2 August 2025 - Der Springer-nature Verlag hat nun einen Vorschlag fü for die deutsche KI-Übersetzung des Buches ''Climate sciecne Concepts born in Hamburg'' von Hans von Storch, Martin Clausen, Martin Heimann, Robert Sausen und Eduardo Zorita vorgelegt. Diese Übersetyung soll im lauf des Jahres 2025 publiziert werden.Klimawissen, Klimapolitik und der Wettbewerb der Wissensansprüche
26. May 2025 - Die Sammlung "Das ANDERE Klimabuch - 25 Experten / Überraschende Fakten / Rationale Alternativen zur Klimaangst", zusammengestelt von Robert Benkens, Axel Bojanowski und Hans von Storch, hat jetzt seinen endgültigen Titel samt eines dazugehörigen Covers bekommen und ist im Druck beim Verlag Königshausen & Neumann.Auf dem backcover heisst es: AUSSTERBEN DER MENSCHHEIT. Ende der Zivilisation, die Erde brennt und wird zur Wûuml;ste - seit Jahren vermitteln Warnungen vor dem Klimawandel jungen Menschen das Gefühl, die Kosten und Opferzahlen würden immer weiter steigen, sie hätten keine lebenswerte Zukunft mehr oder würden sogar in der globalen Erwärmung umkommen. Psychologen warnen: "Klima-Angst" hat sich ausgebreitet. Umfragen offenbaren ein erschreckendes Ausmass an Angst und Traurigkeit. Viele resignieren und wenden sich ab. Die Jahrhundert-Herausforderung der globalen Erwärmung gerät aus dem Blick. Der Alarmismus ist an seine Grenzen gekommen.
ES GEHT AUCH ANDERS!
DIESES BUCH macht Mut. International renommierte Wissenschaftler von den Universitäten Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford und Oxford sowie Energieexperten, Klimaforscher, Ökonomen, Juristen, Lehrer und Journalisten beantworten die entscheidenden Fragen: WAS SAGT die Wissenschaft wirklich? Was steckt hinter dem Begriff der "Kipp-Punkte"? Welche Massnahmen helfen besser als Degrowth oder Verzicht? Wie können wir die Energiewende retten? Warum sind Klimaurteile von Gerichten problematisch? Wie viele Erden verbrauchen wir? Und: Welche Gründe für Zuversicht gibt es?
DIE TEXTE in diesem Buch zeigen, welche blinden Flecken es in der Klimadebatte bis heute gibt und wie rationale Massnahmen als Antwort auf den Klimawandel aussehen können. DAS ANDERE KLIMABUCH möchte den Auftakt bilden zu einem neuen, durchdachteren Umgang mit einem der wichtigsten Themen unserer Zeit - jenseits von Klima-Katastrophismus und Ignoranz.
20. March 2025 - The book The book cover informs: Since the foundation of the Max Planck Institute in 1975 with the now-Nobel laureate Klaus Hasselmann as founding director, the climate science in Hamburg has seen a remarkable boost. Various ideas were brought forward, implemented and tested. Many of them ignited interest in the global scientific community, thus adding significant momentum to the development of modern climate science.
The participants of the remarkable development since 1975 have come together to identify these concepts ''born in Hamburg''. In an introductory chapter, the historical development, including other significant developments of climate science in the late 19th and early 20th century are addressed.
The main part consists of chapters addressing the development of key innovative concepts. These are chosen to describe ideas which have been suggested by scientists while working in Hamburg and have been taken up by the international community in applications and advancements (such as the stochastic framing of dynamics and analysis, adding carbon cycles to climate models, multiple equilibria in climate models, anomaly coupling, downscaling, and constructed proxies). These ideas may not in all cases have been strictly new, or ''firsts'', but they were the Hamburg publications which made the difference.
The book is mostly a book on scientific concepts and ideas, less so a general history of climate science in Hamburg.
21. December 2024 - The book Climate Science Concepts born in Hamburg, coauthored by von H. von Storch, M. Claussen, H. Heimann, R. Sausen and E. Zorita has been announced to be published by Springer in March 2025: ISBN 978-3-031-81107-4
28 October 2024 - the book Statistics and Modelling of Regional Climate Variability in China Qingdao-Hamburg Cooperation in Oceanography and Climate Studies Since the 1980s coedited by Hans von Storch and Li Delei, doi, 10.1142/q0466, 404 pages, is available at World Scientific Publisher .
The Ocean University of China (中国海洋大学) in Qingdao, where Hans von Storch is a guest professor, celebrates its 100 year anniversary on 24 and 25 October 2024. Details on the history of OUC and celebration. Hans von Storch was invited to participate at the event, together with Jürgen Sündermann and Thomas Pohlmann.li>2. September 2024 - The Hasselmann Legacy - Stochastic Thinking in Climate Science Symposium, organized by Lin Lin has now been announced. It is scheduled on 8th November, 2024 in room B22/023 Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPIM) Bundesstrasse 53, Hamburg.
Lin Lin is delighted to present the speaker Prof. Jochem Marotzke for the welcome words, alongside the guests Dr. Francis Zwiers (Emeritus director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, PCIC), Prof. Myles Allan (University of Oxford), Dr. Armineh Barkhordarian (Universität Hamburg, UHH), Prof. Niels Lid Hjort (University of OSLO), Prof. Hans von Storch (Helmholtz-Zentrum, hereon), Prof. Eduardo Zorita (Helmholtz-Zentrum, hereon), and the colleagues from MPIM Prof. Jinsong von Storch, Dr. Lin Lin. For further information, for instance, the speaker's topics, please see the agenda in the attachment. The abstract and motivation of the symposium are as follows: In recent years, high-resolution Earth system simulations have gained popularity in Hamburg. Following the 2021 Nobel Prize, interest in stochasticity has been reignited. Lin Lin's work, influenced by Klaus Hasselmann, is conducted as a postdoc under the Klaus Hasselmann Fellowship. This symposium aims to spark scientific innovation and future work inspired by Hasselmann's ideas and significant contributions to climate science, particularly in defining the nature of stochasticity and distinguishing between signal and noise. The primary focus is to demonstrate the existence of noise and its effect, specifically how white noise (short-scale forcing) makes slow components integrate into a red spectrum. Additionally, the Stochastic Climate Model emphasizes that the presence of noise necessitates the separation of signal and noise in numerical simulations and discussions of global warming.
* Axel Bojanowski: Was Sie schon immer übers Klima wissen wollten, aber bisher nicht zu fragen wagten: Der Klimawandel zwischen Lobbygruppen und Wissenschaft am 15.8.2024
* Bodo Hombach (Hg.): Mission Wahrheit. Wer vermittelt uns ein realistisches Bild unserer Welt am 7..8.2024
16 August 2024 - the book Statistics and Modelling of Regional Climate Variability in China Qingdao-Hamburg Cooperation in Oceanography and Climate Studies Since the 1980s coedited by Hans von Storch and Li Delei, doi, 10.1142/q0466, 404 pages, is announced to be available by World Scientific Publisher in September 2024, and by Amazon.de on October 27, 2024.has been published, and its abstracts reads: Two types of variability are discernible in the ocean: a response to the atmospheric forcing and the so-called internal/intrinsic ocean variability, which is associated with internal instabilities, nonlinearities, and the interactions between processes at different scales. Producing an ensemble of 20 multiyear ocean simulations of the Mediterranean Sea, initialized with different realistic initial conditions but using the same atmospheric forcing, the study examines the intrinsic variability in terms of its spatial distribution and seasonality. In general, the importance of the external forcing decreases with depth but dominates in extended shelves such as the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Gabes. In the case of temperature, the atmospheric forcing plays a major role in the uppermost 50m of the water column during summer and the uppermost 100m during winter. Additionally, intrinsic variability displays a distinct seasonal cycle in the surface layers, with a prominent maximum at around 30m depth during the summer connected to the summer thermocline formation processes. Concerning current velocity, the internal variability has a significant influence at all depths.
* Axel Bojanowski: Was Sie schon immer übers Klima wissen wollten, aber bisher nicht zu fragen wagten: Der Klimawandel zwischen Lobbygruppen und Wissenschaft am 15.8.2024
* Bodo Hombach (Hg.): Mission Wahrheit. Wer vermittelt uns ein realistisches Bild unserer Welt am 7..8.2024
16 August 2024 - the book Statistics and Modelling of Regional Climate Variability in China Qingdao-Hamburg Cooperation in Oceanography and Climate Studies Since the 1980s coedited by Hans von Storch and Li Delei, doi, 10.1142/q0466, 404 pages, is announced to be available by World Scientific Publisher in September 2024, and by Amazon.de on October 27, 2024.has been published, and its abstracts reads: Two types of variability are discernible in the ocean: a response to the atmospheric forcing and the so-called internal/intrinsic ocean variability, which is associated with internal instabilities, nonlinearities, and the interactions between processes at different scales. Producing an ensemble of 20 multiyear ocean simulations of the Mediterranean Sea, initialized with different realistic initial conditions but using the same atmospheric forcing, the study examines the intrinsic variability in terms of its spatial distribution and seasonality. In general, the importance of the external forcing decreases with depth but dominates in extended shelves such as the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Gabes. In the case of temperature, the atmospheric forcing plays a major role in the uppermost 50m of the water column during summer and the uppermost 100m during winter. Additionally, intrinsic variability displays a distinct seasonal cycle in the surface layers, with a prominent maximum at around 30m depth during the summer connected to the summer thermocline formation processes. Concerning current velocity, the internal variability has a significant influence at all depths.
Abstract: Two types of variability are discernible in the ocean: a response to the atmospheric forcing and the so-called internal/intrinsic ocean variability, which is associated with internal instabilities, nonlinearities and the interactions between processes at different scales. Producing an ensemble of 20 multi-year ocean simulations of the Mediterranean Sea, initialized with realistic initial conditions, but using the same atmospheric forcing, the study examines the intrinsic variability in terms of its spatial distribution and seasonality. In general, the importance of the external forcing decreases with depth but dominates in extended shelves such as the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Gabes. In the case of temperature, the atmospheric forcing plays a major role in the uppermost 50 m of the water column during summer and the uppermost 100 m during winter. Additionally, intrinsic variability displays a distinct seasonal cycle in the surface layers, with a prominent maximum at around 30 m depth during the summer probably connected to the summer thermocline formation processes. Concerning current velocity, the internal variability has a significant influence at all depths.
Hans von Storch, Frauke Feser, Richard Blender, Suzana J. Camargo, Leone Cavicchia, Alejandro Di Luca, Gang Fu, Luiz Felippe Gozzo, Elco Koks, Martina Messmer, Nobuhito Mori, Matthew D.K. Priestley, Tirthankar Roy, David M. Schultz, Shun-ichi Watanabe and Ralf Weisse, 2024: Storms as Forming and Threatening Factors for Coasts https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.853
The abstract reads: Storms are the most significant meteorological phenomena that affect the formation of coasts and human livelihood along them. Thus, risks related to coastal storms, such as flooding, loss of land, shipping, and other offshore activity, have had a significant influence on coastal societies and their economies. In the early 21st century, anthropogenic climate change will affect the locations and intensities of coastal storminess, impacting society.
Storms are studied not only by natural scientists but also by social scientists. The former deal with the climatologies, dynamics, and mechanisms of storms but also with the identification of different types of storms, such as extratropical baroclinic storms, explosive cyclones, tropical storms, polar lows, medicanes, Vb-cyclones, and Australian east coast storms. Their significance is often through their physical impacts, in particular ocean waves and storm surges, which were and are associated with massive losses of lives, sometimes up to several hundred thousand people, and wealth.
The perceptions of what storms constitute were different in different cultural contexts and times. In earlier days, higher forces were responsible for such storms, which they used to transfer messages to humans, physically based ideas have been forming since the 16th century. Another significant historical development was societies preparing to reduce their vulnerability to storms and to implement practices of insurance and risk management.
5. Juni 2024 - Das Kapitel "Kontext der wissenschaftlichen Kommunikation zum Klimawandel" von Hans von Storch erschien jetzt im von Bodo Hombach editierten 250-seitigen Sammelband "Mission Wahrheit - Wer vermittelt uns ein realistisches Bild unserer Welt?, im Tectum Verlag, isbn 978-3-8288-5167-2
1 June 2024 - After having served for almost 10 years as editor-in-chief for the Oxford University Press Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, Hans von Storch has resigned from that position.
28. May 2024 - Research.com has informed that Hans von Storch has been ranked #800 in the world ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Environmental Sciences and #51 in Germany.The ranking is based on D-index (Discipline H-index) metric, which only includes papers and citation values for an examined discipline. The ranking includes only leading scientists with D-index of at least 30 for academic publications made in the area of Environmental Sciences.
The full world ranking is available here and the full ranking for Germany is available here
The abstract reads: Using terms with the same meaning is a precondition of academic exchange and coordinated international actions to cope with the global climate issue. However, the understanding and usage of some terms in the climate change field are incompatible among researchers, policymakers, and publics. In particular, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have used significantly different definitions of climate change, which may result in unforeseen problems in coping with the global climate issue. Also, when referring to future changes, the terms climate change projection and climate prediction are frequently used inconsistently. Other terms not always used with the same meaning are global warming, global change, global climate change, abrupt climate change, climate change monitoring, climate change detection, and climate change attribution.
With respect to the term climate change, it is suggested that it be defined in academic circles as a change in any key climate variables or climate extremes on timescales of multidecades or longer periods caused by any drivers (natural or human and external or internal), whereas the term climate variability should be used to refer to variations on all the spectrums of frequency provoked by natural internal drivers or on high-frequency spectrums caused by natural external drivers. Following the IPCC terminology, it is suggested that climate change projection be defined as estimating possible evolutions of the climate state in the future on scales of decades or longer, based on development scenarios and climate models, with the estimate considered possible, internally consistent, but not necessarily probable. It is also suggested that the term anthropogenic climate change be used to express large-scale climate change caused by various human activities, especially global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities and the corresponding changes in other components of the climate system as noted in the IPCC reports and international climate negotiations.
With the keywords: scientific terms, climate change, climate variability, global warming, global change, detection, attribution, projections
24 January 2024 - The new anthology Statistics and Modelling of Regional Climate Variability in China. Qingdao-Hamburg Cooperation in Oceanography and Climate Studies since the 1980s co-edited by H. von Storch, H., and Li Delei 李德磊, has been announced by World Scientific Publishers to be published in May 20214: DOI: 10.1142/q0466, ISBN: 978-1-80061-580-9The Abstract reads: Two types of variability are discernible in the ocean: a response to the atmospheric forcing and the so-called internal/intrinsic ocean variability, which is associated with internal instabilities, nonlinearities and the interactions between processes at different scales. Producing an ensemble of 20 multi-year ocean simulations of the Mediterranean Sea, initialized with realistic initial conditions, but using the same atmospheric forcing, the study examines the intrinsic variability in terms of its spatial distribution and seasonality. In general, the importance of the external forcing decreases with depth but dominates in extended shelves such as the Adriatic Sea and the Gulf of Gabes. In the case of temperature, the atmospheric forcing plays a major role in the uppermost 50 m of the water column during summer and the uppermost 100 m during winter. Additionally, intrinsic variability displays a distinct seasonal cycle in the surface layers, with a prominent maximum at around 30 m depth during the summer probably connected to the summer thermocline formation processes. Concerning current velocity, the internal variability has a significant influence at all depths.
The abstract reads: Using terms with the same meaning is a precondition of academic exchange and coordinated international actions to cope with the global climate issue. However, the understanding and usage of some terms in climate change field are incompatible among researchers, policy-makers and publics. In particular, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have used significantly different definitions of "climate change", which may bring some hidden troubles in coping with the global climate issue. Also, when referring to future changes, the terms climate change projection and climate prediction are frequently used inconsistently. Other terms, which are not always used with the same meaning are global warming, global change, global climate change, abrupt climate change, climate change monitoring, climate change detection, and climate change attribution.
With respect to the term "climate change", we suggest to use in academic circle for a change in any key climate variables or climate extremes on time scales of multi-decades or longer periods caused by whatever drivers (natural or human, and external or internal); on the other hand, the term "climate variability" is used to refer to variations on all the spectrums of frequency provoked by natural internal reasons or on high-frequency spectrums caused by natural external drivers. Following the IPCC terminology, we suggest to define climate change projection as estimating possible evolutions of the climate state in the future on scales of decades or longer period, based on development scenarios and climate models, with the estimate considered possible, internally consistent, but not necessarily probable. We also suggest to face up to the call for using anthropogenic climate change to express large-scale climate change caused by various human activities, especially global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities and the corresponding changes in other components of the climate system, in the IPCC reports and the international climate negotiations.
The abstractreads: A regional ocean ensemble simulation with slightly different initial conditions demonstrates that internal variability is formed (not only) in the Bohai and Yellow Sea. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the internal variability and the baroclinic instability, (represented by the Eady predicted theoretical diffusivity Kt; the larger the Kt, the stronger the baroclinic instability level). In the ensemble, with tidal forcing, the spatial correlation between the Eady predicted theoretical diffusivity and the internal variability amounts to 0.80. Also, the time evolution trends of baroclinic instability and internal variability are similar. Based on this evidence, baroclinic instability may be a significant driver for internal variability. This hypothesis is validated using an additional ensemble of simulations, which is identical to the first ensemble, but this time the tides are inactivated. This modification leads to an increase in internal variability, combined with the strengthening of variability variation co-vary consistently when comparing summer and winter seasons, both with and without tides. Our interpretation is that a stronger baroclinic instability causes more potential energy to be transformed into kinetic energy, allowing the unforced disturbances to grow.
It is a companion paper, dealing with the process level, by Lin L. (林璘), H. von Storch, and Chen X. (陈学恩), 2023: The Stochastic climate model helps reveal the role of memory in internal variability in the Bohai and Yellow Sea. Communications Earth & Environment, doi 10.1038/s43247-023-01018-7, which is examining the issue at the system's level.
14. Oktober 2023 - Die Anthologie Die Wissenschaft in der Gesellschaft von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch ist von Springer Publisher publiziert worden, doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-41882-3 Inhaltlich ist es eine deutsche Fassung der Anthologie Science in Society: Societies, Climate Change and Policies, die früher in 2023 von World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd veröffentlicht wurde (doi: 10.1142/q0399)
The abstract reads: Hasselmann's theory elucidates how short-term random noise leads to longer-term unprovoked variations, i.e., red spectra. Here, we study ensembles of numerical model simulations of the hydrodynamics of the Bohai and Yellow Sea concerning internal variability formation. Short(/long) term variations are associated with small(/large) spatial scales, and the internal variability of long-term temporal and large-scale variations is markedly enhanced, even without external forcing on these scales, when the tides are turned off. This pattern is well explained by Hasselmann's theory. A critical element in this theory is the concept of memory, which in our ensembles exhibits a scale dependence that aligns with the scale-dependent nature of redness. Additionally, this framework clarifies why there is a significant reduction of long-term fluctuations during winter and when tides are active: the system's memory is notably diminished under these conditions.
On the "Behind the paper"-blog of nature we have published this background information.
7. September - Peter Amenda interviewt Hans von Storch für BILD: Klimawissenschaftler geht auf Klima-Politik der Ampel los - Tragisch verdaddelt durch Selbstüberschätzung.
7. September 2023 - The 320 pages-anthology Science in Society: Societies, Climate Change and Policies by Stehr, N., and H. von Storch has been published by World Scientific Publishing Europe Ltd. doi: 10.1142/q0399The book is characterized by "Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, the authors of this anthology, reflect on the popular and scientific perception and construction of the phenomenon of climate, climate change, climate policy and the impact of climate on society. In the early 1990s, the authors encountered notable resistance to the idea of climate change, especially as they wrote about the urgent need for societal adaptation. Something is wrong with our planet, and it is obvious that this has to do with human conduct. Many, if not the majority, of countermeasures to climate impacts require the innovative capacity of science and technology. However, the translation of scientific knowledge into society is not an automatic or autonomous force. Moving science into society is subject to economic, political, and cultural constraints - a central issue of the book.
Nico Stehr is a sociologist specializing in the theory of modern society and the sociology of knowledge; Hans von Storch is a mathematician and is also a physical climate scientist. Since the authors "inhabit" rather different scientific cultures, their collaboration is genuinely exemplary of transdisciplinary work. The book documents the interdisciplinary path and the wide range of themes that has occupied Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch during more than three decades of joint research and writing, which continues to benefit current research and reflection on the interrelation between nature, democracy, society, governance, and climate."
29 July - Hans von Storch has been invited to serve another 2 years, until July 2025, as Associate Editor of Journal of Climate.The abstract reads: The Baltic Sea Experiment (BALTEX) started in 1993 as part of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX). It was later organized into three programs: BALTEX I, BALTEX II, and Baltic Earth. Here, we examine in a brief overview the overall BALTEX achievements, including program goals, risks encountered during the research journey, and knowledge development when finalizing the programs.
During three decades of climate and environmental studies of the Baltic Basin within the BALTEX/Baltic Earth programs, significant steps have been taken towards improved scientifically constructed knowledge and efforts to disseminate this knowledge to neighboring sciences and the public. These programs have illustrated the need to actively navigate the European research arena while remaining an independent science network. The well-organized International Baltic Earth Secretariat and many dedicated scientists made the research excursions safe and successful. The learning process relates to improved knowledge of the dynamics of the atmosphere-ocean-land climate system in the Baltic Sea region, the cycling of carbon and other substances, the region's anthropogenic climate and environmental changes, and how global warming and regional human activities can be detected outside natural variability.
The article documents a phenomenon, which has been observed earlier with atmospheric regional models (Geyer, et al. (2021). Comm & Environment, 2, 17., namly that unprovoked variability, or hydrodynamic noise can be created by slightly temporal shifting the initial time, or by running with nothing changed on a different comoputer platform - at the same time, with the same intensity:
Abstract: As predicted by the stochastic climate model, small disturbances activated in numerical simulations of atmospheric and oceanic systems lead to the formation of unforced variations, named here ''noise''. This has been demonstrated not only for global systems but also for regional systems. Here, we examine how sensitive this generation of noise is to the mechanism of seeding the internal variability in marginal sea models. The case considered is the circulation of the Bohai and Yellow Sea, as exposed to realistic atmospheric forcing. Two ensembles of simulations were formed. In all simulations, the numerical model is the same - in one, initialization was shifted in time, while the forcing was all the same NCEP CFSv2 in the overlapping time. In the second ensemble, the same code ran on different computer platforms. In both simulations, the intensity of the noise, as well as its temporal development are virtually identical. Thus, the mechanism of how the noise is seeded does not matter - what is needed is just small disturbances; the rest is done by the internal, nonlinear, and high-dimensional dynamics of the system.
3. Juni 2023 - ''Lesart'': Christian Rabhansl spricht mit Hans von Storch über sein Buch "Der Mensch-Klima-Komplex". (Audio)3. Mai 2023 - Christoph Heinemann vom Deutschlandfunk interviewt Hans von Storch in der Sendung Das war der Tag: Klimaziele erreichen - Klimaforscher für einen "Soli" Wohlhabender.
18 April 2023 - Research.com, an academic platform for researchers, has released its 2023 Edition of Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Environmental Sciences. Hans von Storch was ranked #876 in the world ranking and #58 in Germany, leading to the recognition with their Environmental Sciences Leader Award for 2023. The ranking is based on D-index (Discipline H-index) metric, which only includes papers and citation values for an examined discipline. The ranking includes only leading scientists with D-index of at least 30 for academic publications made in the area of Environmental Sciences.
The full world ranking is available here: https://research.com/scientists-rankings/environmental-sciences
The full ranking for Germany is available here: https://research.com/scientists-rankings/environmental-sciences/de
17 March 2023 - Hans von Storch's status as guest professor of the Ocean University of China has been extended for another 3 years, until Oktober 2025.It is now open for discussion on the EGU webblog.
The abstract reads: The quasi-realistic models of the dynamics of climate and of its subsystems atmosphere and ocean are in principle deterministic - but in practical terms they behave stochastically. In two introductory examples, the issue is explained, leading to the conclusion that given our inability to ''understand'' high-dimensional, multiply nonlinear systems, the stochastic Ansatz of Klaus Hasselmann, the ''stochastic climate model'', is a suitable tool for conceptualizing and analysis. Randomness is an unavoidable component in such studies, independently if there is true randomness in the world or if it is mere a practical solution to something, which is intractable otherwise.
The abstract reads: Since ages, the topic of climate - in the sense of "usual weather" - has in the western tradition attracted attention as a possible explanatory factor for differences in societies and in human behavior. Climate, and its purported impact on society, is an integrated element in western thinking and perception.
In this essay, the history of ideas about the climatic impact on humans and society, and the emergence of the ideology of climatic determinism are sketched from the viewpoint of a natural scientist. This ideology favored the perception of westerners being superior to the people in the rest of the world, giving legitimacy to colonialism.
