Over four decades, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) has driven massive improvements in the modelled representation of the Earth system, whilst also seeing huge growth in scope and complexity. In its most recent phase, CMIP6, a broad spectrum of scientific questions continue to be answered across twenty-four individual model intercomparison projects (MIPs). However, despite the invaluable science enabled by CMIP6 data, many challenges were faced by the model data providers, data delivery infrastructure, and users, which need to be addressed moving forwards.

The CMIP Panel have developed the design of the CMIP AR7 Fast Track – a novel component of the latest evolution of CMIP’s experimental design. This fast track, focused on the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7), is a subset of climate modelling experiments that have been identified as vital for climate assessments and for informing policy and decision making. The CMIP Panel, supported by the CMIP task teams, have defined this subset of experiments to reduce the burden placed on modelling centres and maximise computational efficiencies, while continuing to deliver impactful climate model data on assessment and policy relevant timelines.

With CMIP7 simulations due to start in many modelling centres this year, a number of key components are being finalised to enable this. The forcing datasets required to run the DECK are due to be published by the end of February 2025 and the final version (v1.2) of the CMIP AR7 Fast Track Data Request expected by the end of March 2025. Together these components are being developed and delivered by a huge group of scientists across the CMIP community. Additionally, work has begun on developing the CMIP AR7 Fast Track Rapid Evaluation Framework (REF) to enable a systematic and rapid performance assessment of the models uploading AR7 Fast Track data.

The Townhall will feature updates on the forcing datasets (including future scenarios), CMIP7 Data Request, the Rapid Evaluation Framework, and an update from the Fresh Eyes on CMIP group. There will be opportunities throughout the event for community discussion.

We invite our growing community to attend. We will describe ongoing planning for CMIP7, and beyond, highlight engagement and consultation opportunities, and invite attendee feedback and participation. The Townhall will be presented by members of the CMIP Panel, Fresh Eyes on CMIP group, and CMIP7 Task Teams.

South America (SA) holds nearly one-third of the world’s freshwater resources, with the Amazon rainforest acting as one of the planet’s most significant net carbon sinks. Additionally, the region is deeply influenced by the Andes cordillera and the El Niño Southern Oscillation, that modulate the regional climate and weather, and generate far-reaching impacts on global atmospheric circulation. These unique characteristics make SA pivotal for understanding global hydrology and climate processes. However, the continent’s vulnerability to climate extremes, i.e., heatwaves, floods, droughts, and their compounds, that cascade to water management and political conflicts, is exacerbated by socio-economic challenges, including low development rates and reliance on agricultural commodities. Addressing these vulnerabilities requires integrating local knowledge into the global climate debate.
Climate research provides the foundation for international agreements, increasingly shaping global geopolitics. SA’s strategic importance in global climate mitigation elevates its role in these efforts. With the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 30) set to take place in Belém, Brazil, countries are expected to present ambitious climate action plans. This represents a significant milestone for global climate adaptation, underscoring the need for collaboration between scientists, governments, and institutions to advance climate governance at local and global levels.
On this basis, critical questions are raised about how regional expertise is integrated into broader hydrologic and climate sciences. Specifically, i) what are the collective responsibilities of the international scientific community associated with local civil society, stakeholders, and decision-makers in addressing regional climate challenges in SA?, and ii) how can transboundary research support the development of hydrology- and climate-focused early career researchers and practitioners in the continent, ultimately promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in research?
These questions are designed to spark discussion about the importance of incorporating local knowledge and promoting early career professionals into the global hydrologic and climate debate. Strengthening regional and international cooperation can address SA’s unique challenges while fostering advances in climate science worldwide. Prioritizing these actions paves the way for achieving the shared goal of equitably advancing global climate adaptation.

Solar Terrestrial and Solar Planetary plasma physics (corresponding to EGU ST division and PS division, respectively) have significant overlap in terms of common fundamental physics and with scientific groups working on both subjects.
We consider that this can be covered by the single disciplinary term of Heliophysics, a term now commonly used by NASA and ESA, which we broadly us to describe the science of understanding the Sun and its interaction with bodies in the solar system (including the Earth, planets and small bodies) and the solar system medium itself. Heliophysics has a large and active international community, with substantial expertise and heritage in the European Space Agency and Europe.

The broad nature of this science has meant that there is no single community list or organizational body associated with it in Europe. This hinders the community in terms of interactions to facilitate science, advertising career opportunities, as well as team building for mission and project proposals to various funding bodies.
To address this, the European Heliophysics Community (EHC) was formed with the aim to improve communication between European heliophysics scientists across this broad discipline. This has included several previous splinter meetings at EGU, the beginning of a series of "Heliophysics in Europe" workshops both in person and online, specific EGU sessions related to this topic (utilising the EHC term in the session title), and an ongoing ISSI forum.

