and heavily relies on the concurrent meteorological factors and snowpack properties, which are usually acquired from point measurements or physical models. A big challenge is bridging information from microstructural scales of the snowpack up to the grid resolution in models and then to provide knowledge-based information on potential impacts to society, economy and safety (e.g. hydro-power, water availability, transportation, tourism, flooding and avalanches). In this session we would like discuss recent developments and progresses on (1) Snow data collection, curation, and management including harmonized observation techniques for several snow parameters and remote sensing snow observations by applying novel techniques, (2) Snow models, satellite-derived snow products, and data assimilation including improved snow modelling and prediction at different scales taking into account macro and microscale snow properties and (3) Monitoring snow-related hazards and extreme events including latest reanalysis and satellite data sets and models to predict and forecast extreme events and snow-related natural hazards.

Scientific drilling through the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) continues to provide unique opportunities to investigate the workings of the interior of our planet, Earth’s cycles, natural hazards and the distribution of subsurface microbial life. The past and current scientific drilling programs have brought major advances in many multidisciplinary fields of socio-economic relevance, such as climate and ecosystem evolution, palaeoceanography, the deep biosphere, deep crustal and tectonic processes, geodynamics and geohazards. This session invites contributions that present and/or review recent scientific results from deep Earth sampling and monitoring through ocean and continental drilling projects. Furthermore, we encourage contributions that outline perspectives and visions for future drilling projects, in particular projects using a multi-platform approach.

Public information:
Please find below messages to the international scientific drilling community from Gilbert Camoin (Director of the ECORD Managing Agency) and Marco Bohnhoff (ICDP Executive Director), at this most difficult time resulting from the COVID-19 crisis:

Message from ECORD/IODP, Director ECORD Management Agency:

Science knowledge over the last 50 years of ocean drilling has greatly enhanced our understanding of the Earth system. Since its creation in 2003, ECORD has played a leading role in the successive ocean drilling programmes. During 2019, the scientific ocean drilling community took a unique multi-decadal approach to formulating the future of this international program in the new 2050 Science Framework: Exploring Earth by Scientific Ocean Drilling. The unprecedented health crisis related to the COVID-19 disease outbreak is severely affecting the activities of our programme, but the scientific ocean drilling community remains mobilized for a brighter future. In these different times, I do hope that you and your loved ones will stay safe and healthy.

Message from the ICDP Executive Director Marco Bohnhoff:

COVID-19 is having a huge impact on society as a whole and the personal life of most of us has been turned upside down. However, ICDP is also active in times of COVID-19. A new ICDP Science Plan for the time after 2021 is currently being prepared and will be published in the second half of 2020. For those who submitted drilling or workshop proposals this year: the ICDP Panels will meet online between May 11-16 and decide about your proposals. Good news is also that the COSC-2 drilling is Sweden runs very successful, passing a depth of 500 m on April 30. Whether the ICDP training course can take place in October as planned is currently still open. Please check the ICDP website or our social media channels regularly for updates. I wish you a successful EGU session, stay healthy, and I look forward to seeing you again, hopefully soon.

The nature of science has changed: it has become more interconnected, collaborative, multidisciplinary, and data intensive. The main aim of this session, now in its third edition, is to create a common space for interdisciplinary scientific discussion where EGU-GA delegates involved in recent and ongoing COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)* Actions can share ideas and present the research activities carried out in their networks. The session represents an invaluable opportunity for different Actions and their members to identify possible synergies and establish new collaborations, find novel links between disciplines, and design innovative research approaches. So far, this session has hosted contributions stemming from 26 Actions, covering different areas of the geosciences (sky, earth and subsurface monitoring, terrestrial life and ecosystems, earth's changing climate and natural hazards, sustainable management of resources and urban development, environmental contaminants, and big data); we are looking forward to receiving new contributions this year.

Same as in past editions, part of this session will be dedicated to presenting and discussing activities carried out in further national and international scientific networks, associations, and collaborative projects.

Moreover, this session is of course open to everyone and abstracts authored by individual scientists or small research teams are most welcome, too. Actually, in 2018 and 2019 we received a very good number of such abstracts, submitted by researchers who wanted to disseminate the results of their studies in front of the multidisciplinary audience that characterizes this session, as an alternative to making a presentation in a thematic session. In fact, contributing to this session can be a productive way to broaden the perspective and find new partners for future interdisciplinary research ventures.

-- Notes --

* COST (www.cost.eu) is funded by the EU and enables researchers to set up their interdisciplinary and international scientific networks (the “Actions”). Academia, industry, public- and private-sector laboratories work together in the Actions, sharing knowledge, leveraging diversity, and pulling resources. Every Action has a main objective, defined goals and deliverables. This session is a follow-up initiative of COST Action TU1208 “Civil engineering applications of Ground Penetrating Radar” (www.gpradar.eu).