In modern time, when natural sciences instituted self-critical processes (repeatability, falsification) and norms (CUDOS @Merton), the traditional host for climate issues, namely geography, lost its grip, and physics took over. This "scientification" of climate science led to a more systematic, critical, and rigorous approach of building and testing hypotheses and concepts. This gain in methodical rigor, however, went along with the loss of understanding that climate is hardly a key explanatory factor for societal differences and developments. Consequently, the large segments of the field tacitly and unknowingly began reviving the abandoned concept of climatic determinism. Climate science finds itself in a "post-normal"condition, which leads to a frequent dominance of political utility over methodical rigor.
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 30, 31?36, 2023 https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-30-31-2023. video footage
18 Dezember 2022 - Der letzte Beitrag von Hans von Storch zur per Ende Dezember 2022 eingestellten Klimakolumne der Kleinen Zeitung ist jetzt erschienen: Licht am Ende des Tunnels
2. December 2022 - The article "Extreme separations of bottle posts in the southern Baltic Sea - tentative interpretation of an experiment-of-opportunity" by Ulrich Callies and Hans von Storch has been accepted "as is" by Oceanologia.The Abstract reads: During an experiment-of-opportunity in July 2019, 27 drift bottles were released in the southern Baltic Sea. Eight of these bottles were found and reported at locations that were surprisingly widespread. In this study we explore the chances to reproduce these findings with a numerical drift model. We illustrate different aspects of uncertainty including specification of leeway, random dispersion, and stretching along Lagrangian coherent structures. Keeping in mind that no information about the drift bottles' full drift paths is available, we conclude that results of numerical ensemble simulations are in satisfactory agreement with observational evidence.
Keywords: drift bottles, drift simulations, uncertainty, random dispersion, leeway, Lagrangian coherent structures. The pdf of the preprint is here with doi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceano.2022.11.004
1. December 2022 - The "Klaus Hasselmann: Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021" article by Patrick Heimbach and Hans von Storch has been published by Oxford University Press of Climate Science, open access for the time being: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.931.The Abstract reads: Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe shared one half of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for their achievements in "physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming." The Swedish Academy asserted: "Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links together weather and climate, thus answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic. He also developed methods for identifying specific signals, fingerprints, that both natural phenomena and human activities imprint in the climate. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide."
Klaus Hasselmann is best known for founding the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, where he implemented his ideas on quantifying internal variability in the climate system and its components (''stochastic climate model''), and on devising a methodology to separate ''noise,'' that is, variability not provoked by external drivers, from a ''signal'' reflecting the impact of such external drivers. In this way, he introduced a paradigm shift from a deterministic view of the climate system to a genuinely stochastic one. This proved instrumental in detecting anthropogenic climate change beyond natural variability (''detection'') and in demonstrating that the ongoing change could not be explained without a dominant role of elevated atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases (''attribution''). Hasselmann and Manabe initiated the construction of two of the leading quasi-realistic climate models featuring not only an atmosphere and ocean but also the carbon cycle. These achievements were recognized by the Nobel Prize.
The spectrum of themes where Klaus Hasselmann left significant footprints extends far beyond climate dynamics, covering a wide range of geophysical topics. By the time he entered the field of climate research, Hasselmann had already produced groundbreaking work on the modeling and predicting of ocean surface waves. He and his wife led the development of a third-generation wave model, versions of which are in operational use today at major numerical weather prediction centers around the world, including the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Europe and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States. After his retirement, Hasselmann considered his contribution to geophysical issues of climate and climate change sufficient and chose to focus on two different topics. One concerned the coupling of societal decision making with the geophysical system. A second concerned Hasselmann's interest in elementary particle physics, which dates back to his work in the 1960s when he described nonlinear resonant wave-wave interactions by means of Feynman diagrams. Following early ideas by Kaluza and Klein, Hasselmann pursued a deterministic, unified field theory of particles and fields, which he termed ''metron theory.'' It remains incomplete, and given Hasselmann's age may never be completed by himself, but may have to await a smart young physicist to take on the challenge.
30. November 2022 - Die Klima-Kolumne in der Kleinen Zeitung wird zum Ende des Jahres 2022 eingestellt. Bis dahin wird noch eine Kolumne von Hans von Storch erscheinen. 
16. November 2022 - Interview von Ralf Hanselle mit Hans von Storch " Die Evidenz ist nicht so eindeutig, wie man denkt" auf cicero online. Auch als Podcast auf youtube.10 November 2022 - The status of Hans von Storch as a guest professor of the Ocean University of China has been extended.
7. November 2022 - Die 27te Conference of the Parties, COP27, in Sharm El Sheik führt zu einer erhöhten medialen Nachfrage bei Klimaforschern, auch bei Hans von Storch: WELT-TV live interview (7.11); Rundfunk-Interview in der Sendung "Neugier genügt" des WDR5 (8.11.).
6. November 2022 - Ein längerer Artikel "Verzicht allein bringt wenig" stellt die Autorin Julia Witte die Ideen von Hans von Storch zur Frage wirksamer Massnahmen zum Begrenzung des Klimawandels dar.
5. November 2022 - Ein langer Artikel "Warum das Gefasel vom Weltuntergang verantwortungslos ist" von Ulrich Fichtner im SPIEGEL enthält einen längeren Abschnitt mit einem Gespräch mit Hans von Storch. Leider hinter paywall.23. Oktober 2022 - Eine weitere Kolumne ist in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen unter der Überschrift "Der Fall Greta Thunberg und die Kernenergie ".
9 October 2022 - Hans von Storch has been invited to join the project "Für viele Menschen materialisiert sich die schon lange angekündigte, erschreckende Zukunftsperspektive der Klimakatastrophe in den letzten beiden Sommern. Das Verlangen, diesen Klimawandel bei einer noch akzeptablen Änderung zu stoppen, führt zum Sachzwang der "Dekarbonisierung", ohne Gas, Öl und Kohle zu wirtschaften. Da man sich vorgenommen hat, ohne Kernkraft zu arbeiten, verfiel man auf die Idee, importiertes Erdgas als "Brückentechnologie" zu nutzen, weil dies mit weniger CO2-Emissionen verbunden ist, in der Hoffnung, dass in der absehbaren Zukunft die Erneuerbaren samt Speicherfähigkeit für Energie sich so verbessert haben, dass man auch auf Gas verzichten kann.
So das "Narrativ" bis neulich. Aber es zeigte sich, dass diese Zukunftssicht doch zu sehr von Hoffnungen und guten Wünschen geprägt war, und der harten Probe der Realität nicht standhält. Wir wissen natürlich, dass neben dieser in Aussicht gestellten Katastrophe alle Art von Änderungen, vor allem zum Schlechten, drin sind: Die letzten zwei, drei Jahre haben uns solche bösen Überraschungen tatsächlich vorgeführt: Pandemie in der Welt, Krieg in Europa, Inflation bei uns. Die Bürger dieses Landes erwarteten dies nicht - die Pandemie überrollte uns in wenigen Wochen, der Krieg änderte die politische Landschaft binnen Tagen. Verschiedene offensichtlich ernsthafte Probleme nisteten sich nicht nur in unseren Wohnzimmern ein, sondern sie torpedieren die avisierten Klimaziele: Kohle, die "schmutzigste" aller Energieformen, wird wieder genutzt, und gefracktes US-Erdgas gebraucht. Die auf Kante genähte Klimaschutzpolitik funktioniert nicht.
Wie man diesem Dilemma entkommen wird, wird sich zeigen: irgendwann wird sich die alte Einsicht durchsetzen, dass Politik sich nicht direkt aus guten Zielen ergibt, sondern auch im Getümmel der Interessengegensätze ihren Weg finden muss. Zukunft wird nicht nur von einer Entwicklung gesteuert, also: mehr als nur durch Klimawandel.
The abstract reads: We present a method to study the interannual variability of the annual cycle. The method consists of first determining the amplitude and phase of segments of 12 monthly means at all spatial points, resulting in one complex number per grid point and per year. The complex fields, once per year, are then subject to a complex EOF (CEOF) analysis. We consider as an example the barotropic stream function in the South China Sea as simulated with an ocean general circulation model across 6 decades of years, driven my realistic (NCEP) weather forcing. We find 3 to 4 to "significant" CEOFs, which account for about 53 to 62% of variance. These CEOFs go with large-scale patterns. Their time coefficients are mostly stationary, but point to some inhomogeneities related to instationarities in the forcing. In particular, the simulation since 1950-1958 deviates from the remainder of the simulation. The first CEOF describes variations in the center of the South China Sea. Its principal component describes a systematic, albeit noisy shift by almost 180o from 1960 to about the year 2000. When overlaid the long-term mean annual mean, the overall change consists of an amplification of the annual cycle in the 1960s and 1990s, whereas In the 1970s, the amplitude was reduced. Phase shifts in the anomaly (given by the CEOFs) have a small effect, because of the dominance of the mean annual cycle. These variations are not related to ENSO variability but may origin in variations of the Southeast monsoon. The second EOF represents strong changes, both in terms of intensity and phase, in the Luzon strait.
12 July 2022 - Hans von Storch was invited to serve a second term, 2022-2026, as editor of Advances in Climate Change Research, the Chinese journal published by Elsevier.
24 Juni 2022 - In dem von Youssef Ibrahim und Simone Rödder herausgegebenen Sammelband "Schlüsselwerke der sozialwissenschaftlichen Klimaforschung" wird das Buch "Klima, Wetter, Mensch" von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch besprochen, und ein "Gespräch" mit Anita Engels und Hans von Storch mit dem Titel "Zum Abschluss: Sozialwissenschaftliche Klimaforschung? Ja! Aber warum?". Das Ganze ist im Transcript Verlag erschienen unter ISBN 978-3-8376-5666-4, und wird von den Herausgebern so motiviert: "Während Klimaforschung lange als rein naturwissenschaftliches Unterfangen galt, wird sie zunehmend auch in den Sozialwissenschaften betrieben. Die Popularisierung in und ausserhalb der Wissenschaft hat dabei nicht nur zu neuen Problembezügen geführt, sondern auch eine wachsende Unübersichtlichkeit produziert: Es ist ein Bedarf entstanden, disziplinäre Einstiegspunkte, interdisziplinääe Anschlussmöglichkeiten und transdisziplinäre Austauschgelegenheiten zu sondieren. Die Beiträge des Bandes thematisieren zentrale Schlüsselwerke der sozialwissenschaftlichen Klimaforschung und ermöglichen so einen ersten und orientierenden Zugang zu diesem Forschungsfeld."Das Buch soll online ist unter ISBN: 978-3-8394-5666-8 kostenlos verfügbar.
16 June 2022 - The article "Klaus Hasselmann - recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021" by Hans von Storch and Patrick Heimbach has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press Research Encylopedia of Climate Science.
7. June 2022 - The book on Klaus Hasselmann From Decoding Turbulence to Unveiling the Fingerprint of Climate Change: The Science of Klaus Hasselmann has now been published as e-book by Springer Cham. The printed version will follow soon.
2. June 2021 - When ending his time as chair of the Baltic Earth Senior Advisory Board, Hans von Storch was recognized with a Certificate of Excellence for "outstanding achievements to the Baltic Earth and BALTEX scientific communities and as Chairman of the Baltic Earth Senior advisory Board". 1 June 2021 - After many years as Editor-in-Chief of Oxford University Press Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science Hans von Storch has resigned - but is completing his tasks related to manuscripts initiated by him for the EncyclopediaThe Abstract reads: The hydrodynamics of marginal seas exhibit internal variability unprovoked by external forcing. So far, the role of tides in reducing this ?noise? has not been studied. We investigate the effect of tides on internal variability in the Bohai and Yellow Sea. To do so, we conducted three ensembles of numerical experiments using the Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) with tidal forcing, with "half tidal" forcing, and without tidal forcing, while everything else was unchanged, and determined the intensity of the signal-to-noise ratio (hereinafter referred to as the S/N ratio), with the "signal" represented by the variance of the coherent variations of the different simulations subject to the same atmospheric variability and the noise represented by the intraensemble variance. The S/N ratio is determined for barotropic velocity, surface temperature, and surface salinity.
The first result is that in all three ensembles, noise emerges but with different intensities. In the ensemble with tidal forcing, unprovoked variability emerges mostly at smaller scales. When the tides are weakened or turned off, the S/N ratios are reduced, more so in the Yellow Sea than in the Bohai. The increase in the S/N ratio is largest for large scales and for barotropic velocity. The reduction in tidal forcing results in an approximately 30% increase in S/N ratios in the Bohai at large scales. Thus, the absence of tidal forcing favours the emergence of unprovoked variability at large and medium scales but not at small scales, likely because of an increase in covariations related to the forced tidal variability.
9 May 2022 - The guest professorship of Hans von Storch at Ocean University of China has ended after 8 sucessful years of academic exchange, studies and publications.
25. April 2022 - Laudatio: Klaus und Susanne Hasselmann. Wissenschaftler und Hamburger aus Anlass der Verleihung der Ehrenmitgliedschaft der Patriotischen Gesellschaft Hamburg an Klaus Hasselmann. Bericht im Hamburger Abendblatt. 3. April 2022 - Klima-Kolumne Klimawissenschaft ersetzt keinen politischen Willensbildungsprozess in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen.
1. Februar 2022 - Der etwas gekürzte Meinungsbeitrag "Senkung der Treibhausgase: Deutschlands Klimapolitik ist chancenlos - weil sie das falsche Ziel verfolgt" von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch ist auf ist bei WELT-online hinter dem Paywall erschienen.Auch in der Druckversion der WELT am 3. Februar 2022.
19. Januar 2022 - Einladung zu einer regelmässigen Kolumne zum Klimathema in der "Kleinen Zeitung", ab März 202223. December 2021 - Hans von Storch has been invited to serve for another 4 years, 2022-2025, on the editorial board of Oceanologia.
13. December 2021 - Our old friend and colleague Harry van Loon has passed away at the age of 96. A great scientist and human. I learned a lot from him. In 2005, a group of friends prepared an extensive interview with him. Submission deadline - abstract: 6 March 2022; manuscript 6 May 2022
7. Dezember 2021 - Zeremonie mit Verleihung des Physik-Nobelpreises duch den schwedischen Botschafter im Harnack-Haus der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin. Die Nobel-lecture von Klaus Hasselmann ist Teil dieser Dokumentation.
25. November 2021 - In mid October, a discussion was organized, in Spanish with simultaneous translation, by the Research Institute for Development and Cooperation, Complutense University, as part of the debate series: "Life in crisis: uncertainty, social risk and changing life stories in Spain" of the CaixaForum in Madrid. Now the video-recording of the event has been made public on Youtube.Tobias Stern Johansen hatte gefragt, welche positiven Impulse von COPs wie in Glasgow ausgegangen seien. Die Antwort: "Vier positive Elemente fallen mir ein.
Erstens ist ein weltweites Bewusstsein für das Problem entstanden, das es so vor 20 Jahren noch nicht gab. Dieses Bewusstsein entstand, als James Hansen 1988 in den Vereinigten Staaten darauf hinwies, dass die damalige Hitzewelle vom Menschen verursacht sein sollte. Bis Ende der neunziger Jahre haben wir das verschlafen, aber seitdem ist das Bewusstsein gestiegen und hat mit Greta Thunberg seinen vorläufigen Höhepunkt erreicht. Das bedeutet aber auch, dass es eine Tendenz gibt, alle möglichen Phänomene dem Klimawandel zuzuschreiben, was dumm ist. Das Wetter hat sich schon immer ab und an extrem verhalten, und etwa die grossen Schäden der Überschwemmungen in Deutschland in diesem Sommer hatten vor allem mit mangelnder Vorbereitung zu tun.
Zweitens sind die Treibhausgasemissionen geringer, als sie ohne diese Klimapolitik gewesen wären. Die Hauptursache für den Klimawandel sind die Treibhausgasemissionen. In Deutschland sind die Emissionen seit der Jahrtausendwende um 20 % zurückgegangen. Dies dürfte vor allem auf die Klimaschutzpolitik zurückzuführen sein. Etwas Ähnliches geschieht wahrscheinlich auch in anderen europäischen Ländern. Das bedeutet, dass sich der globale Emissionsanstieg verlangsamt hat, was zwar nicht ausreicht, um die Pariser Klimaziele zu erreichen, aber viel besser ist als gar nichts. Diesen Punkt hört man in der Öffentlichkeit einfach nicht.
Drittens: In Deutschland und Dänemark schenken Verantwortliche der Anpassung an die Folgen des möglichen Klimawandels vermehrt Aufmerksamkeit. In Hamburg gibt es ein Hafengebiet, das för den Wohnungsbau entwickelt werden soll. Es liegt an der Elbe, und wenn der Wasserstand steigt und es zu Sturmfluten kommt, wird das Auswirkungen auf die Gebäude und ihre Bewohner haben. Hier stellt sich die Frage, was in 50 Jahren passiert, wenn der Klimawandel wie erwartet eintritt, und wie der Schutz vor Umweltgefahren in die Gestaltung des Wohngebiets einbezogen werden kann. Das Gleiche wird in Dänemark an mehreren Stellen getan. Das ist sehr positiv, denn es ist nicht selbstverständlich, dass die Menschen so langfristig denken.
Und, schliesslich, viertens: Modernisierungen aller Art sind ein ständiges Phänomen in unseren Gesellschaften. Diese Modernisierungen gehen vermehrt einher mit einer Minderung der Emissionen. So sehe ich seit einiger Zeit mehr Elektroautos in unserer Tiefgarage. Im Westen ist ein Modernisierungsschub im Gange, der den Rest der Welt mitnehmen kann. In Tansania zum Beispiel haben viele Menschen Handys, während das Telefonieren mit Standleitungen offenbar weitgehend übersprungen wurde. Ebenso kann man sich vorstellen, dass man in diesem Teil der Welt keine weiteren Tankstellen bauen muss, weil man auf Benzinautos verzichtet und modernere Technologien einsetzt."
Am 23. November 2021 auch auf Globkult gestellt: Erfolge der bisherigen Klimapolitik.26. Oktober 2021 - Neuer Beitrag in der Kolumne "Zur Sache Klima": Grünewald, U., 2021 Minderung wechselnder und wachsender Naturgefahren durch Vorsorge und Anpassung Globkult, 26. Oktober 2021
14 October 2021 - The eminent climate scientist Geert Jan van Oldenburgh has passed away, as NRC reports. Earlier this year, Hans von Storch and Sjoukje Philip have prepared an extensive interview with Geert Jan: Geert Jan van Oldenborgh - approaching truth in a sea of noise and data deficiencies.Am 10. Oktober brachte die Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung zu dieser Preisverleihung ein ausführliches Interview mit dem Titel "Er hatte am Ende immer recht" von Andreas Frey mit Hans von Storch.
4. Oktober 2021 - Neuer Beitrag auf "Zur Sache Klima" von Globkult: Klimaszenarien: Projektionen oder Vorhersagen? von Hans von Storch und Katja Woth.29. September 2021 - The paper "Perceptions of an endangered Baltic Sea" has been been published open-access by Oceanologia: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceano.2021.08.005. . The Abstract reads:In a series of ad-hoc surveys at different academic institutions in the Baltic Sea region, students and young scholars were asked about their views about the environmental issues of the Baltic Sea, and who would be responsible for the management of the Baltic Sea. Overfishing, climate change and waste were considered the most significant issues, while tourism and constructions (of bridges etc.) were less often recognized as severe. The responsibility for the management of the Baltic Sea was mostly attributed to the European Union or to the respective national governments.
Since climate is one of these issues, one question has dealt with the main task of climate science. It turns out that the most frequent assertion was not the genuine scientific task of generating knowledge about the dynamics of the system. Instead, the task of solving the problem and, equally often, supporting climate activism was favored.
The results are not representative - neither for the separate surveys, nor for the selection of the sites of surveying. However, when taken all surveys together, the emergence of consistent perceptions may be considered evidence for a general attitude among students and young scholars in the Baltic regions. However, differences between groups - in terms of nationality, seniority and discipline - may be related to sampling randomness.
Weekendavisen, s. 8 (10.09.2021)
Coasts are those regions of the world where the land has an impact on the state of the sea, and that part of the land is in turn affected by the sea. This land-sea interaction may take various forms - geophysical, biological, chemical, sociocultural, and economic. Coasts are conditioned by specific regional conditions. These unique characteristics result, in heavily fragmented regional and disciplinary research agendas, among them geographers, meteorologists, oceanographers, coastal engineers, and a variety of social and cultural sciences.
Coasts are regions where the effects and risks of climate impact societal and ecological life. Such occurrences as coastal flooding, storms, saltwater intrusion, invasive species, declining fish stocks, and coastal retreat and morphological change are challenging natural resource managers and local governments to mitigate these impacts. Societies are confronted with the challenge of dealing with these changes and hazards by developing appropriate cultural practices and technical measures.
Key aspects and concepts of these dimensions are presented here and will be examined in more detail in the future to expand on their characteristics and significance.
2. August 2021 - Neuer Beitrag auf "Zur Sache Klima" von Globkult zur Thematik der Flutkatastrophe im Juli in Westdeutschland: Das Narrativ der deutschen Flutkatastrophe 2021.29 July 2021 - Hans von Storch has been invited by Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society to extend his function as Associate Editor for another 2 years. 28. Juli 2021 - Meinungsartikel in der WELT "Wir brauchen Klimaschutz – aber auch besseren Schutz vor Katastrophen" von Hans von Storch zur Einordnung der westdeutschen Flutkatastrophe am 14. und 15. Juli 2021.The abstracts reads: Inspired by the Charney-and-de Vore hypothesis, Hansen and Sutera in 1986 came forward with the claim of having detected a fingerprint of the presence of two preferred states in the tropospheric circulation at northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes. Shortly after, Nitsche et al. found that this claim was premature, since it may be caused by a insufficient data base. Now, with much more data, both from reanalyses and from extended control runs with earth System models, we have revisited this case, and found no evidence of such bimodality, when using the original metric.
Following the principle that lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking reality, it may be possible to detect footprints of multimodality with different metrics, and we are not making any claims of that sort, even if the literature provides little evidence of the success of alternative metrics.
Our result has a dual significance, namely first for our understanding of atmospheric dynamics, and secondly of the ubiquitous temptations of the Zeitgeist.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2021.101241
29 June 2021 - Number 13 of the interview series has been published on Academia.edu: Mike Hulme: The gentleman understanding climate beyond the fascination of differential equations, with Hans von Storch and Martin Claussen. 29. Juni 2021 - Ein neuer Beitrag ist nun im Internet Magazin Globkult erschienen: "Klimapolitische Herausforderungen: Emissionsminderung und Anpassung" .
15. Juni 2021 - In der von W. Hopf herausgegebenen Sammlung LIBERTAS - Jahrbuch der Meinungsfreiheit ist mein 4-seitiger Beitrag "Klimadeterminismus" in illusterer Gesellschaft anderer interessanter Autoren erschienen.
25. Mai 2021 - Mit etwas Verspätung erfuhr ich heute, dass meine 14te Kolumne "Klimawissen – ein Kopfprodukt aus dem Computer? in der Kleinen Zeitung schon am 27. Februar 2021 erschienen ist:Man hört bisweilen, dass die Wahrnehmung des gegenwärtigen Klimawandels sowie Vorstellungen über die zukünftige Entwicklung etwas sei, dass durch undurchsichtige Codes, genannt Klimamodelle, auf Computern erzeugt würde. Tatsächlich spielen „Klimamodelle“ eine wichtige Rolle in der Klimaforschung, sind aber für die politisch wichtigste Folgerung nur unterstützend. Dass wir es derzeit mit einem Wandel des Klimas zu tun haben, der im Rahmen unseres Wissens nur durch einen dominanten Beitrag der durch menschliche Emissionen verursachten Treibhauseffekt erklärt werden kann, ist eine Bewertung beobachteter Veränderungen. Dieser Wandel kann zum Halten gebracht werden durch die Beendigung der Freisetzungen von Treibhausgasen Die Klimaforschung ist kein fest umrissenes Forschungsgebiet. Es geht um die Dynamik des Klimas, die Veränderung des Klimas in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft, die Wirkung von Klima und Klimawandel auf Gesellschaft und natürliche Umwelt, aber auch um die gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung des Klimas und des Klimawandels. Die Klimaforschung nutzt ein breites Spektrum an Methoden, wie die statistische und dynamische Analyse von Daten, die Nutzung von Proxydaten (z.B. Eisbohrkernen), historischer Quellen und Satellitendaten, Umweltüberwachung oder Umfragen und auch Numerische Modellierung. Wichtige Disziplinen sind Physik, Statistik, Meteorologie, Ozeanographie, Glaziologie, Biogeochemie, Ökologie, Umweltökonomie, Kommunikationswissenschaften, Wissenschaftliches Rechnen und weitere.