This townhall meeting continues the discussion, to grow and mature the EHC and to ensure that we capture as many people who may not even know they can identify as a Heliophysicist. Such community building will lead to better communication of activities, science and opportunities (in particular to support Early Career Researchers). This will also work to indentify commonalities and synergies and demonstrate the diversity of this science and its unique and powerful cross discipinary nature. ALL are welcome.

In 2023, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) announced the establishment of a new Lighthouse Activity focused on Research on Climate Intervention. WCRP’s Lighthouse Activities are designed as ambitious, trans-disciplinary research initiatives aimed at advancing the science and institutional frameworks required to manage climate risk effectively. These efforts are intended to meet society’s urgent demand for robust, actionable, and equitable climate information.
Climate interventions encompass the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s environment to counteract the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. They primarily include two key approaches: large-scale marine and terrestrial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) measures, and solar radiation modification (SRM). The Research on Climate Intervention Lighthouse Activity seeks to evaluate these approaches, their associated Earth system risks and opportunities, remaining uncertainties, and research gaps.
In this townhall, members of the Lighthouse Activities Scientific Steering Committee aim to engage with the EGU community to clarify the goals of this new initiative and seek feedback on its objectives. The session will provide an opportunity to discuss concrete plans such as a comprehensive stocktake of ongoing research activities, the creation of an overview of expected risks and opportunities, and the development of best practices for SRM and CDR research and experimentation.
We will bring three specific discussion points to the audience:
1. Why should solar radiation modification and carbon dioxide removal be considered together in the Lighthouse Activity on Climate Intervention?
2. What are the most pressing issues that you see for climate intervention research today? Which information do we need to provide for the upcoming IPCC assessment report?
3. How can we ensure a globally inclusive and responsible landscape for climate intervention research?
The valuable feedback gathered from this session will directly inform and shape the future priorities, strategies, and actions of the Research on Climate Intervention Lighthouse Activity, ensuring it remains aligned with both scientific and societal needs.

The intersection of motherhood and fieldwork presents unique challenges and opportunities for researchers, particularly in the geoscience disciplines, which require extensive field research. Both fieldwork and parenting demand significant time, effort, and emotional investment – combining the two is an especially Herculean task that mothers in academia are often forced to face. Despite the growing recognition of the challenges faced by researchers with caregiving responsibilities, there remains a gap in support from academia that specifically addresses the dual pressures of motherhood and field research.

This townhall meeting aims to foster a dialogue among researchers who identify as mothers, sharing their experiences and strategies for coping while conducting fieldwork and managing parenting responsibilities. The topics discussed will reflect on personal narratives and strategies, while presenting a call to action for institutional support mechanisms that facilitate the integration of motherhood and rigorous research efforts. By bringing together mothers who are currently or have previously been engaged in fieldwork, we can illuminate diverse experiences and articulate best practices that may offer inspiration and support to others navigating this complex landscape. This townhall meeting represents a significant opportunity to amplify the voices of mother-researchers and to create a supportive community that recognizes and addresses the unique challenges faced by those balancing the demands of fieldwork and parenting. We believe that the insights gained from this gathering will not only benefit individual researchers but also contribute to broader institutional changes that prioritize work-life balance.

We invite mothers currently or previously engaged in fieldwork to attend the meeting and share their experiences. The townhall meeting is open to all researchers of any gender, academics, and practitioners interested in gender and family dynamics. We would especially appreciate attendance by institutional leaders interested in supporting work-life balance in academia. We hope that hearing experiences from mother-researchers can inspire the next generation of women academics and show that there does not need to be a choice between career and motherhood. We look forward to your participation and the meaningful conversations that will emerge from this collective gathering of experiences and ideas.

Although Machine Learning (ML) is becoming relatively common in many areas of climate science, it is still relatively under-used in paleoclimate studies. This is despite the fact that ML offers exciting novel techniques for addressing long-standing problems in the field, through improving computational efficiency and accuracy, and enabling the management of large, complex datasets. Whereas traditional methods often rely on a limited set of statistical techniques that may not fully capture the complexity inherent in the data, ML provides a suite of algorithms capable of handling non-linear relationships and high-dimensional data, allowing for a more sophisticated analysis. When integrated with proxy data and output from Earth system models (ESMs), ML provides innovative approaches to efficiently reconstruct, interpret, and analyze paleoclimate conditions in ways that were previously unattainable. There are also applications of ML to improve proxy calibrations, and to improve ESMs themselves, for example, through developing more accurate model parameterisations. Furthermore, ML techniques can be employed to develop surrogate models that approximate the behaviour of more complex ESMs. These surrogates can be used to efficiently conduct sensitivity analyses or long simulations.

