Since 2006, the German Geophysical Society (DGG) promotes the C.F. Gauss Lecture within the frame of the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Selected authors give an in-depth overview on a specific field of geophysics.

The German Society for Marine Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Meeresforschung, DGM) awards the Georg Wüst Prize every two years to a person who has made a significant contribution to ocean research.

This panel critically analysis the role of innovative technology and public policy solutions and their interactions to preserve aquatic ecosystems, including oceans, estuaries, lakes, ponds, wetlands, rivers, and streams.

Organizer: Global Policy Insights and Envipol

Bringing the complementary expertise and perspectives of mountain scientists from across regions and disciplines together to discuss outstanding challenges is beginning to drive substantial progress in science, practice, and policy. This splinter meeting, convened by the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) and GEO Mountains, intents to further strengthen these efforts by providing a forum in which to discuss – and hopefully collectively identify feasible and practical solutions to – a series of broad challenges that have been identified through work recently carried out under the auspices of the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) and/or GEO Mountains (see references below for further details).

Briefly, the MRI is a scientific networking organization that seeks to drive and connect mountain research across disciplines and regions. The MRI’s Mountain Observatories and Elevation Dependent Climate Change Working Groups – in collaboration with GEO Mountains – are tasked, inter alia, with compiling a comprehensive inventory of mountain observatories and their associated datasets, including reliable information as to their availability for use. We also strive to improve the incompatibility of observations from mountain sites globally (e.g. by proposing common standards).

The following questions summarise some of the challenges that have been identified:

- How can we help improve the density of in situ monitoring instrumentation where this has been identified to be comparatively lacking (e.g. the mountains of Africa, South America, and Asia, and along transects across wide elevation gradients)?

- How can the ongoing shift from thematic to multi-disciplinary observations at mountain sites be accelerated?

- How can we collect and make available appropriate metadata on existing mountain networks and how should we best advocate for / incentivise the free and open sharing of existing datasets?

- How can greater emphasis be placed on obtaining useful socio-economic data in mountainous regions which, whilst critical, is currently often overlooked at the expense of biophysical data?

- How appropriate are global gridded environmental datasets (which can provide extensive spatial coverage) in mountainous applications, given that their spatial resolution may be limited and/or their reliability compromised in complex terrain?

- From a preliminary set of so-called Essential Mountain Climate Variables, how should we go about formalizing a pragmatic set of so-called Essential Mountain Climate Variables and their associated observation requirements?

The splinter meeting format will combine both plenary and break-out group discussions using an online virtual tool. All interested parties are warmly welcomed to attend and share their views on these important questions.

The outcomes of the discussion will represent important contributions from the community to the activities of the MRI’s Working Groups and GEO Mountains, and will accordingly be integrated into the work programmes and fully acknowledged. Conversely, we expect these discussions to inspire new collaborations and prospects for individual researchers – especially early career researchers - who wish to contribute to and be given recognition for participation in this collective effort.

For further information, please contact GEO Mountains Scientific Project Officer, Dr. James Thornton (james.thornton@unibe.ch).

References:

Pepin et al. Elevation dependence of temperature and precipitation changes in the mountains of the world. in preparation, Reviews of Geophysics.

Shahgedanova, M. et al., Mountain Observatories: Status and Prospects to Enhance and Connect a Global Community, in press, Mountain Research and Development

Thornton, J. M., Palazzi, E., Pepin, N., Cristofanelli, P., Essery, R., Kotlarski, S., Giuliani, G., Guigoz, G., Kulonen, A., Li, X., Pritchard, D., Fowler, H., Randin, C., Shahgedanova, M., Steinbacher, M., Zebisch, M., Adler, C. under review. Towards a definition of Essential Mountain Climate Variables. One Earth.

Mountain Research Initiative EDW Working Group., Pepin, N., Bradley, R. et al. Elevation-dependent warming in mountain regions of the world. Nature Clim Change 5, 424–430 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2563

Organizer(s): James Thornton, Carolina Adler, Elisa Palazzi, Maria Shahgedanova & Nick Pepin

Acquisition and analysis of geochemical data are pervasive in the Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, but very little of it is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The need for global standards and best practices for geochemical data is increasingly urgent so that scientists can better share geochemical data in a global network of distributed databases. Standard protocols for exchanging geochemical data among distributed data systems, and for making software tools that support the management, publication, and preservation of geochemical data interoperable (see vEGU21 session ESSI3.9) still need to be defined and approved by a global community. Best practices need to be define for researchers and labs to consistently and comprehensively describe samples, data acquisition procedures, and data quality, and these need to be endorsed and promoted. Discovery in many fields will benefit from a global geochemical data network, from the study of global climate ch ange, to present and past biogeochemical cycles, to magmatic processes, to the origin and evolution of our solar system. This Splinter Meeting is intended to present and broaden participation in OneGeochemistry, an initiative to build a global geochemical network that develops and adopts geochemical data standards and approaches for their technical and organizational governance.

Lithosphere of East Antarctica, International Lithosphere Program, Coordinating Committee (2021-2025). A meeting to share news regarding field programs in East Antarctica, and to connect with the those working in this field more widely. The meeting will also discuss and refine specific goals for the CC during its five year span.

The meeting will address the following issues related to the isotope data quality and comparability: (i) different sampling and analytical protocols, (ii) deviations in calibration approaches, origin and quality of reference materials, (iii) improper sample manipulation and preparation; (iv) different methods of data corrections, normalizations and processing protocols, etc. The discussion will be focused on the detection of flaws with special attention to uncertainty estimation, creating standard operational protocols and tools for self-assessment of Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC), proper use of materials for normalization and exploring future trainings needs. Approaches and tools for high quality isotope data to be applied in many earth sciences and cross-disciplinary will be discussed.

The Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Program is an innovative International Big Science mission that will provide new opportunities and directions for the development of Earth Sciences. The vision and mission of DDE is to transform Earth Science by harmonizing global DDE data, and sharing global geoscience knowledge.
DDE hopes to further introduce the project planning to global geologists through the splinter meeting, and show part of the recent progress.

Business meeting of the International Astronomical Union / International Association of Geodesy Joint Working Group on Improving Theories and Models of the Earth’s Rotation (IAU/IAG JWG ITMER)

Tentative Agenda:

1. Report on activities
2. Proposal and discussion on the organization of activities relative to the assessment of existing and forthcoming suplementary models for the celestial pole offsets (CPO) evolution, including:
• Updating the amplitudes of the leading nutations of the IAU2000 theory and other relevant ones, if any, and testing series of corrections
• Correcting the major inconsistencies found in the precession-nutation models
• Test the available FCN models (for explaining CPO variance) and consider the convenience of recommending some standard FCN models or not

3. Any other issues

Contributions and suggestions of JWG members are welcome. If you’d like to make a short presentation, please contact the conveners in advance to optimize the time distribution.

This meeting is to discuss and co-ordinate the production of large-sample hydrological datasets worldwide. We would like to bring together people creating and/or using large samples of catchments, to develop collaborations, brainstorm ideas, report on progress of current projects, and discuss concrete issues related to data format and technical procedures in order to facilitate data exchange. This meeting is organised as part of the Panta Rhei working group on Large Sample Hydrology.