In diesem methodisch-disziplinären Konglomerat sind als wichtiges Hilfsmittel die „Klimamodelle“ entstanden, die Computergerecht kodiert die grundlegenden Gleichungen „Änderung des Zustandes = Summe von Einflußfakoren“ und die Wechselwirkungen von Atmosphäre, Ozean etc. darstellen.
Nein, das Wissen um den menschgemachten Klimawandel ist kein Kopfprodukt aus dem Computer, sondern Ergebnis und Folge einer sorgfältigen Analyse beobachteter Änderungen.
29. April 2021 - Der Teil IV der Reihe "Klimamodelle" ist nun im Internet Magazin Globkult erschienen: "Modelle – Falsifizierung möglich?" .
25. April 2021 - Word reached me today that my old colleague, the Englishman Peter Wright, has died recently, aged 77. He was quite a character. We joined forces in the late 1980s at MPI - and I learned a lot from him how to handle observational data, mostly on El Nino and Southern Oscillation. Two of his papers, which I remember, are:Wright, P.B., 1984: On the relationship between indices of the Southern Oscillation. Mon. Wea. Rev. 112, 1913-1919
Wright, P.B., 1985: The Southern Oscillation - An ocean-atmosphere feedback system. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc. 66, 398-412
15. April 2021 - Mein Artikel "COVID-19 und menschgemachter Klimawandel als postnormale wissenschaftliche Objekte" ist jetzt im "Forum" der Naturwissenschaftlichen Rundschau 3/2021 erschienen. Abstract: Wissenschaft verändert fortlaufend unser Leben, weshalb man auch Forderungen und Erwartungen an sie stellt. Besonders gilt dies in Zeiten der Unsicherheit, die rasche Entscheidungen erfordern. In einer derartigen Situation läuft die Wissenschaft Gefahr, in das politische Getriebe zu geraten. Sie wird entwissenschaftlicht und zu einem politischen Mitspieler – womit sie ihre Reputation, die auf Fachkompetenz und strikter Sachbezogenheit beruht, aufs Spiel setzt.
Der Text ist hinter einer paywall, kann aber für einige Zeit als Leseprobe heruntergeladen werden.
5. April 2021 - Die Teile II und III der Reihe "Klimamodelle" sind nun im Internet Magazin Globkult erschienen. In II geht es um die Konstruktion und in Teil III um ein immer wieder gebrauchtes, offensichtlich aber falsches Skeptiker-Argument: Das Gerede von der Unmöglichkeit der Vorhersage in komplexen Systemen. 1. April 2021 - Florian Felix Weyh in der Rundfunksendung Letztgültige Antworten in der Wissenschaft - Was wissen wir wirklich? des Deutschlandfunks stellt das Konzept von Detektion und Attribution in einen unerwartet breiten Kontext, und verweist dabei auf Hans von Storch: "wie beim Teilchenbeschleuniger des CERN greift man auch in anderen Wissenschaften immer häufiger auf Datensätze zurück, deren Aussagekraft sich nicht auf Anhieb erschließt. -- An solche Datensätze muss man, mit den Worten des Klimaforschers Hans von Storch, zwei Erkenntnisinstrumente anlegen: das der „Detektion“ und das der „Attribution“. Für die Detektion – also die Suche nach auffälligen Mustern –, gibt es algorithmische Verfahren. Für die „Attribution“ – nämlich die Frage, ob sich hinter den Mustern Abhängigkeiten und Wirkmechanismen verbergen, braucht es Theorien oder Fantasie."
18. März 2021 - Im Rahmen der (virtuellen) 12ten Deutschen Klimatagung wurde der 6. Eduard-Brückner Preis an den Briten Prof. Mike Hulme von University of Cambridge verliehen. Die Laudatio hielt Martin Claussen, auf die Mike Hulme antwortete. 18. März 2021 - Im Zuge der 12. Deutschen Klimakonferenz wurde Hans von Storch zum Thema Sturmfluten an der deutsche Nordseeküste von Axel Schröder für die Sendung DLF-"Umwelt und Verbraucher" interviewt.
15. März 2021 - TV-Interview von Julia Sen im "Hamburg Journal" aus Anlaß der 12. Deutschen Klimatagung (DKT).13. März 2021 - Im Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen achten Beitrag veröffentlicht: "Klimamodelle, Teil I – Modellbegriff und Zweck". von Storch, H., B. Geyer, Li Y., V. Matthias, and B. Rockel, 2021: Chinese lockdown as aerosol reduction experiment. Advances in Climate Change Research, 10.1016/j.accre.2021.03.003
The abstract reads: The lockdown of large parts of Chinese economy beginning in late January 2020 lead to significant regional changes of aerosol loads, which suggests a reduction of backscatter and consequently a regional warming in the following months. Using local data and a numerical experiment with a limited area model, we have examined how strong this response may have been. The observed (local and reanalysis) observations point to a warming of less than 1.0 K, the simulations to a warming of the order of 0.5K. These numbers are uncertain, because of large-scale natural variability and an ad-hoc choice of aerosol optical depth anomaly in the simulation. Thus, the result was, in short, that there was actually a weak warming of a few tenth of degrees, while noteworthy changes in circulation or in precipitation were not detected. More specifically, we found that at selected central China stations temperatures were found to be higher than in previous two years. This warming goes with a marked diurnal signal, with a maximum warming in the early afternoon (06 UTC), weakest at night (18 UTC). This may be related to a general warming of large swaths of Asia (including Siberia, which is not related to local aerosol forcing). Indeed, also the stations outside the immediate strong lockdown region are showing warming, albeit a weaker one. Thus, the difference 2020 minus 2019/2018 may overestimate the effect. The ad-hoc series of numerical experiments indicates that the simulated changes are robust and suffer little from internal dynamical variability. In particular, the overall reduction of the aerosol optical depth does not lead to phases of larger intermittent divergence among the model simulations, irrespective of the aerosol load. Instead, the simulations with reduced anthropogenic aerosol load show more a mere locally increased temperature. This may indicate that the aerosol effect is mostly thermodynamic in all local air columns in the region.
4 March 2021 - Invitation to join the Science Advisory Board of Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC)2. März 2021 - Neuer Beitrag Internet Magazin Globkult: wurde im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima ein weiteren Beitrag veröffentlicht, diesmal von Ludwig Greven: Klimaschutz ist nicht alles. 
28 January 2021 - A proposal by Corinna Schrum, Chen Xueen and Hans von Storch for a session "Role and implications of hydrodynamic noise in regional seas" has been accepted for the online conference "CERF 2021, CERF at 50. Celebrating our Past, charting the Future", on 7 - 11 November 202121. January 2021 - The 12th in-depth interview with remarkable (mostly climate) scientists, this time, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh.von Storch, H., and S. Philip, 2021: Geert Jan van Oldenborgh – approaching truth in a sea of noise and data deficiencies. Academia.edu, 21. January 2021
18. Januar 2021 - Im Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen siebten Beitrag veröffentlicht: "Klimawissen - ein Produkt aus dem Computer?". 23. Dezember 2020 - Im Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen sechsten Beitrag veröffentlicht: "Retten, retten ist die erste Bügerpflicht". 21. Dezember 2020 - Die 13te Kolumne "Gute Wissenschaftler sind 'Fachidioten'" ist in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen.11. November 2020 - Im Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen fünften Beitrag veröffentlicht: Wissenschaft – wozu?. 6. Oktober 2020 - Im Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen vierten Beitrag veröffentlicht: Klimadeterminismus. 29. September 2020 - Die zwölfte Kolumne von Hans von Storch: Klimawandel: Wir brauchen keine Missionare, die anderen vorschreiben wollen, was gutes Leben ist, erschien in der Kleinen Zeitung
19. September 2020 - Der Bericht des Projekts GlobEn ist jetzt als Buch erschienen: Gethmann, C.F., G. Kamp, M. Knodt, W. Kröger, C. Streffer, H. von Storch, and T. Ziesemer, 2020: Global Energy Supply and Emissions An Interdisciplinary View on Effects, Restrictions, Requirements and Options. Springer ISBN 978-3-030-55354-8 ISBN 978-3-030-55355-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55355-5
18. September 2020 - Der Debattenbeitrag Langer Schatten des Kolonialismus ist in der TAZ erschienen. Eine Langfasssung erschien unter "Der Elefant im Raum: Der intellektuelle Neo-Kolonialismus" online bei Publikum.net am 12. Oktober 2020.
11 September 2020 - The collection of all papers of the FRONTIERs-project "Modelling, Simulating and Forecasting Regional Climate and Weather" have now been open-access published as a special report. 
3. September 2020 - Teilnahme an dem online-Streitgespräch "Future Forward Talk | Clash of Generations?" im Zuge des 3. Klimakongresses des Bundesverbands der Deutschen Industrie e.V.: mit Fenja Feitsch, Klimaaktivistin, Klimadelegation e.V.; Lubomila Jordanova, Founder & CEO, Plan A.Earth & Co-Founder, Greentech Alliance; Sarna Röser, Bundesvorsitzende, Die Jungen Unternehmer & Mitglied der Geschäftsleitung, Röser FAM GmbH & Co. KG, und Prof. Dr. Hans von Storch, Mathematiker und Klimaforscher. Die Diskussion, moderiert von Carsten Rolle, wurde als Video aufgezeichnet.23. August 2020 - Für das Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen dritten Beitrag veröffentlicht: Wollen wir wissenschaftliches Wissen oder Wahrheit?. 
2 August 2020 - An online onine introductory lecture of 30 min's length, "Climate and history, history and climate" has been published on Youtube. The idea is that this introductory lecture will be completed with deepening lectures at a later time.25 July 2020 - An online ZOOM-presentation "Postnormal science - climate and epidemiology" was given at the Club of Remy Project "The Evolution of Science", of which a video-recording is now accessible on Youtube.25. Juli 2020 - Hans' sechster Videobeitrag, eine Vorlesung "Was ist Wissenschaft und was liefert sie?" ist jetzt auf youtube gestellt; 15 min. 24. Juli 2020 - Für das Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen dritten Beitrag veröffentlicht: "Covid-19 und menschgemachter Klimawandel als postnormale wissenschaftliche Objekte".22 July 2020 - The project of a special issue at FRONTIER, named "Modelling, Simulating and Forecasting Regional Climate and Weather" has been concluded with the publication of the editorial by H. von Storch, H., F. Feser, R. Laprise, M. Stendel, and I. Takayabu.3. Juli 2020 - Meine 11te Kolumne Krempelt technologisch endlich die Ärmel auf! ist in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen. Es wird in 2,000 Zeichen dargestellt, dass die derzeitige vorübergehende deutliche Minderung der Emissionen von Treibhausgasen keine wesentliche langfristige Wirkung haben wird - und damit der Bedarf für eine technologisch getragene Beendigung der Emissionen unvermindert besteht.Die Kolumne geht jetzt in die Sommerpause.
27. Juni 2020 - Für das Internet Magazin Globkult habe ich im Rahmen meiner Kolumne Zur Sache Klima einen zweiten Beitrag veröffentlicht: Wir leben in aufregenden Zeiten. Nach einem zivilisierten kurzen Hin-und-Her entstand daraus ein Text, in dem ich zunächst einige Grundbegriffe erklärte, und dann skizzierte, welche Perspektiven ich sehe. Diese "Perspektiven" wurden jetzt unter dem Titel "Klimapolitische Perspektiven für Österreich" in Addendum, publiziert.
17. Juni 2020 - Der Diskussionsbeitrag Klimawandel - was tun? von Hans von Storch ist jetzt erschienen in dem Heft "Wohlstand für Alle - Klimaschutz und Marktwirtschaft" der Ludwig Erhardt Stiftung.Der Beitrag wurde auch vorgelesen für einen Beitrag auf youtube.
9. Juni 2020 - Das internet-Magazin Globkult hat die Kolumne Zur Sache Klima eingerichtet, in der Hans von Storch Aspekte von Klimaforschung und Kimapolitik beleuchtet.28. Mai 2020 - Video-Beiträge CO2 Emissionen und der Anstieg der Konzentrationen im Zeiten des Corona Lockdowns und Klimawandel und Dürre / Frühjahr 2020 youtube. Textfassungen auch auf ResearchGate - Emissionen und Dürre. Siehe auch Hinweis vom 25. Mai 202022. Mai 2020 - Mit "Die Dürre, Klimawandel und Anpassung" ist die 10te Kolumne von Hans von Storch in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen. Sie behandelt die Frage, ob es klug ist, nur die Notwendigkeit der Minderung der Emissionen aus der vorgeblich klimawandelbedingten Dürre abzuleiten, aber die Möglichkeiten der Anpassung von Forst- und Landwirtschaft an den Klimawandel auszublenden.16. Mai 2020 - BILD-Plus nimmt das Thema "Corona und Klima" wieder auf in dem Beitrag Trotz Corona-Lockdown – Rekord beim CO2-Wert von Peter Amenda. Dabei kommen Mojib Latif, Martin Stendel und Hans von Storch zu Wort.14. Mai 2020 - Video-Beitrag Mögliche wirksame Beiträge des "Einzelnen" zum Gelingen der Klimapolitik online auf Youtube8. Mai 2020 - Als Antwort auf eine Anfrage des Online-Magazin „Ernsthaft“ hat Hans von Storch ein Video aufgenommen, in dem er vorgegebene Fragen beantwortet hat. Dies Video wird von den Redakeuren des magazins verwertet; das Gesamtvideo wurde jetzt auf Youtube gestellt, siehe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShtkBq0TRXI . 25. April 2020 - Eine Stellungnahme von Hans von Storch zum Nexus von Corona-Pandemie und Klimawandel ist in dem Beitrag "Präsident des Umweltbundesamtes: 'Corona entlastet das Klima'" in der BILD-Zeitung von 25. April 2020 verwertet worden - korrekt sowohl im Wortsinn als auch im Kontext.
24. April 2020 - Im vdw-Magazin der "Die Wohnungswirtschaft Niedersachsen Bremen" ist der Beitrag "Für einen konstruktiven Umgang mit dem Klimawandel" von Hans von Storch erschienen.21. April 2021 - A remarkable story about children preparing drift bottles, seamen dropping several of them simultaneously into the Baltic Sea, and others finding them at beaches far from each other. Thus, a formidable empirical data set, namely of the locations of findings spots, was the result of an “experiment-of-opportunity”. Using a transport model, a mechanism is suggested, how this wide spreading happened.For details, see: Drift bottles in the southern Baltic Sea – an experiment-of-opportunity by H. von Storch, U. Callies, and A. Omstedt in the newest Baltic Earth Newsletter (Nr. 6, 2020)
von Storch, H., und R. Ebinghaus, 2020: MERMAID und FERRYBOX bei GKSS / HZG - Interview mit Wilhelm Petersen und Friedhelm Schroeder. It was published on Researchgate.net DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33125.96485. See also HZG Blog.
19. April 2020 - Die Eckdaten (Termine, Programmstruktur) für die- 12. Deutsche Klimatagung, am 15.-8. März 2021 in Hamburg sind nun online.16. April 2020 - Mit "Corona und das Weltklima" ist die 9te Kolumne von Hans von Storch in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen. Sie behandelt die Frage, ob es klug ist, etwa das Klimathema zum wichtigsten Thema der Welt auszurufen, und dabei andere Themen zu vernachlässigen.12. März 2020 - Mit "Klima, ich und Du" ist die 8te Kolumne von Hans von Storch in der Kleinen Zeitung erschienen. Sie behandelt die Frage, welche Optionen es gibt für das persönliche Engagement in Fragen des Klimaschutzes.
9. März 2020 - Ausführliches Interview auf Podcast "Guidos Bellbergs Kluge Freunde" - Gespräch "#89 Hans von Storch: Klimawandel ist echt, manche Leute nicht".
18 Februar 2020 - Die "Speaker" Agentur Athenas hat Hans von Storch jetzt in ihr Angebot übernommen, siehe Details.17. Februar 2020 - Die 7te Kolumne von Hans von Storch ist jetzt unter dem Titel Licht am Ende des Tunnels in der österreichischen Kleinen Zeitung erschienen. Sie versucht zu beschreiben, warum die Chancen für eine Lösung des Klimaproblems besser werden, was auch an "Fridays for Future" liegt.
27. January 2020 - My 11th interview, this time with co-interviewer Marcus Reckermann, with eminent scientists - this time Anders Omstedt has been published: "45 years of wandering - from processes to systems, through outer and inner seas" (as International Baltic Earth Secretariat Publication No. 17, February 2020)26. Januar 2020 - Michael Langer spricht in seiner vom Deutschlandfunk ausgestrahlten Sendung " Zwischentöne" mit Hans von Storch.
25. Januar 2021 - Im Zusammenhang mit der 12. Deutschen Klimatagung in Hamburg, 15-18 März 2021, wird wieder der Eduard-Brückner-Preis für herausragenden interdisziplinäre Leistungen in der Klimaforschung verliehen. Der Ruf nach Nominierungen ist nun veröffentlicht worden. 
24. Januar 2020 - Hans von Storch engagiert sich im Bürgerschaftswahlkampf der Hamburger SPD am 4. Februar 2020 in St. Georg .23. Januar 2020 - Das SPIEGEL-Plus Interview, in dem Olaf Stampf Hans von Storch befragte, und am 19 Oktober 2019 erschien, ist im Zusammenhang mit dem Davos Treffen aktualisiert worden: "Das ist Wichtigtuerei von reichen Nordeuropäern"21. Januar 2020 - Die sechste Kolumne von Hans von Storch erschien jetzt verspätet in der Kleinen Zeitung: Wie die Zahl 38 wirklich kleiner werden kann.
2. Dezember 2019 - Hans von Storch als Teilnehmer der "Hart aber Fair" Talk-Runde in der ARD. Auschnitt mit Beiträgen von Hans von Storch auf Youtube. (Foto: jens Krick/Flashpic)
9 November 2019 - Eventually, our newly developped method of checking regional details in gobal re-analyses of SST by comparing with local data has been published in the Ocean Science-journal: "Testing the validity of regional detail in global analyses of sea surface temperature —the case of Chinese coastal waters". The authors are 李琰 (Li Y), H. von Storch, 王庆元(Wang Q), and 周庆亮 (Zhou Q.).The article is archived unter https://doi.org/10.5194/os-15-1455-2019The Abstract reads: We have designed a method for testing the quality of multidecadal analyses of sea surface temperature (SST) in regional seas by using a set of high-quality local SST observations. In recognizing that local data may reflect local effects, we focus on the dominant empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) of the local data and of the localized data of the gridded SST analyses. We examine the patterns, variability, and trends of the principal components. This method is applied to examine three different SST analyses, i.e., HadISST1, ERSST, and COBE SST. They have been assessed using a newly constructed high-quality dataset of SST at 26 coastal stations along the Chinese coast in 1960–2015, which underwent careful examination with respect to quality and a number of corrections for inhomogeneities. The three gridded analyses perform generally well from 1960 to 2015,in particular since 1980. However, for the pre-satellite period prior to the 1980s, the analyses differ among each other and show some inconsistencies with the local data, such as artificial break points, periods of bias, and differences in trends. We conclude that gridded SST analyses need improvement in the pre-satellite period (prior to the 1980s) by reexamining in detail archives of local quality-controlled SST data in many data-sparse regions of the world.
3. November 2019 - In der Sendung "Echo der Zeit" des Schweizer Rundfunk und Fernsehens hat Beat Soltermann Hans von Storch interviewt. «Als Wissenschaftler mache ich keine Politik- als Bürger schon», die Audio-Fassung. 
31. Oktober 2019 - FOCUS online bringt ein Interview von Lisa Kleine: "Professor ernüchtert über Klima-Aktivisten: 'Das sind naive, unreife Worthülsen'."Abstract: When subjecting ocean models to atmospheric forcing, the models exhibits two types of variability – a response to the external forcing (hereafter referred to as signal) and inherently generated (internal; intrinsic; unprovoked; chaotic) variations (hereafter referred to as noise). Based on an ensemble of simulations with identical atmospherically forced oceanic models which differ only in the initial conditions at different times, the signal-to-noise ratio of the atmospherically forced oceanic model is determined. In the large-scales, the variability of the model output is mainly induced by the external forcing and the proportion of the internal variability is small, so the signal-to-noise ratio is large. For smaller scales, the influence of the external forcing weakens and the influence of the internal variability strengthens, so the signal-to-noise ratio becomes less and less. Thus, the external forcing is dominant for large scales, while most of the variability is internally generated for small scales.
19. Oktober 2019 - Interview »Früher war ein Sturm einfach ein Sturm« im SPIEGEL 43, S. 108-109, geführt von Olaf Stampf. Hinter Bezahlschranke.14 October 2019 - The new project "Future Climate Scenarios: Regional Climate Modelling and Data Analysis" has been launched at FRONTIER. Submission deadlines are 9 February 2020 for abstracts and 9 May 2020 for manuscripts.26. September 2019 - Am 25. September wurde Hans von Storch von BILD angefragt, was er vom IPCC Bericht SROCC (zu Ozeanen und Kryosphäre) halten würde. Aus seinem Statement, das basiert auf dem Summary for Policymakers, wurde dann korrekt zitiert:
Der Klimaforscher Prof. Dr. Hans von Storch zu BILD: „Neben der Klimaschutzpolitik einer Minderung der Emissionen verdient also auch die Anpassung an unvermeidbare Anstiege des Meeresspiegels unsere Aufmerksamkeit."
Denn für den renommierten Wissenschaftler ist ein Fakt besonders wichtig, selbst bei einem „Stoppen“ der Emissionen zwar die Temperatur nach einige Zeit nicht mehr ansteigt, der Anstieg des Meeresspiegels aber durchaus weitergeht - bis 2300 und länger.
23. September 2019 - Das bereits im Januar 2019 vom Bundespräsidenten verliehene Bundesverdienstkreuz wurde im Rahmen eines Senatsempfangs von der 2. Bürgermeisterin der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, Katharina Fegebank, an Hans von Storch überreicht (HZG Küstenblog, Laudatio K. Fegebank).
11 September 2019 - In 2014, Hans von Storch received the "Östersjöfondens pris". On the occasion of its ten-year anniversary, recipients have been interviewed - also Hans von Storch. A short version of the discussion between Ippo Vourinen and Hans von Storch is now available. A complete version will be published soon.17 August 2019 - After Hans von Storch's position as Associate Editor of Journal of Climate has been extended for another 2 years, from August 1, 2019 to July 31, 2021, he was now told since when he is serving in this position - likely since 1999 - and how many manuscripts he has dealt with since 2011: 29 in total, of which 24 were regular reviews, and 5 to sort out a hung review process.https://doi.org/10.5194/os-2018-137
The Abstract reads:_ We have designed a method for testing the quality of multidecadal analyses of SST in regional seas by using a set of high-quality local SST observations. In recognizing that local data may reflect local effects, we focus on dominant EOFs of the local data and of the localized data of the gridded SST analyses. We examine patterns, and the variability as well as the trends of the principal components. This method is applied to examine three different SST analyses, namely HadISST1, ERSST and COBE SST. They are assessed using a newly constructed high-quality data set of SST at 26 coastal stations along the Chinese coast in 1960-2015 which underwent careful examination with respect to quality, and a number of corrections of inhomogeneities. The three gridded analyses perform by and large well from 1960 to 2015, in particular since 1980. However, for the pre-satellite time period, before 1980, the analyses differ among each other and show some inconsistencies with the local data, such as artificial break points, periods of bias and differences in trends. We conclude that gridded SST-analyses need improvement in the pre-satellite time (prior to 1980s), by re-examining in detail archives of local quality-controlled SST data in many data-sparse regions of the world.
The abstract reads: The variability across decades of years of migrating eddy activities in the South China Sea (SCS) have not yet been documented. We employ a daily global eddy-resolving (0.1 degree) model product called STORM that covers a period of 1950-2010 to fill this gap. The frequency and pattern of eddy occurrence in the simulation is broadly consistent with satellite-based (AVISO) data.
On average, annually 28 anticyclonic travelling eddy (AE) tracks and 54 cyclonic travelling eddy (CE) tracks with long travel lengths were derived from the discrete sea surface height anomaly fields of STORM. Eddy centers most frequently pass by the Luzon Strait and along the continental slope in the northern SCS to the Vietnam coast. The lifespans range from 6 days to 240 days for AEs and to 293 days for CEs, and the longest travel lengths are 1941 km and 1988 km, respectively.
EOFs of the spatial fields of eddy diameter (ED), eddy intensity (EI) and eddy number (EN) show almost white eigenvalue spectra, when calculated on the model’s 0.1-degree grid, but when the data are coarsened to grids with 1-degree and 2-degree grid spacing, meaningful structures emerge.