We aim to bring together those from the modelling and proxy communities, along with experts in machine learning, to showcase existing work applying ML to paleoclimate studies, and to discuss opportunities for future work. Through this meeting, we hope to foster collaborations and discussions that leverage ML for new insights into paleoclimates. The Town Hall meeting will cover, but not be limited to, the following topics:

Modelling
*) Emulators as surrogate models for ESMs to enable efficient paleoclimate simulations;
*) Efficient model tuning to enhance the performance in simulating paleoclimate;
*) New model parameterisations developed through ML;

Proxies
*) Improvements in management and stratigraphic calibration of large proxy dataset;
*) Advances in proxy calibration and quantifying uncertainties;

Model + Proxy Integration
*) Data assimilation and field reconstruction;
*) Proxy system modelling;
*) Downscaling model results for model-data comparisons

The session will be led and facilitated by scientists from the University of Bristol, UK, and Nanjing University, China.

Prepare for lift-off as we embark on a journey into the future of scientific research! This Townhall Meeting will chart new horizons in Open Science, exploring how fully integrated global data sets, tools, and research infrastructures can transcend national and disciplinary boundaries, revolutionising the way we conduct science.

Looking up to the stars: we’ll take flight into the Open Science Universe, identifying what’s already in orbit—what scientific starships can reach and how we can maximise these discoveries. We’ll envision the scientific breakthroughs awaiting us through Open Science and the tools needed to make them a reality.

Looking back to Earth: As we return to base, we’ll assess the obstacles and challenges that stand in the way of achieving this ambitious vision. What will it take to break down these barriers and boldly go where no scientist has gone before? Together, we’ll brainstorm creative solutions to shift our mindset and accelerate progress.

After light-years of exploration, the Starship will return to Earth loaded with transformative methods, new opportunities, and innovative solutions for impactful research in Earth and Environmental Science. Drawing insights from stellar initiatives like AUSCOPE, EARTHSCOPE, Geo-Inquire, EarthChem, and ENVRI—along with its moons like EPOS, EMSO, LifeWatch, and ICOS—we’ll chart a course for a bold new era of Open Science, powered by alien-derived intelligence!

This is a gathering of The Next Generation of researchers who have embraced Open Science principles—leveraging open data repositories, publishing in open access, and using publicly funded large research infrastructures to improve the quality of research. Hear their stories, their struggles, how each small step they took led to a giant leap in their careers and research, and share your own Open Science Space Missions.

Join us to see how their work and careers have been enhanced by Open Science and to explore the possibilities ahead. This Town Hall Meeting builds upon the sessions ESSI 2.2, ESSI 3.1, ESSI 4.4 ESSI 3.2 and ITS1.17/ESSI4.1, showcasing successful integration across disciplines and borders, driving us closer to true Open Science.

The vision of the Global Tsunami Model Association, recently inaugurated in Rome is to saving lives, reducing losses, and enhancing resilience, through the advancement of tsunami science, provision of expert information, and promoting dialog about tsunami hazard and risk.

GTM aims to establish a global tsunami community and consolidate a competence centre for tsunami hazard and risk. This will be achieved through the establishment of curated pools of experts, a commitment to training the next generation of experts, and the promotion of state-of-the-art scientific developments.

GTM will provide services and products related to tsunami hazard and risk, develop reference models and maps, improve and develop analysis methods, tools and good practices with a focus on probabilistic methods.

GTM members will collaborate with users of tsunami hazard and risk products to ensure relevance and proper dissemination of results with the objective of communicating uncertainty transparently.

GTM’s contribution to risk management, reduction and education will be in line with the SFDRR 2015-2030 and SDGs.

The townhall meeting intends to invite the global community to take part in this initiative. GTM Association will be registered as a registered association under German legislation and allows for individual as well as institutional membership. The townhall meeting will feature presentations of recent scientific advancements, current and envisioned projects, the structure of the association, an outline of the business model and future strategy.

GTM fills a gap in knowledge transfer from the scientific community to societal stakeholders. Probabilistic tsunami hazard and risk assessment requires an involved understanding of underlying geological processes, their uncertainty and its quantification, as well as methodological insight. In order to bridge the knowledge gap, GTM is committed to developing standardized and transparent workflows, educate practitioners in applying these to best practices, communicate with decision makers and industry, and disseminate towards the general public.

The townhall meeting invites tsunami scientists as well as stakeholder representatives from all involved disciplines, such as seismology, ocean sciences, risk analysis, volcanology, land slide research, modeling, and others.