EI and ED are highly correlated on both seasonal and interannual time scales. In general, CEs are much more active than AEs, but the AEs with high intensities or large diameters are more frequent than similar CEs. The monthly ED, EI and EN exhibit annual cycles, which are, however, not very stable. The variabilities of annual means of ED, EI and EN is large at interannual time scales, little at interdecadal scales and exhibits hardly a trend. The sizes and intensities of eddies in the SCS are hardly connected to the ENSO-variability in the tropical Pacific.
The EOFs, the weakness of the annual cycle stability and the absence of a correlation with ENSO, point to a massive presence of internal variability (as opposed to variability provoked by large-scale drivers).
7 May 2019 - My PhD student Zhang Meng (张萌) defended today successfully her thesis "The statistics of travelling eddy variability in the South China Sea and its external forcing".Her work is is significant for two reasons:
(1) She has constructed a climatology of travelling eddies in the South China Sea, and derived various statistics of these eddies, such as the distribution of travel times and lengths. Previously such climatologies have been derived, for shorter times, from satellite data, however without proper regard of the limitations of a high noise level of daily satellite-based data of sea surface height.
(2) She found the variability of a number of parameters describing the statistics of eddies strongly contaminated by "noise", i.e., by local processes unrelated to the large-scale state. Thus, she shed light on he unavoidable stochastic character of smaller scale dynamics in regional oceans. This fact ist almost always disregarded by regional oceanographers, who conduct numerical experimentation by simply comparing two simulations and attributing the differences to the change implemented in the simulations. Obviously, ensembles of simulations are needed in extended simulations, and the assessment of numerical experimens needs statistical assessments (such as significance tests).
My little workgroup is pursuing this issue, with first demonstrating the presence of noise and now assessing the scale-dependence of signal-to-noise ratios (with the signal stemming from atmospheric forcing, and the noise reflecting local variations unrelated to external factors). (See also doi 10.1016/j.oceano.2019.01.001).
This work is done in cooperation with the Ocean University of China (中国海洋大学)
The abstract reads: This article analyses differences in the attitudes related to climate change of young scholars in environmental science in Qingdao (China) and Hamburg (Germany). The main aim of the article is to evaluate the role of cultural differences for their explanation. We expect no significant differences in the attitudes related to the findings of climate research, since scientific principles are the joint basis of the the scientific discourse wordwide. However, we expect that there are differences in the attitudes of the young scholars about the role of science, of the state and of the civil society for dealing with the challenge of climate change. We suggest that these can be explained with substantial cultural differences between both societies, with regard to the role of the state and the civil society for the solution of environmental problems.
In order to evaluate these hypotheses, we have conducted a comparative survey among environmental science students in Qingdao (China) and Hamburg (Germany) about their attitudes towards climate change. The findings support our main hypotheses. The young scholars in Quingdao and Hamburg differ substantially in their views of the role of science in society and policymaking. Plausibly, these differences may mainly be explained with differences in the cultural ideas about the role of the state and of the civil society for the solution of environmental problems. Gradual differences in the share of young scholars who think that climate change has anthropogenic causes, may be explained with differences in the curriculum but also by cultural habits.
This article makes a new contribution to the scientific debate by exploring the role of cultural differences for differences in the attitudes of young scholars in environmental science in connection with climate change and climate policy in different cultural contexts.
Deutsche Vorstellung der Studie, siehe "Einstellung junger Wissenschaftler zum Klimawandel und zur Klimapolitik" in dem Helmholtz Blogs - Küstenforschung.
The abstract reads: The history of ideas, which lead to the now matured concept of empirical downscaling, with various technical procedures, is rooted in two concepts, that of synoptic climatology and that of spatial interpolation in a phase space. In the former case, the basic idea is to estimate from a synoptic weather map the regional details, and to assemble these details into a regional climatology. In the other approach, a shortcut is made, in that samples of (monthly, seasonal or annual) large-scale dynamical statistics (i.e., climate) are linked to a sample of local statistics of some variables of interest.
21. Februar 2019 - Im Rahmen einer kleinen Feier in HZG wird Jürgen Sündermann für seine Leistungen beim Zusammenwachsen des Standorts Hamburg unter Einbeziehung von GKSS/GZG als "Freund des Instituts für Küstenforschung" gewürdigt. Bei der Gelegenheit wird das ausführliche Interview von Heike Langenberg und Hans von Storch mit Jürgen Sündermann als HZG-Bericht 2019-1 veröffentlicht.A Chinese version 于尔根孙德曼访谈录 was prepared by 管晓晨，陈学恩、江文胜. Das Interview wurde im Rahmen einer Ehrung durch das Helmholtz-Zentrum vorgestellt; dabei auch eine Laudatio von Hans von Storch.
13. Februar 2019 - Die Senatskanzlei der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg hat Hans von Storch mitgeteilt, dass der Bundespräsident ihm den Verdienstorden 1. Klasse (Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) verliehen hat wegen seiner Verdienste in der Klimaforschung. Der Orden wird zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt übergeben.The Abstract reads: The internally generated variability in the climate system, which is unrelated to any external factors, can be conceptualized as “noise”. This noise is a constitutive element of high-dimensional nonlinear models of such systems. In a three-layer nested simulation, which is forced by climatological (periodic) atmospheric forcing and includes an (almost) global model, a West-Pacific model, and South China Sea (SCS) model, we demonstrate that such “noise” builds also in ocean models. They generate variability by themselves without an external forcing. The “noise” generation intensifies with higher resolution, which favors macroturbulence.
9 February 2019 - Hans von Storch's series of interviews with eminent scientists has been extended by another one, this time Christian Pfister - ein Historiker, der Grenzen überwindet. The interview was done by Hans von Storch and Heinz Wanner, with a preface by Thomas Stocker. The German version is archived here, and the English version here. Döring, M., W. Settekorn and H. von Storch, 1999: Grenzen und Chancen der Wissenschaftskommunikation. Die Havarie der "Pallas" als Symbol. Vorgänge 148, 4: 13-16
Settekorn, W., M. Döring und H. von Storch, 2000: Ergebnisbericht des Kooperationsprojekts Bilder der PALLAS, GKSS Report 2000/43, 18pp.
Aus gleichem Anlaß ein Fernseh-Interview bei Phoenix' "Der Tag"
The abstract reads: We review the state of dynamical downscaling with scale-constrained regional and global models. The methodology, in particular spectral nudging, has become a routine and well-researched tool for hindcasting climatologies of sub-synoptic atmospheric disturbances in coastal regions. At present, the spectrum of applications is expanding to other phenomena, but also to ocean dynamics and to extended forecasting. Also new diagnostic challenges are appearing such as spatial characteristics of small-scale phenomena such as Low Level Jets.
The article is an extension of a presentation at Workshop on 'Polar lows and mesoscale weather extremes' in Trier, Germany, on 5-6 April 2018
1. Aus Sicht der Klimaforschung: Warum kommt es in diesen Tagen zu so einer drastischen Hitzewelle?
2. Was hat der Klimawandel mit diesem Extremwetter zu tun?
3. Müssen sich die Menschen in Deutschland (aufgrund des Klimawandels) in Zukunft auf häufigere Extremwetter-Phänomene (wie Phasen mit sehr hohen Temperaturen) einstellen?
Antwort: "Das Klima - das ist die Statistik des Wetters, also wie oft wie warm, wie lange warm etc. in einer Jahreszeit. Da gibt es dann Sommer, in denen es sehr lange sehr warm ist. wie dieser Sommer; oder der in 2003. Diese Schwankungen an sich sind normal, aber im Zuge des menschgemachten Klimawandels hat sich diese Verteilung hin bewegt zu höheren Temperaturen und damit auch zu längeren sehr warmen Perioden. Insofern ist das, was wir jetzt erleben, nicht überraschend, und wir werden uns weiter daran gewöhnen müssen, dass es ab und an sehr warme, langanhaltende Episoden gibt. Je stärker sich Klimawandel ausprägt, und dies ist in sehr guter Näherung einfach eine Frage des Umfangs der Emissionen von Treibhausgasen in die Atmosphäre, umso stärker wird diese Tendenz hin zu langanhalrende warmen Episoden.
Aus dieser Deutung der Verhältnisse ergibt sich, dass Gesellschaft und Politik sich um diese Tendenz kümmern müssen. Wenn das Abkommen tatsächlich umgesetzt wird, werden die Emissionen deutlich gemildert, aber eine Rückkehr zum früher Normalen ist nicht zu erwarten. Tatsächlich wird der gegenwärtige Trend sich auch in diesem optimistischen Fall noch einige Jahre fortsetzen bis es vielleicht zu einem Stopp käme. Dies bedeutet, dass eine Vorsorgepolitik für Bevölkerung und Ökosysteme sich jetzt und weiterhin um eine bessere Anpassung kümmern muß. Die Vogel-Strauss Rhetorik der 1990er Jahre, wonach eine erfolgeiche Klimaschutzpolitik Anpassungsmaßnahmen als sekundäre Aufgaben erscheinen läßt, erweist sich immer deutlicher als unangemessen."
Veröffentlicht von der Huffpost online zusammen mit Antworten von Mojib Latif und Janus Schipper
Zhang M, and H. von Storch, 2018: Distribution features of travelling eddies in the South China Sea, 2-31, and
Tang S., H. von Storch, and Chen X. 2018: "Noise" generation in climatologically driven ocean models with different grid resolutions, 8-17
Barkhordarian, A., H. von Storch, A. Behrangi, P. C. Loikith, C. R. Mechoso, and J. Detzer: "Simultaneous regional detection of land-use changes and elevated GHG levels: the case of springtime precipitation in tropical South America." has been accepted for publication by Geophys Res Letters
Abstract: Results indicate that, the magnitude of negative trends in springtime precipitation over tropical South America in the past decades exceeds the estimated range of trends due to natural variability of the climate system defined in both the pre-industrial climate and during the 850-1850 millennium. Such change could have profound societal and ecosystem impacts over the region. The univariate detection analysis shows that greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing has a systematic influence in 30-year trends of precipitation ending in 1998 and later on. The bivariate attribution analysis demonstrates that forcing by elevated GHG levels and land-use-change are attributed (< 5% risk of error) as key causes for the observed drying over 1983-2012. We further show that with 20 out of 24 models analyzed, the effect of GS signal (Greenhouse gas and Sulfate aerosols) based on RCP4.5 scenario already has a detectable influence in the observed drying. Thus, we suggest that the observed regional precipitation decrease and drying during recent austral springs is a feature which will continue and intensify in the course of unfolding anthropogenic climate change.
DOI: 10.1029/2018GL078041
he abstract reads: The present study reveals climate features of low-level jets (LLJs) over the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea (BYS) based on a 35-year (1979 – 2013) high-resolution (7 km) atmospheric hindcast. The regional climate model COSMO-CLM driven by the ERA-Interim reanalysis dataset was used to obtain the hindcast. Through comparison with observations, the hindcast was proved to robustly reproduce the climatology, the diurnal cycle, the variability of wind profiles and specific LLJ cases. LLJs over the BYS feature a strong diurnal cycle, intra-annual and inter-annual variability but weak decadal variability. LLJs are more frequent in April, May and June (LLJ-season) and less frequent in winter over the Bohai Sea and western coastal areas of the Yellow Sea, which is due to the intra-annual variations of large-scale circulation and local land-sea thermal contrast. In the LLJ-season, the heights of jet cores are generally lower than 500 m above sea level. The maximum wind speed of LLJs is mostly in the range of 10 – 16 m/s, and prevailing wind directions are southerly and southwesterly. The LLJs are of the nocturnal type, with the highest occurrence frequency at approximately 2300 local time. Furthermore, a low-frequency link between anomalies of LLJ occurrence and regional large-scale barotropic circulation was identified using canonical correlation analysis and associated correlation patterns. Pressure systems over the East Asia-Northwest Pacific region are significantly correlated with the variations of LLJ occurrence over the BYS in terms of the intra-annual and inter-annual variability.
Key words: Low-level jet; Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea; Climatology; Regional climate modelling; COSMO-CLM
Zhang M., and H. von Storch, 2018: Distribution features of travelling eddies in the South China Sea.
Tang S., H. von Storch, and Chen X, 2018: “Noise” generation in climatologically driven ocean models.
25. April 2018 - Die russische Übersetzung "Ян Харф v среди миров" des Harff-Interviews liegt jetzt in der Übersetzung von Сергея Котова vor und ist bei Academia und ResearchGate archiviert (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22539.80160). Dort findet sich auch das deutsche Original sowie die englische, polnische und chinesische Übersetzung. Damit ist das Projekt "Interview Jan Harff" fertiggestellt.
3 April 2018 - Die chinesische Übersetzung "Jan Harff - 遨游在不同领域之间" in der Übersetzung von 区欣 liegt jetzt vor und ist bei Academia und ResearchGate archiviert (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20519.65440). Dort findet sich auch das deutsche Original sowie die englische und polnische Übersetzung.
20. March 2018 - The excellent scientist and fine gentleman Profesor dr hab. inż. Stanisław Ryszard Massel of the PAN-Institute of Oceanology in Sopot, Poland, has died at the age of 78 years.
3 March 2018 - Since many years, Hans von Storch is preparing extensive interviews with renown and eminent geoscientists. The latest in this series is the geologist and coastal researcher Jan Harff. The German version of this interview, which was prepared by Hans von Storch and Reinhard Dietrich, was published earlier; now the english translation, prepared by Anupa Srinivasan, is online.The full list of all interviews can be found here.
28. Februar 2018 - Im Rahmen der 11. Deutschen Klimatagung (DKT) in der Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt/M. erhält am 6. März der Tscheche Rudolf Brázdil für seine herausragende interdisziplinäre Leistung in der Klimaforschung den vom Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG) gestifteten und mit 1.500 Euro dotierten Eduard-Brückner-Preis. (Pressemitteilung)The Abstract reads: We present a homogenized time series surface air temperature at 2?meters (SAT) for the city of Qingdao in China from 1899 to 2014. This series is derived from three data sources: newly digitized and homogenized observations of German National Meteorological Service from 1899 to 1913; National observation data of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) from 1961–2014 and a gridded data set of Willmott and Matsuura in Delaware to fill the gap from 1914 to 1959. Based on this new series, long-term trends are described. The SAT in Qingdao has a significant warming trend of 0.11?°C (10 yr)-1 during 1899–2014. The coldest period occurred in 1909–1918 and the warmest period occurred in 1999–2008. For the seasonal mean SAT, the most significant warming can be found in spring, followed by winter. Access to the data is provided in excel and archived by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) web page under overseas stations of the Deutsche Seewarte (http://www.dwd.de/EN/ourservices/overseas_stations/ueberseedoku/doi_qingdao.html) or be freely available at https://doi.org/10.5676/DWD/Qing_v1.
The Abstract reads: In 1942 Robert K. Merton tried to demonstrate the structure of the normative system of science by specifying the norms that characterized it. The norms were assigned the abbreviation CUDOs: Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, and Organized skepticism. Using the results of an on-line survey of climate scientists concerning the norms of science, this paper explores the climate scientists’ subscription to these norms. The data suggests that while Merton’s CUDOs remain the overall guiding moral principles, they are not fully endorsed or present in the conduct of climate scientists: there is a tendency to withhold results until publication, there is the intention of maintaining property rights, there is external influence defining research and the tendency to assign the significance of authored work according to the status of the author rather than content of the paper. These are contrary to the norms of science as proposed by Robert K. Merton.
The abstract reads: The monthly sea surface temperature (SST) data of 27 marine observation stations have been detected and adjusted by the Penalized Maximal test (PMT) and the detailed metadata archive. In this study, the homogenous surface air temperature (SAT) data from neighboring meteorological observation stations are used to construct the reference series by correlation coefficient weighted averaged method. Results show that almost all of the stations along coast of the China Seas, the inhomogenities or change points can be detected. Combined with the detailed metadata of each station, the main reasons causing the inhomogenization problems are instrument change (including the change from artificial observation to automations) and relocation, accounting for about 52.4% and 33.3% of the total change points. It is also found that the annual mean SST trend has changed obviously and homogeneity is improved well after adjustment. The warming rate of SST series along the coast of the China Seas after adjustment is much larger than that before adjustment. This phenomenon links tightly to the SST decreasing after automation which leads to the large proportion of negative correction values.
18. Dezember 2017 - Ein weiteres Interview in meiner Interview-Reihe mit beeindruckenden wissenschaftlichen Persönlichkeiten ist jetzt erschienen - mit dem Geologen Jan Harff. Ein Gemeinschaftswerk mit Reinhard Dietrich, mit einem Vorwort von Jörn Thiede.Also the article "Misuses of statistical analysis in climate research" by Hans von Storch enjoys quite some recognition - with more than 250 citations logged at ResearchGate since its first publication in 1995.
The project is described as: "The atmospheric dynamics is essentially the manifestation of a global machinery, within which larger scales are mostly conditioning smaller scales (the downscaling concept), and local processes feedback on the global scale in a statistical sense, often described by parameterizations.
However, the regional and local scales matter in terms of the impact of climate and weather on people and ecosystems. Therefore, the scientific development in the last years was mostly in two directions – towards global Earth system models, and towards the description of regional and local dynamics. The present Research Topic deals with the latter.
Models describing the regional dynamics, and the links to supra-regional conditioning states, usually serve one of the following purposes: description of climate and its change; description of air quality and its change; reconstruction and analysis of past conditions, both in historical times and in Earth history; forecasting short term development; ensemble experiments; and process studies. We ask for contributions in all these fields. A significant aspect would be the added value, the regional modelling provides over global modelling.
We ask for regional studies, covering several hundred kilometers of diameters but also “local studies”, in particular of urban conglomerates. Most approaches make uses of limited area models, but some studies are making use of variable-resolution models and high-resolution global models, which are however constrained on the large scales so that they complement a global forcing (available from analysis systems) with regional or even local detail. In the other end of resolution are convection-permitting models of interest.
While some studies are mostly focusing on dynamical aspects, such as the conditioning of regional and local processes by large-scale conditions and forcing (e.g., changing land-use), other concentrate on impacts, both on geophysical conditions (e.g., ocean waves and storm surges), components of the ecological systems (e.g., vegetation, algae blooms), but also on societal aspects (such as hazards related to extreme events).
1 November 2017 -Today Hans von Storch's participation at the Center of Excellence CLISAP has come to an end.The abstract reads: We investigate whether the recently observed trends in daily maximum and minimum near-surface air temperature (Tmax and Tmin, respectively) over South America (SA) are consistent with climate model simulations of Tmin and Tmax in response to anthropogenic forcing. Results indicate that the recently observed warming in the dry seasons is well beyond the range of natural (internal) variability. In the wet season the natural modes of variability such as ENSO, AMO and PDO explain a substantial portion of Tmin and Tmax variability. Using several climate models and ensemble means, we demonstrate that the large-scale component (spatial-mean trend) of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing is detectable (at 2.5% level) in dry seasonal warming. However, none of the global and regional climate change projections reproduce the observed warming of up to 0.6 K/Decade in Tmax in 1983-2012 over the northern SA during the austral spring (SON). Thus, besides the regional manifestation of GHG forcing, other external drivers have an imprint. Using aerosols-only forcing simulations with and without the second indirect of aerosols, our results provide evidence that anthropogenic aerosols also have a detectable influence in SON and that the indirect effect of aerosols on cloud’s lifetime is more compatible with the observed record. Our two-signal detection analysis confirms that the effect of GHG and aerosol signals are jointly detectable (at 5% level) in Tmax increase. In addition, there is an increasing trend in the incoming solar radiation over the northern SA in SON, which is larger than expected just due to natural (internal) variability.
The paper is available online.
24. Oktober 2017 - Der zweite "Hamburger Klimabericht" ist vom Springer-Verlag als "open access" veröffentlicht worden und in der Handwerkskammer Hamburg der interessierten Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt worden (s. Hintergrundpapier). Er wurde generiert im Rahmen des KlimaCampus Hamburg mit Hans von Storch, Insa Meinke und Martin Claussen als Projektleitern.The abstract reads: Extreme Event Attribution has raised increasing attention in climate science in the last years. It means to judge the extent to which certain weather-related extreme events have changed due to human influences on climate with probabilistic statements. Extreme Event Attribution is often anticipated to spur more than just scientific ambition. It is able to provide answers to one of the most commonly asked questions after extreme events, namely, ‘can we blame it on climate change’ and is assumed to support decision-making of various actors engaged in climate change mitigation and adaptation. More in-depth research is widely lacking about who these actors are; in which context they can make use of it; and what requirements they have, to be able to actually apply Extreme Event Attribution. We have therefore addressed these questions with two empirical case studies looking at regional decision-makers who deal with storm surge risks in the German Baltic Sea region and heat waves in the Greater Paris area. Stakeholder interviews and workshops reveal that fields of application and requirements are diverse, difficult to explicitly identify, and often clearly associated with stakeholders’ specific mandate, the hazard background, and the regional socio-economic setting. Among the considered stakeholders in the Baltic Sea region, Extreme Event Attribution is perceived to be most useful to awareness-raising, in particular for climate change mitigation. They emphasised the importance of receiving understandable information - and that, rather later, but with smaller uncertainties than faster, but with higher uncertainties. In the Paris case, we typically talked to people engaged in impact mitigation with higher level of expertise in terms of climate science, but narrowly defined mandates which is typical for the Paris-centred political system with highly specialised public experts. The interviewees claimed that Extreme Event Attribution is most useful to political leverage and public discourses. If novel information like this is not sorted out a priori, it needs to be clearly linked to impacts, preferably in “Euro figures”. These examples underline the significance of conducting case-specific stakeholder mappings and consultation. Overall, our studies can thereby provide methods and exemplary empirical evidence to support developing useful services from Extreme Event Attribution for targeted groups of users.
The Call for paper reads: Coastal regions are featured by high population densities and high levels of development, especially in the 21st century. However, properties, life and environment in coastal regions are greatly threatened by coastal hazards, which is, in most cases, caused by coastal meteorological events. This Special Issue aims to collect current state-of-the-art studies on the statistics and the changes of hazardous regional meteorological events in coastal regions, in particular meso-scale and synoptic scale storms (polar lows, Mediterranean cyclones including medicanes, Australian east coast lows, tropical and midlattude baroclinic storms) and coastal low-level jets.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Analyses of the frequency and characteristics of regional meteorological events based on observation data, re-analyses and simulations, both regionally and globally;
Identification of links between low-frequency large-scale atmospheric configurations and the tendency for generating such regional phenomena;
Historical and future climate changes in coastal meteorological events;
Changes in ocean states, such as waves and storm surges related to coastal meteorological events;
Risks and impact assessment of such phenomena for human activities and coastal environment.
The abstract reads: Science-based knowledge about climate-related hazards is an inevitable part of the knowledge basis needed for many stakeholders’ decision-making. Despite continuous advances in climate science, much of it is perceived to be hardly accessible, understandable, or relevant to stakeholders. One relatively new field where these aspects may become evident is Extreme Weather Event Attribution. It has received much attention in science in recent years, but its potential usefulness to stakeholders has rarely been addressed in the literature so far.
This study has therefore developed criteria for evaluating potential climate services from a stakeholder perspective using the example of findings from Extreme Event Attribution. It is illustrated in an empirical mixed-method study about decision-makers dealing with storm surge risks at the German Baltic Sea Coast and re-/insurance sector representatives. The study builds on interviews and workshops with potential users of Extreme Event Attribution. It reveals that there are three main groups of criteria which matter most to the considered stakeholders: 1) Trustworthiness, 2) context-sensitivity and decision-relevance, 3) clarity and comprehensibility. Having appropriate evaluation categories, as well as processes to identify stakeholder-specific criteria, will facilitate the inclusion of values, knowledge contexts, and interests. Many stakeholders emphasized that they need a trustworthy knowledge broker who provides decision-oriented information which is intuitively accessible, understandable, and in their mother-tongue. Being independent, scientifically competent, and in a continuous dialogue with both scientists and stakeholders, established regional and sector-specific climate services can facilitate the fulfilment of these requirements. A stakeholder-oriented evaluation will thereby help to make climate services more useful to potential user groups – even if the product is not in use yet, as is the case for Extreme Event Attribution products.
The abstract reads: Spectral nudging is a method which was developed to constrain regional climate models so that they reproduce the development of the large-scale atmospheric state, while permitting the formation of regional-scale details as conditioned by the large-scales. Besides keeping the large-scale development in the interior close to a given state, the method also suppresses the emergence of ensemble variability. The method is mostly applied to reconstructions of past weather developments in regions with an extension of typically 1000-8000 kilometers.
In this article, we examine if spectral nudging is having an effect on simulations with model regions of the size of about 700 km x 500 km at mid-latitudes located mainly over flat terrain. We first compare two pairs of simulations, two runs each with and without spectral nudging, and find that the four simulations are very similar, without systematic or intermittent phases of divergence. Smooth fields, which are mainly determined by spatial patterns, such as air pressure show hardly any differences, while small-scale and heterogeneous fields such as precipitation vary strongly, mostly on the grid-point scale, irrespective if spectral nudging is employed or not. We conclude that the application of spectral nudging has little effect on the simulation when the model region is relatively small.
The article goes with doi:10.1175/MWR-D-17-0087.1
Zwiers, F.W., and H. von Storch, 1995: Taking serial correlation into account in tests of the mean. - J. Climate 8, 336-351
von Storch, H., G. Bürger, R. Schnur, and J. von Storch, 1995: Principal Oscillation Pattern: A review. - J. Climate 8, 377-400
has been cited 100 times.
The abstract, after translation from Chinese, reads: The monthly sea surface temperature (SST) data of 27 marine observation stations have been detected and adjusted by the Penalized Maximal test (PMT) and the detailed metadata archive. In this study, the homogenous surface air temperature (SAT) data from neighboring meteorological observation stations are used to construct the reference series by correlation coefficient weighted averaged method. Results show that almost all of the stations along coast of the China Seas, the inhomogenities or change points can be detected. Combined with the detailed metadata of each station, the main reasons causing the inhomogenization problems are instrument change (including the change from artificial observation to automations) and relocation, accounting for about 52.4% and 33.3% of the total change points. It is also found that the annual mean SST trend has changed obviously and homogeneity is improved well after adjustment. The warming rate of SST series along the coast of the China Seas after adjustment is much larger than that before adjustment. This phenomenon links tightly to the SST decreasing after automation which leads to the large proportion of negative correction values.
The abstract reads: This paper demonstrates two important aspects of regional dynamical downscaling of multi-decadal atmospheric re-analysis. First, that in this way skillful regional descriptions of multi-decadal climate variability may be constructed in regions with little or no local data. Secondly, that the concept of large-scale constraining allows global downscaling, so that global re-analyses may be completed by additions of consistent detail in all regions of the world.
Global re-analyses suffer from inhomogeneities. However, their large-scale componenst are mostly homogeneous; Therefore, the concept of downscaling may be applied to homogeneously complement the large-scale state of the re-analyses with regional detail – wherever the condition of homogeneity of the description of large scales is fulfilled.
Technically this can be done by dynamical downscaling using a regional or global climate model, which’s large scales are constrained by spectral nudging. This approach has been developed and tested for the region of Europe, and a skillful representation of regional weather risks – in particular marine risks – was identified. We have run this system in regions with reduced or absent local data coverage, such as Central Siberia, the Bohai and Yellow Sea, Southwestern Africa and the South Atlantic. Also a global simulation was computed, which adds regional features to prescribed global dynamics. Our cases demonstrate that spatially detailed reconstructions of the climate state and its change in the recent three to six decades add useful supplementary information to existing observational data for mid-latitude and sub-tropical regions of the world.
7. Juni 2017 - Auch bei der nächsten Deutschen Klimatagung (11DKT; 5.-8. März 2018 in Frankfurt) wird wieder der Eduard-Brückner-Preis verliehen. Im Ausschreibungstext heisst es: "Der Eduard-Brückner-Preis ist gestiftet worden für herausragende interdisziplinäre Leistungen in der Klimaforschung. Der Preis ist nach dem herausragenden Geographen Eduard Brückner (1862-1927) benannt, der sich neben der Erforschung des eiszeitlichen Klimas in den Alpen und der natürlichen Klimaschwankungen auf Zeitskalen von Jahrzehnten auch um die ökonomische und soziale Dimension des Klimas in historischer Zeit verdient gemacht hat." Vorschläge für Preisträger bitte bis 1. September 2017 an Hans von Storch.
28. May 2017 - The collection of papers "Coastline Changes of the Baltic Sea from South to East Past and Future Projection" has been published as Volume 19 of the Coastal Research Library by Springer Publishers. Editors were Jan Harff, Kazimierz Furmanczyk, and Hans von Storch. ISBN: 978-3-319-49892-8 (Print) 978-3-319-49894-2 (Online) 8 March 2017 - Hans von Storch has been invited to serve on the "Senior Advisory Board" of Baltic Earth.
25. February 2017 - The video/audio of our Union Session U14A "Determining Matured Science: Cases, Formats, Utility" at the AGU Fall Meeting 2016 in San Francisco is now available on AGUOnDemand.
21. Februar 2017 - Von der Veranstaltung "Herrenhäuser Forum Mensch - Natur - Technik ist jetzt ein podcast auf Youtube mit Standbild veröffentlicht worden. (Foto: Carreno Hansen für VolkswagenStiftung) In dem Zusammenhang ein Interview am 1. Februar bei SWR1-Leute.
The abstract reads: We suggest to transfer the empirical downscaling methodology, which was developed mostly for atmospheric dynamics and impacts, to regional ocean problems. The major problem for doing so is the availability of decades long and homogeneous and spatially detailed data sets. We have examined the performance of the STORM multidecadal simulation, which was run on a 0.1o grid and forced with 1950-2010 NCEP re-analyses, in the South China Sea and found the data suitable. For demonstration we build with this STORM-data downscaling model for the regional throughflow.
The STORM data is compared with AVISO satellite observations and the ocean re-analysis dataset C-GLORS. We find the seasonal patterns and the inter-annual variability of sea surface height anomaly in both the C-GLORS data and the STORM simulation consistent with the AVISO-satellite data. Also the strong westward intensification and the seasonal patterns of South China Sea circulation steered by the monsoon have been presented well. As an important indicator of vertical movement, the sea surface temperature distribution maps are also very close, especially for the narrow upwelling region in summer. We conclude that the output of the STORM simulation is realistically capturing both the large-scale as well as the small-scale dynamical features in the South China Sea.
19. Januar 2017 - nach ungefähr 3 Monaten ist nun das Interview von Hans von Storch und Kay Emeis mit Hartmut Heinrich erschienen auf Academia und ResearchGate: Hartmut Heinrich - der unbekannte weltberühmte Klimaforscher aus Hamburg, mit einem Vorwort von Wally Broecker.Das (deutschsprachige) Interview wird auch so vorgestellt: Heinrich-events are a phenomenon widely known in the scientific community, in particular since man-made climate change has risen to absolute dominance in the field. The variations of the overturning circulation of the North Atlantic is a key aspect of this possible change. - But to whom does this "Heinrich" refer to? If you ask, then most people will tell you that they believe it would be person who has done it in the past, say the 1950s or 30s, who is long dead. But this is definitely not so. It is a detection from the 1980s, and the scientist is working at the German Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie in Hamburg. He has an insignificant h-index, was not honored with academic awards, is mostly unknown in Hamburg and Germany - but is one of the few (in Germany) who will rightly be remembered in the future as the one, who unraveled the key aspects of North Atlantic variability and climate change. He is an example of "small science", which delivered outstanding results (99% correct, as Wally Broecker estimates) without being guided by programs and claims of "excellence" or "grand challenges" of "big science". Hartmut was just curious.
12-16 December 2016 - Union Session "Determining matured science" at the 2016 Fall Meeting of AGU, San Francisco: Monday, 12 December 2016, 16:00-18:00, Moscone West; 2020.The abstract reads: Results from a series of five surveys among five groups of international climate scientists about their evaluation of elements of climate models and of climate change are presented. The first survey was done in 1996, the latest in 2015/16. Thus, our snapshots of the opinions of climate scientists cover 20 years. The results describe a strong increase in agreement concerning issues of manifestation of climate change, i.e., that the warming is real and not influenced by changing measuring and reporting practices, and concerning attribution of this ongoing climate change to ongoing anthropogenic causes. On the other hand, the evaluation of the climate models has changed little in the past 20 years. There are still significant reservations with the models ability to incorporate clouds and to describe rainfall.
Obviously the growing conviction of ongoing man-made climate change is based on a variety of explanations, with modelling not being the predominant line of evidence. We suggest that it may be the repeated assessments by the IPCC, based on paleoclimatic evidence and stringent statistical analysis of the instrumental record which have led to the growing consensus of the warming and its causation.
We stress that the presented results concern the opinion of climate scientists with a rather broad background. Our results do not assess if the opinions of the surveyed scientists are “valid” or “right”, but they recognize the character of science being a social process.
8. November 2016 - alpha-ARD Sendung "Tot? Verbrechen? Täter? – Manifestation, Detektion und Attribution des menschgemachten Klimawandels". Dazu gab es eine öffentliche Diskussion. Apart of the general scientific interest in these results, the papers provide evidence for the significance of the Geesthacht-work on regional detection and attribution. The former article demonstrates the successful cooperation between Chinese leading laboratories and the KlimaCampus Hamburg, and in particular the Institute of Coastal Research in Geesthacht. The abstracts read:
- Changing precipitation characteristics directly affect society through their impacts on drought and floods, hydro-dams and urban drainage systems. Global warming increases the water holding capacity of the atmosphere and thus the risk of heavy precipitation. Here, we analyze daily precipitation records from over 700 Chinese stations from 1956-2005. The results show a significant shift from light to heavy precipitation over eastern China. An optimal fingerprinting analysis of simulations from 11 climate models driven by different combinations of historical anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, aerosols, land use, and ozone) and natural (volcanic and solar) forcings indicates that anthropogenic forcing on climate including increases in greenhouse gases (GHG) have had a detectable contribution to the observed shift towards heavy precipitation. We find some evidence that anthropogenic aerosols (AA) partially offset the effect of the GHG forcing, resulting in a weaker shift towards heavy precipitation in simulations that include the AA forcing than in simulations with just the GHG forcing. In addition to the thermodynamic mechanism, strengthened water vapor transport from the adjacent oceans and by midlatitude westerlies, resulting mainly from GHG-induced warming, also favors heavy precipitation over eastern China. Further GHG-induced warming is predicted to lead to an increasing shift towards heavy precipitation, leading to increased urban flooding and posing a significant challenge for mega-cities in China in the coming decades. Future reductions in AA emissions resulting from air pollution controls could exacerbate this tendency towards heavier precipitation.
- We investigate whether the recently observed temperature and precipitation trends over the BalticSea Basin are consistent with state-of-the-art regional climate model projections. To address this question we use several data sources: 1) multi-decadal trends derived from various observational data sets, 2) estimates of natural variability provided by a 2,000-year paleoclimatic model simulation, and 3) response to greenhouse gas forcing derived from regional climate simulations driven by the A1B and RCP4.5 scenarios (from ENSEMBLES and CORDEX projects). Results indicate that, over the past decades, the climate in the Baltic Sea Basin has undergone a change that is beyond the estimated range of natural variability. We test the hypothesis that this change may be understood as a manifestation of global warming due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). We find that changes in near-surface temperature support our hypothesis that the effect of GHG is needed to simulate the observed changes. The pattern correlation and regression results clearly illustrate the concerted emergence of an anthropogenic signal consistent with the GHG signal in summer and autumn in the 21st century. However, none of the 19 regional climate simulations used in this study reproduce the observed warming. The observed trends in precipitation and surface solar radiation are also partially inconsistent with the expected changes due to GHG forcing. We conclude that, besides the regional response to GHG forcing, other human-made drivers have had an imprint. Regional emission of industrial aerosols has been strongly reduced in this region, and we suggest that this reduction may be the missing driver.
Einer der Interviewten ist Hans von Storch mit den Themen "Cities in the Baltic Sea Region", "The new scientific players in adaptation", "Adapative adaptation to increasing sea levels", "The Baltic Sea Region", and "Don't reduce uncertainties for busines purposes".
The abstract reads: This study analyzes a method to construct a homogeneous, high-resolution global atmospheric hindcast. The method is the spectral nudging technique which was applied to a state-of-the-art general circulation model (ECHAM6, T255L95). Large spatial scales of the global climate model prognostic variables were spectrally nudged towards a reanalysis data set (NCEP1, T62L28) for the last decades. The main idea is the addition of dynamically consistent regional weather details to the coarse grid NCEP1 reanalysis. A large number of sensitivity experiments were performed, using different nudging e-folding times, vertical profiles, wave numbers, and variables. Comparisons with observations and several reanalyses showed a high dependency on the variations of the nudging configuration. At the global scale, the accordance is very high for extra-tropical regions and lower in the tropics. A wave number truncation of 30, a relatively short e-folding time of 50 min and a plateau-shaped nudging profile applied only to divergence and vorticity generally yielded the best results. This is one of the first global spectral nudging hindcast studies and the first applying an altitude-dependent profile to selected prognostic variables. The method can be applied to reconstruct the history of extreme events such as intense storms in the context of ongoing climate change.
The abstract reads: At the German Meteorological Service in Hamburg handwritten journals of meteorological observation data of 164 signal stations exist, which were digitized. This data contain long-term time series of up to 125 years in the period 1877 to 1999 and allows studies of regional meteorological conditions with greatly improved spatial resolution. Wind and air pressure data of selected signal stations along the German Bight and the southern Baltic Sea coast show a spatial data homogeneity, which allow an improved description of two historical storms from 1906 and 1913. This is the first presentation of signal station data.
This is #200 in my list of reviewed publications :-)
The abstract reads: Using the tide-surge circulation model ADCIRC, the storm surges in the Bohai Sea were hindcasted from 1961 to 2006 after a regional model-based reconstruction of wind conditions. Through comparing with 4 storm surge cases that happened in the Bohai Sea and long-time observations at 4 tide gauges in the Yellow Sea, it is concluded that the model is capable of reproducing the conditions of storm surges in the past few decades in this area. The spatial distribution, seasonal variation, the interdecadal variability and the long-time trend were analyzed using the model results. Results show that the storm surges in three bays of the Bohai Sea are more serious than in other areas. The storm surges exhibit obvious seasonal variations - they are more serious in spring and autumn. Obvious interdecadal variations and long-time decreasing trends take place in the Bohai Sea. Storm surge indices show statistically significant negative correlations to the Arctic Oscillation (AO), and a statistically significant positive correlation to the Siberian High (SH). Linear-regression analysis was used to determine a robust link between the indices of the storm surges and the AO and SH. Using this link, conditions of storm surges from 1900 to 2006 were estimated from the long-time AO and SH.
1 September 2016 - The NOSCCA-editors inform that the "North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment" book is now published and available online free of chage. The printed book is expected in about three weeks time. The editors Markus Quante and Franciscus Colijn inform: As a next step we will prepare a summarising journal article of the NOSCCA findings. On the longer term we are thinking of a symposium/conference on North Sea climate change, during which we may decide within our NOSCCA-network whether we shall continue to collaborate on climate change issues related to the North Sea.Hans von Storch was one of the initiators of this process.
Hans: "It was a great time with the two, and I am sure we will continue with some work, but in a remote cooperation mode. Now, "my group" is reduced to one PhD student, with whom to work is exciting. Less responsibility is more fun."
16 June 2016 - Hans von Storch was awarded a Certificate of Excellence "in recognition of outstanding achievements for the BALTEX and Baltic Earth communities" by the Baltic Earth Programme.16 June 2016 - The proposal "Determining matured science" for a Union Session at the 2016 Fall Meeting of AGU (12-16 December 2016) by Allan Graubard, Thomas Stocker and Hans von Storch has been accepted.
26 May 2016 - Hans von Storch was conferred an adjunct professorship by the 上海海洋大学 (Shanghai Ocean University) for 4 years (until May 2020).
24. May 2016 - Feng Jianlong (冯建龙) has defended his PhD thesis "Assessing changes in extreme sea levels along the coast of China" at the Ocean University of China (中国海洋大学), in Qingdao. He was co-supervised by 江文胜 (Jiang Wensheng) and myself.26. Januar 2016 - "In Würdigung und Anerkennung Ihrer langjährigen und maßgeblichen Arbeit für den Erfolg des Exzellenzclusters" CLISAP hat man Hans von Storch den Status eines Principal Investigators zuerkannt.The Abstract reads: Most papers in this focus issue on 'climate and climate impact projections for adaptation strategies' are solicited by the guest editorial team and originate from a cluster of projects that were initiated 5 years ago. These projects aimed to provide climate change and climate change adaptation information for a wide range of societal areas for the lower parts of the deltas of the Rhine and Meuse rivers, and particularly for the Netherlands. The papers give an overview of our experiences, methods, approaches, results and surprises in the process to developing scientifically underpinned climate products and services for various clients. Although the literature on interactions between society and climate science has grown over the past decade both with respect to policy-science framing in post-normal science (Storch et al 2011 J. Environ. Law Policy 1 1-15, van der Sluijs 2012 Nature and Culture 7 174-195), user-science framing (Berkhout et al 2014 Regional Environ. Change 14 879-93) and joint knowledge production (Hegger et al 2014 Regional Environ. Change 14 1049-62), there is still a lot to gain. With this focus issue we want to contribute to best practices in this quickly moving field between science and society.
20. Januar 2016 - Antrittsvorlesung " Wieviel Sinn macht naturwissenschaftliche Klimaforschung ohne sozialwissenschaftliche Kontextualisierung?" als Zweitmitglied der Fakultät der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften der Universität Hamburg.The Abstract reads: The winter extratropical cyclone activity in the Southern Hemisphere during the last one thousand years within a global climate simulation was analyzed by tracking cyclones, and then clustering them into ten clusters consecutively for each hundred years. There is very strong year-to-year variability for Southern Hemispheric winter extratropical cyclone numbers and larger variations on centennial time scale, more so than for its Northern Hemispherical counterparts. However, no obvious trend can be found. The mean tracks of clusters over the Southern Indian Ocean and near New Zealand shift poleward from the 11th to the 20th century while the clusters in the central Southern Pacific shift equatorward. Storm track clusters with largest deepening rates are found over the Southwestern Indian Ocean. In the 20th century, rapidly deepening cyclones appear more often while long lifespan cyclones appear less frequently. The winter storm activity in the Southern Hemisphere is closely related to the Antarctic Oscillation(AAO). The cyclone frequency over the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean can be associated with the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) respectively.
Ich begrüße diesen Vertrag als zielführend und problemangemessen, selbst wenn der eine oder andere barocke Appendix aus Gründen der politischen Nützlichkeit angefügt worden ist. Entscheidend ist, dass die die Einleitung von Maßnahmen zur Minderung der Akkumulation von Treibhausgasen in der Atmosphäre im Vordergrund steht, wobei die Jura in den Hintergrund getreten ist. Eine große Anzahl von Staaten folgt dem Grundsatz, dass die Emissionen und die Vulnerabilität gegenüber extremen Wetterereignissen massiv zu mindern sind. Dabei soll die Art der Maßnahmen zeitlich flexibel und abhängig von den Bedingungen vor Ort sein, etwa in Abhängigkeit von den regionalen Risiken und den jeweiligen Entwicklungszielen. Die Verabschiedung des Vertrages sollte aber auch Anlass sein, weitere Optionen zur Emissionsminderung zu entwickeln. Auch sollten die bisherigen verkürzenden Narrative überwunden werden, wonach extreme Ereignisse nur im Zusammenhang mit Klimawandel signifikant sind, und negative Entwicklungen VOR ALLEM auf den menschgemachten Klimawandel zurückzuführen seien. Letzteres fokussiert zwar auf das Klimathema, entlässt aber etwa ungenügende Anpassung oder Sünden des europäischen Kolonialismus aus der Verantwortung.
The Abstract reads: A 34-year (1979-2012) high-resolution (7 km grid) atmospheric hindcast over the Bohai and Yellow Sea (BYS) has been performed using the COSMO-CLM (CCLM) forced by the ERA-Interim reanalysis data (ERA-I). The skill of CCLM in surface wind reproduction and the added value from dynamical downscaling have been investigated by comparing with the co-located QuikSCAT grid data and site observations. The results reveal that CCLM has reliable ability to reproduce the regional wind characteristics over the BYS. Added value has been detected in the coastal areas with complex orography. CCLM wind quality has strong seasonal variability, with better performance in summer relative to ERA-I even in the offshore areas. CCLM shows better skill in representing light and moderate winds, but has even more added values for strong winds relative to ERA-I. The spatial digital filter method was used to investigate the scale of the added value, and results show that CCLM adds value to ERA-I mainly in medium scale. Furthermore, the wind climatology has been investigated and significant increasing trends in south YS especially in winter and spring have been found for seasonal mean wind speed.
8 December 2015 - The Romanian version of the 2010-book "Climate and Society" by Nico Stehr and H. von Storch has now, after translation by H. Dragomirescu and support by Aristita Busuioc, been published as Clima și Societatea Ars Docendi in Bucharest (ISBN 978-973-558-884-7). On that occasion, a formal presentation was organized in Bucharest by Administratia Nationala de Meteorologie and Societatea Meteorologica Româna. The printing costs were covered by Societatea Meteorologica Româna.The first edition of the book came out in German in 1999; the second in 2009. Until now it has seen translations to English, Chinese, Slovenian, Russian, Czechian and, now: Romanian. Bibliographic details
I certainly will not attend the conference in Paris (I have never attended any of these conferences, because it is a political negotiation process, where scientist can not meaningfully contribute), but I will provide one or two postings.
13. November 2015 - Hans von Storch was invited to present the Nordenskjöld-Lecture at Göteborg Universitet. He spoke about Recent climate change in the Baltic Sea region - manifestation, detection and attribution. (pptx) The Abstract reads: "Hourly tide-gauge data along the coast of China are used to evaluate changes in extreme water levels in the past several decades. Mean sea level, astronomical tide, non-tidal component and the tide-surge interaction was analyzed separately to assess their roles in the changes of extreme sea levels. Mean sea level at five tide gauges, Kanmen, Keelung, Zhapo, Xiamen and Quarrybay, show significant increasing trends during the past decades (1954-2013) with a rate of about 1.4 - 3.5 mm/year. At Keelung, Kaohsiung and Quarrybay the mean high waters increased during 1954-2013 with a rate from 0.6 to 1.8 mm/year, while the annual mean tidal range rose at the same time by 0.9 to 3.8 mm/year. In terms of storm surge intensities, there is interannual variability and decadal variability but five tide gauges show significant decreasing trends, and three gauges, at Keelung, Xiamen and Quarrybay, exhibited significant increases of extreme sea levels with trends of 1.5 - 6.0 mm/year during 1954-2013. Significant tide-surge interactions were found at all 12 tide gauges, but no obvious change was found during the past few decades. The changes in extreme sea levels in this area are strongly related to the changes of mean sea levels (MSL). At gauges, where the tide-surge interaction is large, the astronomic tides are also an important factor for the extreme sea levels, whereas tide gauges with little tide-surge interaction, the changes of wind driven storm surge component adds to the change of the extreme sea levels."
On the occasion of stepping down as director of the institute, Ina Frings made an interview with me for the "Küstenblog" of the institute: "Hinterm Horizont geht es weiter" (in German).
21. September 2015 - Im Zuge der 10ten Deutschen Klimatagung wurde James Rodger Fleming der Eduard-Brückner-Preis 2015 verliehen. Presseerklärung. Im Rahmen der gleichen Veranstaltung wurden Hans Graf und ich von der Deutschen Meteorologischen Gesellschaft (DMG) mit der Reinhard-Süring Plakette für unsere Initiative ausgezeichnet, die Deutsche Klimatagung zu gründen, die 1990 in der Stasi-Hochschule in Gosen (nahe Berlin) erstmals durchgeführt wurde. (Siehe auch Grußwort von Bürgermeister Scholz zur Eröffnung der Tagung.)
4. September 2015 - Profs. Janusz Pempkoviak and Hans von Storch signed in Sopot a Memorandum of Understanding on the cooperation between the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Coastal Research of HZG.Aus der Strategie lassen sich die folgenden Kernbotschaften ableiten:
1. Das Wattenmeer wird sich ohne Maßnahmen grundlegend ändern.
2. Das Wattenmeer soll langfristig erhalten bleiben.
3. Gemeinsames Handeln ist erforderlich.
Das Wattenmeer wird sich - wenn keine wirksamen Klimaschutz- und Anpassungsmaßnahmen getroffen werden - spätestens in der zweiten Hälfte dieses Jahrhunderts infolge des menschenverursachten beschleunigten Meeresspiegelanstiegs grundlegend verändern. Zunehmende Sedimentdefizite im Wattenmeer werden zu Beeinträchtigungen der Sicherheit der Küstenbevölkerung vor Sturmfluten führen und starke Änderungen der charakteristischen Eigenschaften, aufgrund derer das Wattenmeer zu Nationalpark und Weltnaturerbe wurde, bewirken.
Das Wattenmeer soll mit seinen Funktionen für Natur- und Küstenschutz sowie möglichst auch in seiner Größe langfristig erhalten bleiben. Dabei hat die Sicherheit der Küstenbevölkerung oberste Priorität. Ein wirksamer globaler Klimaschutz ist hier für die wichtigste Voraussetzung. In der Region sind jedoch zusätzlich Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen erforderlich. Nach heutigen Kenntnissen ist ein Sedimentmanagement dafür die wichtigste Option. Daraus folgt:
· Bei Küstenschutzmaßnahmen ist bereits heute darauf zu achten, dass sie einem Sedimentmangel im Wattenmeer keinen Vorschub leisten. Wünschenswert wäre es, wenn solche Maßnahmen im Gegenteil zu einer Zunahme des Sediments führten.