The polar oceans, encompassing the Arctic and Antarctic region and their adjacent seas, play a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate and in hosting a unique diversity of life. These regions act as key drivers of oceanic and atmospheric circulation, serving as heat and carbon sinks that mitigate the impacts of global warming, and they are highly productive. The interplay of sea ice, ocean currents and mixing, fringing ice shelves, and biogeochemical and ecosystem processes in polar environments influence weather patterns, global sea level, the Earth energy balance, the carbon cycle, and marine biodiversity, extending their impact far beyond the poles, directly affecting human welfare and societal development. However, rapid warming and ice loss in these areas highlight their vulnerability and the urgent need for action to understand the causes of these changes and mitigate climate and ecosystem impacts.
Thus, beyond the UN decade for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the UN has also called out for a Decade of Science Action for the Cryosphere 2025-2035, and the international polar community is preparing for the International Polar Year 2032/2033.
With this townhall we invite the ocean community to discuss new international missions being developed and their contribution to sustainable ocean observation much needed in the frame of the CCMLR convention as well as in the implementation of the Central Arctic Ocean fishing moratorium.
Addressing these and other challenges necessitates unprecedented international cooperation. The logistical and financial complexities of studying these remote regions call for shared infrastructures, such as icebreakers, observational networks, and advanced research stations. Collaborative initiatives, like the UN Decade Programme Antarctica InSync, the EU-funded infrastructure network POLARIN as well as the planned transpolar drifts of the Tara Polar Station in the Arctic provide new solutions to enhance scientific understanding but also foster equitable access to resources, ensuring that nations worldwide benefit from and contribute to polar science. By working together, we can harness innovation and data-sharing to understand and protect these fragile systems, highlighting the polar oceans’ irreplaceable role in sustaining a stable and livable planet.
This townhall aims to underline the importance of joint international efforts in advancing polar research and to support and inform about collective actions for preserving the climatic balance that polar oceans provide.

Coastal vegetated environments are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth and are often collectively referred to as Blue Carbon habitats. These habitats include salt marshes, mangrove forests, and seagrass meadows. They play a variety of important roles such as biodiversity support and coastal protection, while also providing nature-based solutions contributing to the mitigation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Coastal vegetated ecosystems are under increasing pressure globally due to climate and sea-level change, as well as local anthropogenic activities, which can disrupt their resilience and their carbon balance. There is a pressing need to understand and address these global change impacts and pressures upon carbon cycling in these ecosystems, as well as the disruption to their overall ecosystem dynamics. A better understanding of the feedback loops between sediment carbon and vegetation, the intricate exchanges of different forms of carbon between the atmosphere, sediment, and water are required.

In this townhall, we will host ECRs who are actively shaping the field of research and policy, and discuss emerging opportunities in national and international programmes, with guest panellists to answer questions.

All are welcome - and the event is particularly aimed at ECRs wishing to build their networks.

If you would like to get involved, please contact: bluecarbon@st-andrews.ac.uk

Coastal vegetated environments are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth and are often collectively referred to as Blue Carbon habitats. These habitats include salt marshes, mangrove forests, and seagrass meadows. They play a variety of important roles such as biodiversity support and coastal protection, while also providing nature-based solutions contributing to the mitigation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Coastal vegetated ecosystems are under increasing pressure globally due to climate and sea-level change, as well as local anthropogenic activities, which can disrupt their resilience and their carbon balance. There is a pressing need to understand and address these global change impacts and pressures upon carbon cycling in these ecosystems, as well as the disruption to their overall ecosystem dynamics. A better understanding of the feedback loops between sediment carbon and vegetation, the intricate exchanges of different forms of carbon between the atmosphere, sediment, and water are required.

Earth system sciences undoubtedly depend on the availability and quality of good measurement and observational data from a wide range of disciplines. Data formates hereby cover wide ranges of types, size and complexity. However, a holistic view of the Earth system requires that such research data are available across disciplines and organizations in order to understand Earth system processes as a whole, enable reliable scientific predictions, and be able to play out scenarios for intervention strategies.
In the meantime, there are a wealth of initiatives and projects that aim to organize research data from Earth system sciences within the framework of digital infrastructures according to the FAIR principles, and to prepare them for broad reuse.
This results in the increasingly greater challenge of networking such initiatives across specialist domains and organizational boundaries in such a way that users are able to work with the data and associated tools without any apparent interruption. Typically, many of the approaches follow the perspective of a dedicated user community and thus tend to focus on certain domain-specific aspects of Earth system science. However, initiatives such as NFDI4Earth in Germany purposely foster a compartment overarching, holistic approach.
Following a data-centric perspective and making use of state-of-the-art technologies, both approaches can be combined towards building a joint distributed digital research infrastructure. The key idea hereby is to harmonize approaches while allowing individual contributors to detail-out their specific requirements.
The aim of the meeting is to bring together various perspectives of users, data providers, infrastructure providers and policy makers to discuss the principles and agreements needed to establish a network of virtual infrastructures. Hereby, examples from ongoing initiatives will be brought together with experiences in establishing cross-domain collaboration. Both will be complemented with providing perspectives from the point of view of users. Ideally, the discussion will result in a common roadmap for joint action. Furthermore, the discussion will show where gaps still exist and which approaches are suitable for closing them.