· Neben den notwendigen Anpassungen des Hochwasserschutzes sind weitere Anpassungsmaßnahmen unumgänglich, vor allem durch Sedimentmanagement. Alle Maßnahmen sind ökologisch verträglich und nachhaltig unter Berücksichtigung sozio-ökonommischer und kultureller Aspekte zu gestalten.
· Obwohl noch genug Zeit für die Vorbereitung solcher Maßnahmen verbleibt, müssen die fachlichen Grundlagen durch Messprogramme, unter anderem als Frühwarnsystem, und durch Pilotprojekte verbessert werden.
· Aufwand und Kosten für die Erhaltung des Wattenmeeres werden sich unvermeidlich erhöhen.
Gemeinsames Handeln ist erforderlich, um das Wattenmeer zu erhalten. Die weiteren Schritte aus der Strategie sollen partnerschaftlich zwischen Küstenschutz und Naturschutz sowie mit aktiver Beteiligung der Region angegangen werden. Basierend auf der Strategie für das Wattenmeer 2100 sollen gemeinsam die Weichen für spätere Maßnahmen sowohl des Küstenschutzes als auch des Naturschutzes gestellt werden.
Hans von Storch wirkte im Projektbeirat der "Strategie für das Wattenmeer 2100" mit.
The Abstract reads: Reanalysis data sets have been widely used in regional climate dynamical downscaling studies. In this study, we test the use of various reanalysis data sets in constraining dynamical downscaling by assessing the skill of the reconstruction of the coastal winds of the Yellow Sea using the COSMO model in CLimate Mode (CCLM) with 7-km resolution. Four reanalysis forcing data sets are used as lateral boundary conditions and as internal large-scale constraints (spectral nudging): the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data set (NCEP1) downscaled to an intermediate domain with 55-km resolution (CCLM_55km), the ERA-interim reanalysis data set (ERAint), the NCEP climate forecast system reanalysis data set (CFSR) and the Japanese 55-year reanalysis data set (JRA55).
Several statistical analysis methods are employed to assess the modeled winds through comparison with observed offshore wind data from 2006, and it is found that the downscaled simulations yield good-quality wind speed products. However, they all tend to overestimate observed low wind speeds and to underestimate observed high wind speeds. Furthermore, the quality of the modeled wind direction is strongly associated with the wind speed intensities, exhibiting much better reproduction of wind direction at strong wind speeds than at light wind speeds.
The downscaling simulations driven by ERAint, JRA55 and CFSR are consistent with each other in the reproduction of local wind speed and direction; the simulations driven by ERAint and JRA55 are slightly better for strong winds, and those driven by CFSR are better for light winds. All three simulations generate local wind estimates that are superior to those of the simulation driven by CCLM_55km. This superiority reflects the better quality of the CFSR, ERAint and JRA55 reanalyses with regard to assimilated local observations compared with the CCLM_55km hindcast, which exploits only upper-air large-scale NCEP1 wind fields.
doi:10.2151/jmsj.2015-044
The Abstract reads: Dynamical downscaling (DDS) is performed by using regional climate models (RCMs) with global atmospheric states as the input, but there is no consensus among researchers on how to define and estimate the resolvable scale of the various climatic variables obtained by DDS. Sources of RCM uncertainties, including both internal model and intermodel variability, have been assessed by performing ensemble simulations and model intercomparisons, sometimes under the controversial assumption that model bias is independent of the climatic state. Compared with low-resolution global climate simulations, DDS can add value in several ways. For example, because they take account of high-resolution topographic data, RCMs can often capture mesoscale phenomena and can better represent climate dynamics. Another downscaling method, empirical statistical downscaling (ESD), is complementary to dynamical downscaling because it is based on a different philosophy (i.e., sources of information) and on a mostly different set of assumptions. More collaboration and communication should be encouraged among those who develop models, those who use models and perform downscaling, those who use downscaling data, and those who make decisions based on the scientific results provided by models. In addition, ensemble experiments should be devised that can more effectively benefit impact studies. By using DDS and ESD, separately or in combination, users can maximize the utility of local climate information.
25 June 2015 - Hans von Storch's Chinese web-page has been updated - with the help of LI Shuang from OUC.
6. Juni 2015 - Die Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften der Universität Hamburg teilt mit: "Herr von Storch, Professor am Meteorologischen Institut der MIN-Fakultät der Universität Hamburg und Direktor des Helmholtz Forschungszentrums Geesthacht - Zentrum für Material und Küstenforschung - ist vom Fakultätsrat zum Zweitmitglied der WISO-Fakultät ernannt worden. Diese Entscheidung soll die große Wertschätzung Herrn von Storchs und seiner wissenschaftlichen Leistung unterstreichen, und wie sehr in unserer Fakultät sein besonderes Interesse an der soziologischen Aufklärung der naturwissenschaftlichen Klimaforschung über ihre eigenen gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Grundlagen, ihrer Zustandsbeschreibung als post-normal science sowie der Erforschung der Schnittstellenproblematik in der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung geschätzt wird. Die einstimmige Entscheidung des Fakultätsrats drückt nicht zuletzt die Anerkennung für Herrn von Storchs erfolgreichen Einsatz dafür aus, dass im Hamburger Exzellenzzentrum CliSAP eine signifikante sozialwissenschaftliche Dimension etabliert wurde."15. Mai 2015 - NDR-Info Radio-Interview von Mayke Walhorn mit Hans von Storch: "Der zweite Klimabericht für den Ostseeraum" 
12 May 2015 - Press release on the occasion of the publication of the BACC-2 report about the knowledge on climate change and climate impact.3. Mai 2015 - Der siebte und letzte Bericht über die China-Reise von Hans von Storch liegt jetzt vor: "China: Katzen, Institute und Schiffe".Sechs vorherige Berichte sind schon auf dem "Küstenblog" der HZG erschienen: "China: Namen und Küsten", "Qingdao: Ozean-Universität und Geschichte", "Qingdao: Ozean Universität, II, Plastiktüten und Siemens", "China: Qingdao Ozean Universität - Transport und Mensa", "Shandong: Chinese Academy of Science, Weißstörche und 马路杀手" und "China - Ludwig Prandtl auf dem Changjiang?".
22 April 2015 - The web-page of "Oxford University Press Research Encyclopedia Climate Science" offers first glimpses of the future content or OPRE-C, with advanced summaries of forthcoming articles, such as Frauke Feser's "Constructing Records of Storminess".. 16 April 2015 - The second BACC-report has been published by Springer Verlag with open access: The BACC-II author team, 2015: Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin. 506pp, ISBN 978-3-319-16005-4Abstract: "This book is an update of the first BACC assessment, published in 2008. It offers new and updated scientific findings in regional climate research for the Baltic Sea basin. These include climate changes since the last glaciation (approx. 12,000 years ago), changes in the recent past (the last 200 years), climate projections up until 2100 using state-of-the-art regional climate models and an assessment of climate-change impacts on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. There are dedicated new chapters on sea-level rise, coastal erosion and impacts on urban areas. A new set of chapters deals with possible causes of regional climate change along with the global effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, namely atmospheric aerosols and land-cover change.
The evidence collected and presented in this book shows that the regional climate has already started to change and this is expected to continue. Projections of potential future climates show that the region will probably become considerably warmer and wetter in some parts, but dryer in others. Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems have already shown adjustments to increased temperatures and are expected to undergo further changes in the near future.
The BACC II Author Team consists of 141 scientists from 12 countries, covering various disciplines related to climate research and related impacts. BACC II is a project of the Baltic Earth research network and contributes to the World Climate Research Programme.
27 March 2015 -
The BACC II book will be officially published on 14 May 2015.On this occasion we will have a short launch event in the frame of ECCA 2015 the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference, 12-14 May in Copenhagen. The event will be on Thursday 14 May as Midday Plenary in the Auditorium 11 of the Bella Center in Copenhagen, 13:15 - 13:45. There will be a short introduction to BACC by Hans von Storch, followed by a podium discussion. Here, we have confirmed participation by a range of stakeholders:March/April 2015 - During his visit to 中国海洋大学, Hans von Storch presents a 5-part lecture series on "Advanced conceptual issues in climate and coastal science":
12 March Utility of coastal science
26 March Concepts of regional climate servicing
2 April Detection and attribution of change
9 April Concepts of downscaling
The presentations are published as pptx's on my webpage and as pdf's on academia.edu.
6 March 2015 - Hans von Storch, together with his three Chinese PhD students, has begun his extended stay at the Ocean University of China, in Qingdao, as envisioned by the Memorandum of Understanding between OUC and HZG. 
25 February 2015 - The second BACC-report on scientifically legitimate knowledge about climate, climate change and climate impacts in the Baltic Sea region is now in the final production phase at the Springer Verlag - it is already announced on Springer's web-pages.30. Januar 2015 - Der schon dreimal, zuletzt in 2006 verliehene Eduard Brückner Preis wird im Rahmen der 10. Deutsche Klimatagung im September 2015 erneut vergeben. Weitere Details.
27 January 2015 - The Czech translation "Klima a spolecnost" of the book "Climate and Society" co-authored by Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch has been published (Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum, 2014, ISBN 978-80-246-2847-9, 157 s) and was be presented to the public on the occasion of a seminar on 27 January 2015 in Praha.So far, this book has been published in German, English, Chinese, Slowenian, Czechian and Russian.
Der KlimaCampus Hamburg präsentiert sich in der Handelskammer Hamburg. Im Commerzsaal der Handelskammer wird von 10.00 Uhr - 18.00 Uhr eine Ausstellung zu sehen sein, die über die große Vielfalt der Klimaforschung in Hamburg informiert.
Ab 14.00 Uhr werden im Albert-Schäfer-Saal der Handelskammer Vorträge über die besondere Bedeutung der Klimaforschung in Hamburg zu hören sein. Der 1. Bürgermeister der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg - Herr Olaf Scholz - wird seine Position zur Bedeutung von Klimapolitik und Klimaforschung in Hamburg darstellen.
The abstract reads: Coastal research deals with that part of the sea, which is significantly affected by the land, and the part of the land, which is significantly affected by the sea. Coasts are in most cases densely populated, and the activities of people are shaping and changing the land/seascape of the coast. Thus, coast encompasses the coastal sea, the coastal land, coastal flora and fauna, and people. Since peoples' economic and political preferences change and compete, also the human impact on the coast changes, is contested and subject to societal decision making processes.
While some coastal research can help informing and constraining such decisions, many legitimate scientific efforts have little bearing on society. All decision making processes are political, so that scientific knowledge is not the dominant driver in such processes. Using cases from the Institute of Coastal Research of Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht, we describe some of these potentially useful parts of science, and discuss under which circumstances the potential usefulness transform into real utility. These cases do not span the full range of coastal science. Important issues are the recognition of alternative knowledge claims, the inevitableness of uncertainties and incompleteness of scientific analysis, the acceptance of the political nature of decisions and the ubiquitous presence of social values. Modesty, self-reflexivity and skepticism are needed on the side of science and an organized exchange with stakeholders and public through designated "border" services.
26 November 2014 - The web-page of the new " University Press Research Encyclopedia Climate Science" is up and running. First contributions to the "ORE-C" are invited. For an overview of the scope refer to its Taxonomy. The abstract reads: In 1942 Robert K. Merton tried to demonstrate the structure of the normative system of science by specifying the norms that characterized it. The norms were assigned the abbreviation CUDOs: Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, and Organized skepticism. Using the results of an on-line survey of climate scientists concerning the norms of science, this paper explores the climate scientists’ subscription to these norms. The data suggests that while Merton’s CUDOs remain the overall guiding moral principles, they are not fully endorsed or present in the conduct of climate scientists: there is a tendency to withhold results until publication, there is the intention of maintaining property rights, there is external influence defining research and the tendency to assign the significance of authored work according to the status of the author rather than content of the paper. These are contrary to the norms of science as proposed by Robert K. Merton.
15 November 2014 - In the Special Issue "Second-order Science" of the journal "Constructivist Foundations", edited by Alexander Riegler and Karl H. Müller, first the essay "On Climate Change Research, the Crisis of Science and Second-order Science" by Philipp Aufenvenne, Heike Egner and Kirsten von Elverfeldt, is presented, and then discussed by several scholars, among them Hans von Storch and Werner Krauss. Hans von Storch's comment is dealing with the concept of "Detection and Attribution".
20-24 October 2014 - Sino-German Cooperation in Marine Sciences (SGMS) Symposium "Coastal Oceans: Interdisciplinary Scientific Prediction and Management" in Qingdao.Under the framework of the SGMS, the University of China and the Institut für Küstenforschung, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht organize a Symposium on coastal issues through a broader forum of exchange and cooperation among scientists from China and Germany as well as Sweden and Poland.
The major benefit expected as a result of this Symposium is that the range of cooperation opportunities between leading marine research institutions of China, Germany and the 3rd-party countries will be expanded by integrating 25 research institutes and universities (12 in China, 11 in Germany, 2 from 3rd parties). This Symposium will serve as an instrument to increase the awareness of the platform of the SGMS and its potential partners to support the development of synergies in the fields of coastal areas, climate change, and climate-biogeochemistry interactions.
20 October 2014 - Signature of Memorandum of Understanding between Ocean University of China 中国海洋大学, Qingdao, and Institut für Küstenforschung, Geesthacht, in Qingdao. OUC was represented by vice-president 李 华军 (Li Huajun), HZG by Hans von Storch.Also, the "Qingdao Consensus on Sustainable Development of Future Oceans" was signed and published on 26 October 2014 on the occasion of the "Ocean Summit" in Qingdao. Hans von Storch was co-signer. (Group foto)
Die Ausstellung und das begleitende Symposium sind Teil eines Kooperationsprojekts, welches auf Initiative von Friedrich von Borries, Professor für Designtheorie und kuratorische Praxis an der HFBK Hamburg, und der Forschungsgruppe Understanding Science in Interaction (USI) des Exzellenzclusters für Klimaforschung CliSAP im Jahr 2013 entstand.
15 October 2014 - The last interview with late formidable Tom Crowley has now been published in the Newsletter of PAGES. Since 1982 a Polish-German cooperation exists for the exchange of scientists between both countries. The cooperation was established between the Institute of Hydroengineering of the Polish Academy of Science and the German Institute of Oceanography of the University of Hamburg with the focus on the Baltic Sea. For a couple of years now Prof. Hans von Storch from Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht, Institute of Coastal Research is responsible for the German side.
From the beginning of the cooperation seminars were held on a rotational basis in Poland and Germany. This year Polish scientists from Gdynia, Sopot, Gdansk and Szczecin will meet German scientists from Geesthacht, Hamburg, Kiel, Rostock and Ludwigslust at the 12th Polish-German Seminar in Sopot, 13 to 14 Octobre. The title of the seminar is: "Our coast at the end of the century". As always focus is on the Baltic Sea but there are also excursions to the North Sea and even to Vietnam.
Panellists: D. Jacob (Head of Climate Services Centre, Hamburg), H. von Storch (director, Institute of Coastal Research, Germany), C. Goodess (senior research associate, UEA, England), and R. Benestad (MET Norway, RealClimate)
(18:00; House for Professed, Great Hall (Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University), Malostranské námestí 25, Praha 1 - Mala Strana)
#2 in that series, "A long-term climatology of medicanes" by Leone Cavicchia, Hans von Storch and Silvio Gualdi is in Climate Dynamics: Volume 43, Issue 5 (2014), Page 1183-1195 and electronically on SpringerLink.
#1, describing case studies of such small-scale storms, came out in 2013 as Cavicchia, L., and H. von Storch, 2013: Medicanes simulation in a high resolution regional climate model. Clim. Dyn. 39, 2273-2290; DOI: 10.1007/s00382-011-1220-0.
The three papers formed the basis for Leone's PhD thesis on medicanes, which he defended in February 2013 in Venezia.
See also press releases by NOAA and by HZG.
As highlighted in consecutive reports from the IPCC, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change is taking place and the chances are high that future climate is going to change even more than what has already been realised. Impacts of changes over recent decades are likewise visible throughout the Nordic region, manifested e.g. through observed changes in the hydrological cycle, reductions in sea ice cover, lengthening growing seasons and the occurrence and strength of heavy rain events. Adaptation to these changes is already high on the agenda in the Nordic and international societies. However, science is providing new information on changes and their consequences, which calls for a wider dialogue to enable adjustments of already initiated adaptation plans as well as providing the baseline knowledge for future initiatives.
28. Juli 2014 - Der Aufsatz "Klimaservice: Nachhaltig 'Vorhersagen'?" von Hans von Storch erscheint in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 31-32/2014. Abstract The Mediterranean has been identified as one of the most responsive regions to climate change1. It has been argued that one of the effects of climate change could be to make the Mediterranean Sea prone to the formation of tropical cyclones.
Already in the present climate regime, however, a few of the numerous low pressure system that are formed in the area develop a dynamical evolution similar to the one of tropical cyclones, showing a characteristic spiral cloud pattern and very strong winds. Even if their spatial extent is generally smaller and the lifecycle shorter compared to tropical hurricanes, such storms can produce severe damage on the highly populated coastal areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Here we show that the effect of climate change on Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones is a decreased frequency, accompanied to a moderate tendency to reach a higher intensity.
This is the first extensive study on such rare and peculiar storms, based on the analysis of homogeneous long-term and high-resolution multi scenario datasets, and focusing both on the stronger medicanes and on the larger class of Mediterranean tropical-like storms. Beyond the advancement in the understanding of Mediterranean tropical-like storms, such analysis provides an interesting insight on the complex dependence on climate change of the behavior of hurricane-like systems.
25 July 2014 - Hans von Storch has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Oxford University Press Encyclopedia: Cimate Change, which will become operational in the coming months.
6.-12 Juli 2014 - Auch in 2014 wieder "Forschung vor Anker" mit RV Ludwig Prandtl. Diesmal auf der Tideelbe von Geesthacht, Hamburg, Stade bis zum Natureum an der Ostemündung, und via Glückstadt zurück nach Hamburg in den Sandtorhafen. (Presseerklärung)
3. Juli 2014 - Hans von Storch spricht über "Die Klimafalle" als Teil einer Ringvorlesung "Streit um Wissenschaft" des Zentrum für Wissenschaftstheorie in Münster. Topics of the workshop are: Regional Climate and Earth System Models, Very-high-resolution RCMs, Challenges for RCM evaluation and application, RCM Ensembles.
This is by no means the first case that our results and assessments have been subject to heavy, interest-led distortions; another case was in August 2013, when a person Ameling made up claims about us to raise the impression that we would be supportive of what certain groups of sceptics claim. We are not. We are not in the pocket of neither sceptics nor alarmists.
9. Maj 2014 - The Östersjöfonden has awarded Hans von Storch its "stiftelsens pris" 2014: "Årets huvudpristagare är professor Hans von Storch från Tyskland. Professor von Storch har på ett föredömligt sätt bidragit till att sammanställa fragmentarisk information och kunskap till en heltäckande bild av klimatförändringens effekter i Östersjöregionen."My speech, which addressed the Baltic Sea, on that occasion is here.
The report in Ålandstidningen (10 maj 2014) is informative.
8 April 2014 - Report about the handing over the original colonial German documents of weather observations in Tsingtao (1898-1909) in Hamburger Abendblatt. On that occasion Hans von Storch received a "certificate of appreciation" by the Qingdao Meteorological Bureau and the Qingdao Meteorological Society.Die nächste Folge unserer Diskussionsreihe „Fokus@Helmholtz“ soll unter dem Titel: „Was können wir glauben? Die Klimadebatte und ihre Folgen“ laufen. Ende März wird der zweite Teil des IPCC-Berichtes in Yokohama, Japan veröffentlicht. Er wird erneut Fragen um den Klimawandel, seine Folgen und Auswirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt aufwerfen. Internationalen Wissenschaftler diskutieren schon jetzt zum Teil kontrovers und ringen um gemeinsame Antworten in der Klimafrage. Wenn Wissenschaftler sich schwer tun, wie können da die Bürgerinnen und Bürger verstehen, was mit unserem Klima passiert und verantwortungsvoll handeln. Warum verläuft der Streit zwischen den Forschern so heftig? Was treibt die Klimaskeptiker an? Und: Welche Fragen können Klimamodelle überhaupt beantworten? Viele Menschen fragen sich, woran sie eigentlich glauben sollen: Ist der Klimawandel doch nicht so schlimm, wie gedacht? Welchen Einfluss hat der Mensch auf ihn und in welchem Maße? Welche Rolle spielen politische Interessen, wenn es um Vorhersagen geht? Wir laden Sie herzlich zur vierten Veranstaltung der Reihe Fokus@Helmholtz ein. Unter der Überschrift „Was können wir glauben? Die Klimadebatte und ihre Folgen“ wollen wir gemeinsam mit Ihnen und mit Vertretern aus Wirtschaft, Hochschule und außeruniversitärer Forschung diskutieren.
Fokus@Helmholtz: Was können wir glauben? Die Klimadebatte und ihre Folgen
Montag, 17. März 2014 19:00 Uhr, Einlass ab 18:30 Uhr
DKB Forum (Taubenstraße 7, 10117 Berlin)
Die Veranstaltungsreihe Fokus@Helmholtz bringt regelmäßig Forschung, Politik und Gesellschaft zusammen, um miteinander über strittige Zukunftsfragen zu diskutieren. Die Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft möchte dabei gemeinsam mit ihren Gästen den Blick über den Tellerrand wagen, Handlungsoptionen hinterfragen und Denkanstöße liefern.
Call for Session: Human activities are impacting the sustainability and resilience of the marine environment. However, much uncertainty exists regarding how social-ecological systems will respond to a diverse and dynamic set of threats such as climate change, sea level rise and ocean acidification and how in turn these responses may impact ecosystem services. To understand the evolution and feedbacks among myriad pressures, while balancing human health and well being with ecosystem health, will require the creation and application of multi-disciplinary teams, effective cross-discipline tools in the context of research coordination networks. In this session we explore the interface of human dimensions science and oceanography. We solicit presentations on emerging tools for understanding social- ecological linkages and discussions on the feedbacks and trade- offs inherent in complex marine systems. Drawing on examples from the coastal marine environment in locations as diverse as the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and tropical islands, we want to discuss recent developments and future scenarios for moving the marine environment closer to sustainability. We encourage submissions from those developing and applying multi- disciplinary theory, ecosystem-based methods, or working towards creating the infrastructure and research networks critical to the successful understanding of the marine environment. As our session lies at the interface of several disciplines we invite presentations from researchers interested in broadly engaging those in the marine and social science communities. Through this session we will provide a forum for presentations and discussion of novel collaborations among researchers studying social-ecological systems.
21 December 2013 - The first newsletter of the newly launched Baltic Earth programme, a successor of BALTEX, has been published. It includes an overview of the activities of Baltic Earth. 
18 October 2013 - Hans von Storch was invited to become a member of the International Advisory Board of WIREs Climate Change 
13. September 2013 - Hans von Storch became a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences
30. August 2013 - Interview mit Judith Hartl "Wir haben ein Problem!" mit Hans von Storch auf der Deutschen Welle. Sicher nicht in allen Details sauber formuliert von meiner Seite - war "life".- Chen F., B. Geyer, M. Zahn and H. von Storch, 2012: Towards a multidecadal climatology of North Pacific Polar Lows employing dynamical downscaling. Terrestrial, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 23, 291-303 (Manuscript at academia.edu)
- Chen F., and H. von Storch, 2013 : Trends and variability of North Pacific Polar Lows, Advances in Meteorology 2013, ID 170387, 11 pages, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/170387, open access
- Chen, F., H. von Storch, Y. Du, and L. Wu: Polar Low genesis over North Pacific under different scenarios of Global Warming, submitted
. The major conclusions for the North Pacific are consistent with earlier findings for the North Atlantic Reagion - namely that Polar Lows can be reproduced by dynamcial downscaling (constrained by spectral nudging); that in recent decades no noteworthy trend in the formation and spatial distribution has emerged, and that for the future less such storms may be expected, however, with a slight northward shift.
The introductory paragraphs reds: In recent years, the increase in near-surface global annual mean temperatures has emerged as considerably smaller than many had expected. We investigate whether this can be explained by contemporary climate change scenarios. In contrast to earlier analyses for a ten-year period that indicated consistency between models and observations at the 5% confidence level, we find that the continued warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level. Of the possible causes of the inconsistency, the underestimation of internal natural climate variability on decadal time scales is a plausible candidate, but the influence of unaccounted external forcing factors or an overestimation of the model sensitivity to elevated greenhouse gas concentrations cannot be ruled out. The first cause would have little impact of the expectations of longer term anthropogenic climate change, but the second and particularly the third would.
Stehr, N., und H. von Storch, 2008: Eduard Brückner - Die Geschichte unseres Klimas: Klimaschwankungen und Klimafolgen; Heft 40 der Österreichischen Beiträge zur Meteorologie und Geophysik (ISSN 1016-6254; 272pp)
zum freien Herunterladen bei Academia.edu gestellt.
25 July 2013 - Ernst Maier-Reimer has passed away. No need to explain who Ernst was - a superb scientist and a fine gentleman and friend. The "old" Max-Planck Institute is now history for good.Ernst was the 2003-recipient of the Eduard Brueckner Preis for interdisciplinary achievements.
At the funeral service on 9 August 2013 in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, two speeches were given, one by Klaus Hasselmann, and one by Jürgen Sündermann (both in German)
The Abstract reads: Medicanes, intense and destructive mesoscale cyclones exhibiting several similarities with tropical hurricanes, are known to struck occasionally the Mediterranean Sea. Thanks to a high-resolution dynamical downscaling effort, we are able to study for the first time the long-term climatology of those rare storms in a systematic way. The distribution of medicanes frequency in space and time is discussed, and the environmental factors responsible for their formation are investigated. We find that medicanes develop in those areas of the Mediterranean region where intrusions of cold air in the upper troposphere can produce configurations of thermodynamical disequilibrium of the atmosphere similar to those associated with the formation of tropical cyclones.
23. June 1013 - Hans von Storch appointed Guest-Professor at the Ocean University of China, Qingdao, for three years.
20 June 2013 - The new SPIEGEl interview by Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter with Hans von Storch, 10 years after the first in 2003, is now available in English translation and on-line .
7-12. Juli 2013 - Forschung vor Anker – Ostsee: Das Institut für Küstenforschung des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht lädt auf die Ludwig Prandtl ein. Vom 7. bis 12. Juli kann das institutseigene Forschungsschiff in den Häfen Flensburg, Kappeln, Schleswig und Eckernförde besichtigt werden. Küsten- und Klimaforscher präsentieren an Bord und bei Abendveranstaltungen ihre Arbeit und stehen den Besuchern Rede und Antwort.Nach vier früheren jährlich durchgeführten Touren seit 2009, längs der Schleswig Holsteinischen Westküste in 2009, längs der Küste Ostfrieslands in 2010, von Stralsund bis Szczecin in 2011, von Neustadt in Holstein bis Kühlungsborn in Mecklenburg in 2013, ist dies die fünfte derartige Reise, die sich an die Öffentlichkeit wendet.
16 Juni 2013 - Zehn Jahre nach einem ersten Interview von Hans von Storch durch Olaf Stampf und Gerald Traufetter jetzt ein neues SPIEGEL-Gespräch "Wir stehen vor einem Rätsel" - SPIEGEL 25/2013, S. 108-110. 16 June 2013 - Last week, the ending of BALTEX, and the initiation of Baltic Earth as a successor-program was celebrated in the presence of HM Carl XIV Gustav in Borgholm, Öland in Sweden - press releases by the Royal Swedisch Court and the Swedisch weather service SMHI describe the events and document with some nice fotos.
See also the BACC-blog.In BALTEX Hans von Storch was was vice chair, now in Baltic Earth he is serving as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee.
The abstract reads: The main subject of this article is to comment on the issue of storminess trends derived from the 20th Century Reanalysis and from observations in the North Atlantic region written about in Wang et al. (2012). The statement that the 20CR estimates would be consistent with storminess derived from pressure-based proxies does not hold for the time prior to 1950.
The paper has now been published online - see DOI 10.1007/s00382-013-1814-9.
10-14 June 2013 on Öland, Sweden: 7th Study Conference on BALTEX, which will be honoured by the presence of H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, during the Conference Opening on Monday 10 June 2013.Abstract: The 6-hourly 1948-2010 NCEP1re-analyses have been dynamically downscaled for the region of the North Pacific. With a detecting-and-tracking algorithm,theclimatology of North Pacific Polar Lows has been constructed. This derived climatology is consistent with the limited observational evidence in terms of frequency and spatial distribution. The climatology exhibits strong year-to-year variability but weak decadal variability and a small positive trend. A Canonical Correlation Analysis describes the conditioning of the formation of Polar Lows by characteristic seasonal mean flow regimes, which favor, or limit, cold air outbreaks and upper air troughs.
Abstract: This paper presents research outcomes from an investigation into climate change and urban impacts on climate devel-opment in urban regions of the Baltic Sea coast. The cities considered were Rostock and Stockholm, and their sur-rounding regions. The objectives were: 1) to determine whether significant changes in temperature and precipitation have occurred and, if so, to what extent; and 2) to establish whether there is a noticeable urban heat island effect in Stockholm and the medium-sized city of Rostock. Climatic trends were detected by linear regression and the Mann-Kendall test. Different precipitation trends were detected over the whole period of observation. Average annual temperatures increased significantly in both case studies, particularly from the 1970s with highest trends in winter and lowest in autumn (Rostock) and summer (Stockholm). Although changes in temperature extremes were detected for both regions, no overall long-term trend for precipitation extremes was observed. The average temperature in the city of Rostock (Stockholm) was approximately 0.3°C to 0.6°C (1.2°C) higher than in the surrounding rural areas had seasonal variations, with maxima in the warm season. The main outcomes were that significant changes in climatic conditions, particularly temperature patterns, have been occurring in the case study regions since the 1980s, and that there is a considerable urban heat island effect in both Stockholm and Rostock. This could encourage urban planners to consider specific climatic conditions and small-scale climatic influences also in relatively small coastal urban conglomerates in mid latitudes which can follow from land use changes.
18. April 2013 - Hamburg major Olaf Scholz introduces Hans von Storch at his seminar Scientific tools for coastal zone management at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo. .
16 March 2013 - New interview in the AGU series, this time Julia Hargreaves from Yokohama.Do proxies, which supposedly represent rainfall, really present rainfall or something else, such as integrated rainfall, which is something like soil moisture? In any case, shorter rainfall series derived from instrumental data as well as from millennial simulation show a white noise behavior for yearly data, whereas proxies from tree rings have memory. Of course, both instrumental data may be too short, and model data flawed, but it is more plausible that the tree ring data reflect not only precipitation but other factors, and, indeed it is the amount of water available to trees in the soil which matters, not how much is precipitating.
Küsten sind ein viel genutzter und ein gut erforschter Raum. Hier treffen unterschiedlichste Interessen aufeinander. Vom 4. bis zum 6. März 2013 sind Küstenforscher, Küstenplaner und Küstenschützer in die Handelskammer Hamburg eingeladen, sich auszutauschen und im Dialog auf den aktuellen Wissensstand zu bringen.Das Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht veranstaltet dazu eine Tagung in der Handelskammer Hamburg. Experten aus Forschung, Wirtschaft, Planung und Naturschutz stellen aktuelle Themen, Ergebnisse und Fragestellungen vor. Im Fokus der dreitägigen Veranstaltung stehen u.a. die zukünftige Windenergienutzung in den küstennahen Meeren. Ein zweiter thematische Schwerpunkt befasst sich mit Interessenskonflikten im Küstenraum.
Mit dieser Veranstaltung schließt das Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht an den vor zehn Jahren auf der Tagung „Forschungshorizonte der Küstenregion“ begonnen Dialog zwischen Praktikern, Wissenschaftlern und der Öffentlichkeit an. Die Tagung findet in Kooperation mit dem Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar und Meeresforschung Bremerhaven und der Technischen Universität Hamburg-Harburg statt. Alle Vorträge werden in deutscher Sprache gehalten.
Für Details siehe web-Seite, bzw. Flyer mit Programm.
Das Buch "Die Klimafalle. Die gefährliche Nähe von Politik und Klimaforschung" von Hans von Storch und Werner Krauss ist beim Hanser-Verlag am 25 Februar 2013erschienen. 245 Seiten, Preis 19.90 EUR. Das Buch wird so angekündigt: Die Klimagipfel scheitern und bleiben folgenlos, obwohl die Emissionen immer weiter steigen. Der Klimaforscher Hans von Storch und der Ethnologe Werner Krauß erklären, wie wir in der Klimafalle gelandet sind – und wie wir ihr entkommen können. Die inflationäre Ankündigung der Klimakatastrophe hat zu einem Verlust der Glaubwürdigkeit von Wissenschaft geführt. Dabei ist der Klimawandel keine wissenschaftliche Frage, sondern eine gesellschaftliche! Er muss in regionaler Kultur, Alltag und Politik verankert werden. Die Weltgesellschaft braucht keine politisierte Wissenschaft, die das 2-Grad-Ziel ausruft, sondern eine, die die Bedingungen für einen pragmatischen Umgang mit dem Klimawandel auslotet.
Der Hanser-Verlag hat eine Leseprobe online gestellt, ebenso Die Presse.
13 February 2013 - Sadly, our highly respected colleague Klaus Wyrkti has passed away. For an obituary by Roger Lukas refer to Klimazwiebel. I met Klaus personally several times, before his retirement, and after. Impressed by him, both as a person and a scientist,I conducted an in-depth interview with him together with Jürgen Sündermann and Lorenz Magaard:von Storch, H., J. Sündermann and L. Magaard, 2000: Interview with Klaus Wyrtki. GKSS 99/E/74, 42 pp;
which was reprinted in Historisch-Meereskundliches Jahrbuch 2000, Vol. 7, 49-94; as part of the collection by M. Jochum and T. Murtugudde (eds.), 2006: Physical Oceanography. Developments since 1950, Springer Verlag, ISB 0-387-30261-1, 203-238; and later online by the Niels-Bohr Library and Archives of the Center for History of Physics.
For the Germans among the readers it may be interesting to learn that Klaus was born German, and that he started his scientific career with employments in Kiel and and the DHI in Hamburg - among others with work on the Baltic Sea. More on this aspect in the interview.
Xia Lan: “Long-term variability of storm track characteristics”
Chen Fei: “Multi-decadal climatology of Polar Lows over the North Pacific by regional climate model"
Monika Barcikowska: “Variability and trends of tropical cyclones over the western North Pacific for the last decades”
29 January 2012 - Oliver Krüger has successfully defended his thesis "The Informational Value of Pressure-Based Proxies for Past Storm Activity" - he was my 19th PhD student.
10 January 2013 - It is now 20 years ago that the transdisciplinary cooperation between Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch began with a first coincidental meeting of the two at Cäcilienhof in Potsdam, when PIK brought a number of scientists together in late 1992. Hans von Storch invited Nico Stehr to visit the Max Planck Institut of Meteorology in Hamburg for a couple of months, and Nico accepted. A first product of this cooperation was later published ZEIT in September 2013. [On the occasion of the 20th anniversary, I have set the article on Genarrt vom Wettergott on academia.edu.]The cooperation is still going on, with many articles and several books on the issue of the social construction of climate and climate change (and related issues, such as history of climate determinism, Eduard Brückner as an early "modern" climate researcher). For me, this cooperation was, and is, one of the most fruitful I had the privilege to be involved in.
A main product of the Stehr/Storch cooperation was the book "Klima, Wetter, Mensch" or "Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk", which came out in Chinese, Russian and Slowenian - apart of German and English. It is now the second, much extended revision.
28 November 2012 - New interview in the AGU series, this time Victoria Slonosky from Quebec.Küsten sind ein viel genutzter und ein gut erforschter Raum. Hier treffen unterschiedlichste Interessen aufeinander. Vom 4. bis zum 6. März 2013 sind Küstenforscher, Küstenplaner und Küstenschützer eingeladen sich auszutauschen und im Dialog auf den aktuellen Wissensstand zu bringen. Das Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht veranstaltet dazu eine Tagung in der Handelskammer Hamburg.
Experten aus Forschung, Wirtschaft, Planung und Naturschutz stellen aktuelle Themen, Ergebnisse und Fragestellungen vor. Im Fokus der dreitägigen Veranstaltung steht unter anderem die zukünftige Windenergienutzung in den küstennahen Meeren. Ein zweiter thematischer Schwerpunkt befasst sich mit Interessenkonflikten im Küstenraum.
Mit dieser Veranstaltung schließt das Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht an den vor zehn Jahren auf der Tagung „Forschungshorizonte der Küstenregion“ begonnenen Dialog zwischen Praktikern, Wissenschaftlern und der Öffentlichkeit an.
Die Tagung findet in Kooperation mit dem Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung Bremerhaven und der Technischen Universität Hamburg-Harburg statt. Alle Vorträge werden in deutscher Sprache gehalten. Informationen unter www.hzg.de/kuestentagung.
The IMSC has been organized by a group of independent climatologists and statisticians since 1979. The aim of IMSC is to promote good statistical practice in the atmospheric and climate sciences and to maintain and enhance the lines of communication between the atmospheric and statistical science communities.
Topics: Oral presentations and posters are invited on all topics related to the analysis of climate variability and change on global, regional and local scales, and to advances in relevant statistical techniques, including Bayesian and non-Bayesian methods. A series of thematic sessions will address issues including: Data homogenization and climate trends/variability assessment, Next generation climate data products, Reconstruction and interpretation of past climates, Spatial and spatiotemporal analysis of climate data, Non-linear methods for climate analysis, Forecast verification, Ensemble methods and uncertainty quantification, CMIP5 model evaluation, prediction, and projection, Detection and attribution, downscaling, and impacts, Weather and climate extremes – statistical modeling and event attribution, Large-scale climate variability and teleconnections, Global/regional change in water cycle including monsoon.
Registration and deadlines: The deadline for abstract submission is February 28, 2013. Full details on registration, abstract submission, and session programs will be available from December 1, 2012 at the website WWW.IMSC2013.ORG.
Am 11./12. Oktober fand am Institut für Geographie und Geologie der Universität Greifswald das 12. Deutsch-Polnische Seminar über Küstenforschung - diesmal verbunden mit dem 6. Treffen des an der Universität Szczecin koordinierten CoPaF-Projektes (Coastline changes in the Baltic Sea – past and future projections) - statt. Es steht in der Tradition einer transnationalen Veranstaltungsreihe über gemeinsame regionale Umweltfragen, die 1982 in Hamburg begann und regelmäßig an Standorten in beiden Ländern fortgeführt wurde. Das diesjährige Treffen ist maßgebend vom Helmholtz-Zentrum-Geesthacht konzipiert und organisiert wurden.
In zahlreichen Vorträgen stellten Wissenschaftler der Universitäten Greifswald, Hamburg, Poznan, Rostock und Szczecin sowie von Instituten der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gdansk und Sopot sowie von deutschen Forschungsinstituten, wie dem Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht und dem Leibniz Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde den Stand des Wissens über die südliche Ostseeküste dar und diskutierten Perspektiven für künftige wissenschaftliche Programme. Schwerpunkte bildeten die morphologische Entwicklung der Küsten und der Schutz ihrer Ökosysteme aber auch ihrer ökonomischen Resources vor dem Hintergrund des gegenwärtigen Klimawandels. Dabei zeichnete sich klar ab, dass die südliche Ostsee mit ihren Lockergesteinsküsten und dem hier durch Senkungsprozesse der Erdkruste bei klimatisch bedingtem steigenden Meeresspiegel gegenüber den Hebungsküsten der nördlichen Ostsee besondere Strategien für die gesellschaftliche Reaktion auf die natürlichen und anthropogenen Änderungen der Umwelt verlangt. Ein Beispiel für neue Perspektiven ist die vermehrte Erosion von Küstenabschnitten als Folge des schwächer werdenden Schutzes der Küsten durch winterliches Meereis. Dieses spezifische Problemspektrum verlangt nach einer wissenschaftlichen Beratung von Raumplanung, Küsten- und Naturschutz und genau diese Fragen wurden breit diskutiert; es erwies sich, dass das Handwerkzeug dafür vorhanden ist, aber noch besser auch transnational zusammengeführt werden muss. Die Wissenschaftler wollen sich ihrer Verantwortung in diesem Zusammenhang stellen und gemeinsam einen Katalog der Anforderungen an Strategien für den Schutz der Küsten und ihrer Ökosysteme an der südlichen Ostsee erarbeiten. Dieser Katalog soll dann die Grundlage für zukünftige Forschungsprogramme der Anrainer der südlichen Ostsee im Rahmen multinationaler Kooperation bilden.
Das 13. bilaterale Treffen wird im Jahr 2014 in Sopot veranstaltet. Bis dahin soll eine gemeinsame Einschätzung der derzeitigen und zukünftigen Herausforderungen für die gemeinsame Landschaft „südliche Ostseeküste“ erarbeitet werden.
Ansprechpartner:: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Sündermann, Institut für Meereskunde der Universität Hamburg, Bundesstrasse 53, D-20146 Hamburg, Tel. 040-42838-2606, Fax 040-42838-7488, jgsun@t-online.de
The abstract reads: The winter storm activity on the Northern Hemisphere during the last one thousand years in a global climate simulation was analyzed by determining all midlatitude storms and their tracks, then consecutively clustering them for hundred years’ segments. Storm track clusters with longest lifetime and largest deepening rates are found over the oceans. The numbers of extratropical winter storms exhibit notable yearly variability but hardly any variability on centennial time scales. The clusters of these storm tracks also show only small differences between the centuries. The numbers of members in neighboring oceanic clusters are negatively correlated. A linear relationship was found between the numbers of members per storm track clusters over the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean and seasonal mean atmospheric circulation patterns by a canonical correlation analysis (CCA).
The final publication will be available at www.springerlink.com.
Wir anerkennen die engagierte Arbeit zum acatech-Papier „Klimawandel – pro Anpassung“, aber wir können das Papier aus mehreren Gründen nicht mittragen. Hierzu gehören vor allem Unterschiede bei der Einschätzung der Belastbarkeit der Ergebnisse der physikalischen Klimaforschung und bezüglich der Gewichtung der Bedeutung von Anpassung und Mitigation.
Ein fundamentaler Dissens zwischen uns und den Aussagen des Papiers besteht in der Einschätzung der Belastbarkeit der Ergebnisse der physikalischen Klimaforschung. Die bestehenden Klimamodelle sind sicher nicht perfekt. Insbesondere ist es notwendig, die bis jetzt häufig nur vereinfacht dargestellten Teilkomponenten realitätsnäher zu gestalten, um das Gesamtsystem noch exakter abbilden zu können. Dennoch, die wesentlichen Fragen an die physikalischen Klimaforschung sind weitgehend beantwortet. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Perspektiven der weiteren Emission von Treibhausgasen und die Wirkung von Minderungen dieser Emissionen bzw. weiterer Anwüchse.
Darüber hinaus ist die Wissenschaft heute schon in der Lage für viele Fragestellungen, wie z.B. für die Anpassung urbaner Räume an den Klimawandel ausreichende Informationen zur Verfügung zu stellen, um Vorsorgehandlungen ableiten zu können.
Ein weiterer wesentlicher Punkt, der von uns nicht mitgetragen wird besteht in der vorgenommenen Gewichtung der Bedeutung von Anpassung und Vermeidung.
Wir sehen die Notwendigkeit, dass auch ein Papier zur Anpassung beide Aspekte (Anpassung und Mitigation) auch gerade in Ihrem Zusammenwirken betrachtet. Wichtig erscheint darüber hinaus auch die Beschreibung des bereits sehr deutlich erkennbaren Bedarf an multi-dimensionalen Szenarien, die mögliche zukünftige klimatische, wirtschaftliche, politische und technologische Entwicklungen konsistent beschreiben.
Die Darstellung der Diskussion für die Sektoren, die noch aktueller Forschungsgegenstand sind hat z.T. nicht die notwendige Tiefe. Dies gilt u.a. für Fragestellungen, die den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Klimawandel und der Energiewende bzw. dem Klimawandel und der Migration zum Inhalt haben.
Abstract: Polar lows are a particular kind of extreme weather event. Polar lows are subsynoptic-scale vigorous cyclones in subpolar maritime region. They are associated with strong winds and severe weather and when developing rapidly can constitute a major threat to human offshore activities. Here we present methods and results of our previous research to investigate long-term frequency changes of polar low occurrences over the North Atlantic in the past and in a projected, anthropogenically warmed future atmosphere. For the past, we downscaled reanalysis data to reproduce, detect, and count polar lows, and for the future, we downscaled global model data from various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios. We found no systematic change of polar low frequency in the past 60 years but a significant decrease of down to half as many cases for the simulated future.We relate this decrease to an increase of vertical atmospheric stability, which is the result of more quickly rising air temperatures compared to the sea surface. The results have recently been published in a series of articles.
Barkhordarian, A., H. von Storch and E. Zorita: The observed surface specific humidity changes over the Mediterranean region has very likely an anthropogenic origin. (Supplementary material )
Abstract: We investigate whether the observed surface specic humidity (q) trends over the Mediterranean region in the period 1974-2003 are consistent with climate model (CMIP3, CMIP5) simulations of q in response to anthropogenic forcing (Greenhouse gas and sulphate aerosols). The natural (internal) variability is estimated using 6,000-year of pre-industrial control simulations. With the exception of winter, the increases in annual and seasonal q over this re gion are very unlikely (with less than 1% chance) due to natural (internal) variability or natural forcing alone. Using several climate models and ensemble means, we demonstrate that the large-scale component (spatial-mean trend) of the anthropogenic forcing is detectable (at 1% level) in the annual and seasonal trends of q (except winter). However, the smaller-scale component (spatial anomalies about the mean trend) of the anthropogenic signal is detectable only in warm seasons (spring and summer). We further show that the spread of projected trends based on the A1B scenario derived from 13 CMIP3 models encompasses the observed area-averaged trend in q. This may imply that the observed trends of surface humidity, which is an important factor in human thermal comfort, serves as an illustration of plausible future expected change in the region.
The other papers are
Barkhordarian, A., J. Bhend and H. von Storch, 2012: Consistency of observed near surface temperature trends with climate change projections over the Mediterranean region, Climate Dynamics 39: 1695-1702 - DOI 10.1007/s00382-011-1060-y (open access, supplementary material),
Barkhordarian, A., 2012: Investigating the influence of anthropogenic forcing on observed mean and extreme sea level pressure trends over the Mediterranean region. The ScientificWorld Journal 2012, Article ID 525303, 16 pages doi:10.1100/2012/525303, and
Barkhordarian, A., H. von Storch, and J. Bhend, 2012: The expectation of future precipitation change over the Mediterranean region is different from what we observe. Climate Dynamics, in press
The abstract reads: This paper presents research outcomes from an investigation into climate change and urban impacts on climate devel-opment in urban regions of the Baltic Sea coast. The cities considered were Rostock and Stockholm, and their sur-rounding regions. The objectives were a) to determine whether significant changes in temperature and precipitation have occurred and, if so, to what extent, and b) to establish whether there is a noticeable urban heat island effect in Stockholm and the medium-sized city of Rostock. Climatic trends were detected by linear regression and the Mann-Kendall test. Different precipitation trends were detected over the whole period of observation. Average annual temperatures increased significantly in both case studies, particularly from the 1970s with highest trends in winter and lowest in autumn (Rostock) and summer (Stockholm). Although changes in temperature extremes were detected for both regions, no overall long-term trend for precipitation extremes was observed. The average temperature in the city of Rostock (Stockholm) was approximately 0.3 to 0.6 °C (1.2°C) higher than in the surrounding rural areas had seasonal variations, with maxima in the warm season. The main outcomes were that significant changes in climatic conditions, particularly temperature patterns, have been occurring in the case study regions since the 1980s, and that there is a con-siderable urban heat island effect in both Stockholm and Rostock. This could encourage urban planners to consider specific climatic conditions and small-scale climatic influences also in relatively small coastal urban conglomerates in mid latitudes which can follow from land use changes.
Keywords: Urban heat island; climate change; urban climate; Baltic Sea
August 26, 2012 - Interview #15 in my series in AGU Atmospheric Science Section Newsletter has now been published in the August 2012 issue - read questions to and responses by Toshio Yamagata here.
24. August 2012 - The extended interview of Harry van Loon, prepared by H. von Storch, G. Kiladis and R. Madden in 2005, has now been published online by the Niels-Bohr Library and Archives of the Center for History of Physics. von Storch, H. and F.W. Zwiers, 2012: Testing ensembles of climate change scenarios for "statistical significance" Climatic Change 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-012-0551-0, open access
In very short version: In some cases the usage is flawed, in others it is trivial.
The abstract reads: In this study we assess the role of anthropogenic forcing (Greenhouse gases and Sulphate aerosols, GS) in recently observed precipitation trends over the Mediterranean region. We investigate whether the observed precipitation trends (1966-2005 and 1979-2008) are consistent with what 22 models project as response of precipi tation to GS forcing. Significance is estimated using 9,000-year control runs derived from the CMIP3 archive. The results indicate that externally forced changes are detectable in observed precipitation trends in winter, late summer and in autumn. Natural internal climate variability cannot explain these changes. However, the observed trends (derived from 3 sources) are markedly inconsistent with expected changes due to GS forcing. While the influence of GS signal is detectable in winter and early spring, observed changes are several times larger than the projected response to GS forcing. The most striking inconsistency, however, is the contradiction between projected drying and the observed increase in precipitation in late summer and autumn, irrespective of the data set used. Natural (internal) variability as estimated from the models cannot account for these inconsistencies, which are already present in the large scale circulation patterns (Geopotential height at 500 hPa). The obtained results are robust to the removal of the fingerprint of the North Atlantic Oscillation. The detection of an outright sign mismatch of observed and projected trends in autumn and late summer, leads us to conclude that the recently observed trends can not be used as an illustration of plausible future expected change in theMediterranean region. These significant shortcomings in our understanding of recent observed changes complicate communication of future expected changes in Mediterranean precipitation.
Previously, a methodically similar analysis has been done concerning temperature, and in this case recent changes were mostly consistent with scenarios, see:
Barkhordarian, A., J. Bhend and H. von Storch, 2012: Consistency of observed near surface temperature trends with climate change projections over the Mediterranean region, Climate Dynamics 39: 1695-1702 - DOI 10.1007/s00382-011-1060-y (open access).
Results are also available for air pressure, see:
Barkhordarian, A., 2012: Investigating the Influence of Anthropogenic Forcing on ObservedMean and Extreme Sea Level Pressure Trends over the Mediterranean Region. The ScientificWorld Journal Volume 2012, Article ID 525303, 16 pages doi:10.1100/2012/525303
The abstract reads: To do climate science sustainably, a number of constraints in practicing research and communicating science need to be implemented. Among them are the admission of uncertainty and the possibility for future revision, the recognition that scientific knowledge is challenged and influenced by cultural constructions, and the usage of accurate language, which is not conflicting with every-day language. That scientific knowledge does not directly lead to political conclusions must also be recognized. A few elements needed for a successful science-public dialogue are listed and discussed.
Abstract: Climate impacts and adaptation research increasingly uses ensembles of regional and local climate change scenarios. To do so, the ensembles are examined to evaluate whether they describe a systematic difference between present states (and impacts) and envisaged future states - and such differences are often characterized as being statistically significant. This term "significance" is well defined by statistical terminology as the result of a test of a null hypothesis that is applied to samples of observations that are obtained with a defined sampling strategy. However such a statistical null hypothesis may not be a well-posed problem in the context of the evaluation of climate change scenarios. Therefore, the usage of terms such "statistical significant scenario" may be misunderstood in the general discourse about the certainty of projected climate change. We propose to employ instead a simple descriptive approach for characterizing the information in an ensemble of scenarios. Physical plausibility in the light of theoretical reasoning often adds robustness to the interpretation of climate change scenarios.
Keywords: Climate change scenarios, Statistical significance
- Werner Krauss, Mike Schäfer and Hans von Storch: Introduction: Post-normal climate science; 121-132
- Jerome Ravetz: The significance of the Hamburg workshop: post-normal science and the maturing of science; 133-150
- Silke Beck: Between tribalism and trust: The IPCC under the "public microscope"; 151-173
- Jeroen P. van der Sluijs: Uncertainty and dissent in climate risk assessment: a post-normal maturing of science; perspective; 174-195
- Roger Pielke, jr: Post-normal science in a German landscape; 196-212
- Werner Krauss and Hans von Storch: Post-normal practices between regional climate services and local knowledge; 213-230
Previsously, a short report about the workshop has been published in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union: Krauss, W., and H. von Storch, 2012: Workshop report: Postnormal Science: the case of climate research., EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union 93 (10)
2-6. Juli 2012 - Forschung vor Anker – Ostsee: Das Institut für Küstenforschung des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht lädt auf die Ludwig Prandtl ein. Vom 2. bis 5. Juli kann das institutseigene Forschungsschiff in den Häfen Neustadt (in Holstein), Travemünde, Lübeck und Kühlungsborn besichtigt werden. Küsten- und Klimaforscher präsentieren an Bord ihre Arbeit und stehen den Besuchern Rede und Antwort.Nach früheren Touren jedes Jahr seit 2009, längs der Schleswig Holsteinischen Westküste in 2009, längs der Küste Ostfrieslands in 2010, von Stralsund bis Szczecin in 2011, ist dies die vierte derartige Reise, die sich an die Öffentlichkeit wendet.
Eine erste derartige Taguhng wurde am 13-15 Februar 2002 in der Patriotischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg durchgeführt - hier der damalige Flyer und ein Hintergrund-Text.
June 2, 2012 - Interview #14 in my series in AGU Atmospheric Science Section Newsletter has now been published in the May 2012 issue - read questions to and responses by Christopher Castro here.
von Storch, H. and F.W. Zwiers, 2012: Strategies to Deliver Information on Regional Climate Changes to Communities, EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union 93, 220.
(An original version, which I consider more informative, is downloadable here).
12/13 Mai 2012 - Aus Anlaß des Hamburger Hafengeburtstages ist am 12. und 13. Mai ist Open Ship auf der „Ludwig Prandtl“ - dem Forschungsschiff des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht. Unter dem Motto „Küstenschutz in Zeiten des Klimawandels“ präsentiert sich das Institut für Küstenforschung des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht gemeinsam mit der Hamburg Port Authority (HPA). Die „Ludwig Prandtl“ legt während des HAFENGEBURTSTAG HAMBURG im Brandenburger Hafen in der Nähe der Cap San Diego an. Zu erreichen ist der Brandenburger Hafen über die Überseebrücke.Sonnabend, 12. Mai 14:00 bis 18:00 Uhr, Sonntag, 13. Mai 10:00 bis 16:00 Uhr.
8 May 2012 - The Springer book with the interview with Walter Munk is now freely available and can be downloaded here.
Bibliographic detail: von Storch, H., and K. Hasselmann, 2010: Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography. A prolonged weekend discussion with Walter Munk. Springer Publisher, 137pp - DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-12087-9. It is the 6th interview in a series with eminent geoscientists.
10 April 2012 - No 13 of my series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists has been published in Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter, this time Bjorn Stevens. The abstract reads: This study investigates storminess in northern Italy and the northern Adriatic Sea through the examination of several storm proxies. These proxies are based on homogenized daily mean pressure series given at a set of stations (Genoa, Milan, Padua, Turin, and Hvar). The application of widely accepted and wellknown methods on pressure series allows for a long-term year-to-year analysis of the intra-seasonal storm variability. As storminess is usually more intense throughout the cold season, our analysis is limited to the October–March period of each year. The following proxies are considered in this study: First, we assess the statistics of geostrophic wind speed. These statistics are derived from two adjacent triangles that are located across the Adriatic Sea (Padua–Hvar–Genoa) and in northern Italy (Genoa–Padua–Turin). Second, we evaluate annual statistics of time series of pressure tendency. Last, intra-seasonal low percentiles of pressure are also made use of. These proxies are used to describe the evolution of the storm climate far back in time, covering in some cases a 260-year long period. The proxies show pronounced interannual and interdecadal variability, but no sustained long-term trend.
18 March 2012 - CLISAP Interview with Heinke Schlünzen, coordinator of the Urban System group with CLISAP. So far 9 such interviews with very different members of CLISAP have been published, see list. An ongoing joint effort with Mike Schäfer and Julika Doerffer. 
9 March 2012 - Springer Verlag has published a collection of interviews done by Georg Götz: Global Change - Interviews with Leading Climate Scientists (53 p), Softcover, ISBN 978-3-642-23443-9. Interviewed are Hans Oerlemans, Hans von Storch, Erland Källen, Andrew Weaver, Martin Parry, Stephane Hallegatte and Donald Hughes. My chapter goes under "We always make models for something not of something" - about dynamical modelling and postnormality. 
6 March 2012 - A short report about theWorkshop "Postnormal Science: The Case of Climate Science, on 4-6 May 2011 in Hamburg (Abstracts, Program) has now been published in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union:Krauss, W., and H. von Storch, 2012: Workshop report: Postnormal Science: the case of climate research., EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union 93 (10).
An extended report, with a number of worked-out contributions to the workshop are collected and prepared for a special volume of the journal nature and culture.
Das Thema "Sturmfluten" ist seit vielen Jahren ein zentrales Thema des Institut für Küstenforschung, wobei auch gerade das Thema einer Verschärfung der Gefahrenlage durch den menschgemachten Klimawandel behandelt wird und in die Öffentlichkeit und die zuständigen Verwaltungen kommuniziert wird. (vgl. auch diese Stellungnahme)
An drei Gedenkveranstaltungen wird Hans von Storch das wissenschaftliche Wissen über die Gefahren und ihrer Veränderungen einbringen, am 17. Februar in Wilhelmshaven, am 14. Februar in Stade, und am 12. Februar in Husum (siehe shz-Bericht). Zu der Veranstaltung im Nissenhaus in Husum heisst es in in einer Presseerklärung: Zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung am 12. Februar 2012 um 11 Uhr werden Ministerpräsident Peter Harry Carstensen und der Klimaforscher Prof. Hans von Storch vor eingeladenen Gästen sprechen und ein vom NordseeMuseum in Auftrag gegebener Dokumentarfilm zur Sturmflut sowie ein weiterer Film des NDR werden gezeigt. Die damaligen Ereignisse in Schleswig-Holstein sollen in dieser zentralen Veranstaltung gewürdigt werden. Die bis zum 9. September präsentierte Ausstellung selbst wird an diesem Tag allen Interessierten kostenlos offen stehen.
(Fotos zur Pressemitteilung des Nissenhauses Husum: Deichschäden am Husumer Dockkoog, Dr. Günther Klatt; Notreparatur durch die Bundeswehr, Dr. Erich Wohlenberg; Überfluteter Deich, Archiv Hans Carstens; Gebäudeschäden auf Hallig Hooge, Dr. Erich Wohlenberg )
13. Februar 2013 - Presseerklärung des Norddeutschen Klimabüros des Instituts für Küstenforschung: "Klimawandel und Küstenschutz im Internet - Neue Webseite des Norddeutschen Klimabüros informiert über Sturmfluten, Klimawandel und Küstenschutzbedarf - heute und in Zukunft." Ein neues tool zur Beantwortung der Farge: "Wer wird eigentlich durch den Küstenschutz geschützt - und wer wird in Zukunft dazu kommen?"
24 January 2012 - An English version of the 2003-interview with Reimar Lüst by Hans von Storch and Klaus Hasselmann has now been published on-line by the Niels Bohr Libraries & Archies of the American Institute of Physics.
18 January 2012 - CLISAP Interview with Anke Allner, the executive director of CLISAP. So far 8 such interviews with very different members of CLISAP have been published, see list. An ongoing joint effort with Mike Schäfer and Julika Doerffer. The abstract reads: Several surveys around the world claim that the issue of climate change is of declining interest among the population. Hamburg, regularly experiencing storm surges and suffered a major flood in 1962, shows evidence of this tendency in yearly surveys undertaken from 2008 to 2011. Comparing detected trends in public awareness of climate change around the western world, this paper concludes that there is a decline in public concern about climate change in the last few years. A few surveys in the US reaching back to the 1990s indicate that this decline may be intermittent; data suggest that the long-term increase in scientific confidence and in media coverage is not transferred in a parallel long-term increase in public concern about climate change.
The Abstract reads: In this study we compare two different cyclone tracking algorithms to detect North Atlantic polar lows, which are very intense mesoscale cyclones. Both approaches include spatial filtering, detection, tracking, and constraints specific to polar lows. The first method uses digital bandpass filtered Mean Sea Level Pressure fields (MSLP) in the spatial range 200~600km and is especially designed for polar lows. The second method also uses a bandpass filter but is based on the discrete cosine transforms (DCT) and can be applied to MSLP and vorticity fields. The latter was originally designed for cyclones in general and has been adapted to polar lows for this study. Both algorithms are applied to the same Regional Climate Model (RCM) output fields from October 1993 to September 1995 produced from dynamical downscaling of the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. Comparisons between these two methods show that different filters lead to different numbers and locations of tracks. The DCT is more precise in scale separation than the digital filter and the results of this study suggest that it is more suited for the band-pass filtering of MSLP fields. The detection and tracking parts also influence the numbers of tracks although less critically. After a selection process that applies criteria to identify tracks of potential polar lows, differences between both methods are still visible though the major systems are identified in both.
Im redaktionellen Vorwort heisst es: "Der Gipfel von Durban enttäuschte, die Umweltpolitik steckt fest. Schuld seien gerade Klimaforscher, die aus Eitelkeit und Missionarseifer auf die Senkung des CO2-Ausstoßes fixiert seien, schreiben die Wissenschaftler Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch in einem Gastbeitrag. Sie fordern eine offene Debatte über Maßnahmen gegen die Erwärmung."
5 December 2011 - CLISAP Interview with Sebastian Sonntag, a PhD student of CLISAP. So far 7 such interviews with very different members of CLISAP have been published, see list. An ongoing joint effort with Mike Schäfer and Julika Doerffer. The abstract reads: Air pressure readings and their variations are commonly used to make inferences about storm activity. More precisely, it is assumed that the variation of annual and seasonal statistics of several pressure based proxies describes changes in the past storm climate qualitatively – an assumption that has yet to be proven. We present a systematic evaluation of the informational content of five pressure-based proxies for storm activity based on single-station observations of air pressure. We examine the number of deep lows, lower percentiles of pressure, the frequency of absolute pressure tendencies above certain thresholds, as well as mean values and high percentiles of absolute pressure tendencies. Such an evaluation needs long and homogeneous records of wind speed, something that is not available from observations. Consequently, we examine the proxies by using datasets of ground level wind speeds and air pressure from the NCEP-driven and spectrally nudged regional model REMO. We gauge the proxies against 95th and 99th percentile time series of ground level wind speeds to quantify the relation between pressure based proxies and storminess. These analyses rely on bootstrap and binomial hypothesis testing. Our analyses of single-station based proxies indicate that the proxies are generally linearly linked to storm activity and that absolute pressure tendencies have the highest informational content. Further, we investigate whether the proxies have the potential of describing storminess over larger areas, also with regard to surface conditions. We find that absolute pressure tendencies have improved informational value when describing storm activity over larger areas, while low pressure readings do not show improved informational value.
Der Beitrag wird auf der Klimazwiebel diskutiert.
The introductory paragraph reads: Climate research has left the narrow confines of pure science and has entered the public arena. Experts from the cultural, social and natural sciences discussed the current state of climate science through the lens of “postnormal science” on the workshop "Postnormal Science: the case of climate research". Science turns postnormal when "facts are uncertain, stakes high, values disputed, and decisions urgent". During the workshop, situations and practices in climate research were identified and discussed in order to provide a solid empirical basis for a more realistic definition of climate science.
23. November 2011 - No 12 of my series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists has been published in Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter, this time Tom Knutson. 23. November 2011 - Interview mit Hans von Storch "Extremwetterbericht. Wie schlimm es wirklich kommen wird" von Angelika Sanktjohanser von Focus Online aus Anlaß der Veröffentlichung des Summaries for Policymakers des IPCC SREX Berichts.During the first two days of availability, the interview attracted more than 100,000 klicks.
Der Beitrag wurde unverändert vom Handelsblatt am 25. November 2011 nachgedruckt.
Abstract: The North Pacific is an area where frequently sub-synoptic Polar Lows form in the cold season, especially over the Japan Sea, Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. So far, a multidecadal climatology of such Polar Lows based on individual cases has not been assembled. Here, we consider for this task a dynamical downscaling method for constructing realistically the formation and life cycles during the past decades without exploiting sub-synoptic information in initial fields. To do so, a regional climate model is conditioned by large-scale information of NCEP re-analyses. We test the approach by examining its skill in simulating ten known cases of North Pacific Polar Lows. Three of these are discussed in some detail. The signatures of all storms emerge in the simulations with additional sub-synoptic details. The tracks of the simulated Polar Lows follow closely the tracks derived from satellite imagery. We conclude that the suggested method is suitable for constructing multi-decade climatologies, including trends and variability, of Polar Lows in the North Pacific by dynamically downscaling NCEP re-analyses.
Abstract: Extreme sea levels provide a substantial hazard for low lying coastal areas in the Southern North Sea. They are caused by a combination of different factors such as high astronomical tides, a large-scale rise of the sea surface caused by high wind speeds and low atmospheric pressure (usually referred to as storm surges), or extreme wind-generated waves (sea states) caused by high wind speeds in atmospheric low pressure systems; that is extra-tropical storms. Long-term changes in any of these factors may substantially alter the hazard associated with extreme sea levels. Moreover, any long-term change in mean sea level such as observed over the past 100 years or as associated with future anthropogenic climate change will have an impact as it shifts the entire distribution of sea levels towards higher values; that is, it changes the baseline upon which storm induced sea levels have to be added. Moreover, in shallow waters non-linear interaction effects may occur. Here we review the present knowledge about long-term changes in any of these factors. We show that storm activity in the area underwent considerable variations on time scales of decades and longer, but that no clear long-term trend could be identified. Similar findings are obtained for long-term changes in the storm surge and wave climate. Mean sea level has increased in the Southern North Sea over the past centuries. Correspondingly an increase in extreme sea levels is found. For the future most projections point towards a moderate increase in storm activity in the area with corresponding changes in storm surge and wave climate. These changes will add to the expected future increase in mean sea level, leading to an increased hazard from extreme sea levels. The latter may have consequences for safety, especially in the low lying coastal areas in the Southern North Sea. Consequences for coastal protection and alternative strategies are discussed.
The Abstract reads: Medicanes, strong mesoscale cyclones with tropical-like features, develop occasionally over the Mediterranean Sea. Due to the scarcity of observations over sea and the coarse resolution of the long-term reanalysis datasets, it is difficult to study systematically the multidecadal statistics of sub-synoptic medicanes. Our goal is to assess the long-term variability and trends of medicanes, obtaining a long term climatology through dynamical downscaling of the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data. In this paper, we examine the robustness of this method and investigate the value added for the study of medicanes. To do so, we performed several climate mode simulations with a high resolution regional atmospheric model (CCLM) for a number of test cases described in the literature. We find that the medicanes are formed in the simulations, with deeper pressures and stronger winds than in the driving global NCEP reanalysis. The tracks are adequately reproduced. We conclude that our methodology is suitable for constructing multi-decadal statistics and scenarios of current and possble future medicane activities.
1 October 2011 - The Dutch newspaper "trouw" has published a Naschrift on Nanne Weber, who passed away on 12. August 2011. In November 2010 I had published an interview with her in the Newsletter of the AGU Atmospheric Science Section. Nanne was a remarkable person. (A beta-vrouw is a woman who works in the field of mathematics and physics, the so-called 'hard-sciences' that is usually occupied by men. In the Netherlands it is an achievement for a female to find a post as professor, which has to by-pass the "old boy's network" - I was told).
22 September 2011 - CLISAP Interview with Michael Brzoska.The abstract reads: Climate science and its flag ship IPCC find itself in difficult waters; on the one side its authority is contested by alarmist, which add dramatizing detail to a robust and hardly contested core of scientific knowledge, on the other side skeptics doubts the validity of the this core of knowledge. The events at the turn of the years 2009/2010 brought a decline in trust into climate science, which in the framework of postnormal science is not really surprising. For rebuilding the trust in science measures are needed, which recognize the specific postnormal situation; climate services need to be installed, the contract between science and society needs to be revisited, and regional bottom-up efforts should accompany the global efforts of IPCC.
The abstract reads: BALTEX is an environmental research network dealing with the Earth system of the entire Baltic Sea drainage basin. Important elements include the water and energy cycle, climate variability and change, water management and extreme events, and related impacts on biogeochemical cycles. BALTEX was founded in 1993 as a GEWEX continental-scale experiment and is currently in its second 10-year phase. Phase I (1993-2002) was primarily dedicated to hydrological, meteorological and oceanographic processes in the Baltic Sea drainage basin, hence mostly dealt with the physical aspects of the system. Scientific focus was on the hydrological cycle and the exchange of energy between the atmosphere, the Baltic Sea, and the surface of its catchment. The BALTEX study area was hydrologically defined as the Baltic Sea drainage basin. The second 10-year phase of BALTEX (Phase II: 2003-2012) has strengthened regional climate research, water management issues, biogeochemical cycles, and overarching efforts to reach out to stakeholders and decision makers, and to foster communication and education. Achievements of BALTEX Phase II have been the establishment of an assessment report of regional climate change and its impacts on the Baltic Sea basin (from hydrological to biological and socio-economic), the further development of regional physical climate models and the integration of biogeochemical and ecosystem models. BALTEX features a strong infrastructure, with an international secretariat, a publication series, and organizes various workshops and conferences. This article gives an overview of the BALTEX programme, with an emphasis on Phase II, with some examples from BALTEX related research.
12 September 2011 - Number eleven in my AGU-series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter, Vol. 5 (3) published - this time with Mong-Ming Lu from Taiwan. 
1 September 2011 - The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society
edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard and David Schlosberg, has been published September - with the analysis "The Physical Sciences and Climate Politics" by theoretical physicist Armin Bunde, theoretical sociologist Nico Stehr and myself, pages 113-128The conclusions are
Two major conclusions about the science of climate, and the knowledge about climate may be drawn:
The scientific construct is mostly based on a physical analysis of climate and developed by natural scientists. In the “linear model” social and cultural dynamics are not taken into account. Instead, once society has given a metric of determining “good” and “less good”, it is simply a matter of understanding the “physical” (incl. economic) system.
However, the climate scientists are also part of society and not immune to dominant societal conceptions of the nature and the impact of climate and climate change on human conduct, they tend to embed their analysis, especially in efforts to communicate their knowledge to policy makers and society at large in ways which are attentive to the socio-cultural construct of climate and climate change. It is not surprising that in this postnormal situation scientists concerned about the impact of the greenhouse gases, in their desire to save the world, may develop some bias towards an over dramatization. The discussion itself often resembles more a religious than a physics discussion where the non-believers (of the role of the greenhouse gases and their impact) are called “deniers”.
One therefore is able to surmise that the transfer of the scientific construct into the societal realm goes along with a subtle transformation of the climate knowledge, by blending the scientific construct with the socio-cultural construct. The basic assumption of physics, that there are given quantifiable laws (linear or non-linear), is not longer valid. Understanding the interaction of climate and society is not only an issue of physical analysis (with laws) but of society/culture analysis (without laws) as well.
Obviously, the situation is not quite that straightforward, it is not easily deconstructed and the interrelations of scientific and everyday construct are difficult to dissemble. To comprehend and disentangle the multiple interactions of science and society in the case of our understanding of climate and climate change is nonetheless a real and worthy scientific and practical challenge. It needs a transdisciplinary approach, bringing together scientists with a solid background in the physics, and scholars who understand societal and knowledge dynamics.
If this helps to implement a better climate policy, with an efficient constraining of climate change and socio-culturally acceptable measures of mitigation and adaptation, it needs to be developed. Summing up, climate science is and should be much more than just the physical analysis.
Abstract: The authors compared two different sets of assessment of the abilities of contemporary climate models. One group is made of experts, and their results are provided in two expert reports, while the other is the subjective assessment made by “physical climate scientists” in general, sampled in a series of three survey questionnaires. The expert group is considerably more optimistic than the general group; the former suggesting progress, while the perception of the latter group is more or less stationary.
11 August 2011 - CLISAP Interview with Eduardo Zorita.
10 August 2011 - Movie on this year's Forschung vor Anker – von Stralsund über Greifswald nach Szczecin available on You Tube. Die Welt ändert sich, und ein wesentlicher Treiber in diesem globalen Wandel ist der nicht-intendierte Klimawandel als Folge von vor allem der Freisetzung strahlungsaktiver Gase und Substanzen in die Atmosphäre. Für den Laien ist nicht immer erkennbar ist, worauf die Feststellung, dass es in ungewöhnlichem Maße „wärmer“ werde, und warum dies auf den „menschgemachten Treibhauseffekt“ zurückzuführen sei - dahinter stehen die Konzepte von „Detektion“ und „Attribution“.
Der erfolgreiche statistische Detection-Nachweis, wonach derzeit Veränderungen vonstattengehen, die mit rein natürlichen Abläufen nicht vereinbar sind, und das Attribution-Plausibilitätsargument, dass unser bisheriges Verständnis der Wirkung verschiedener Einflussfaktoren auf das Klima zwingend auf die verstärkte Gegenwart der Treibhausgase als wesentlichen Verursache verweist, klärt auf wissenschaftliche überzeugende Weise die Wirkungskette auf und motiviert eine „Klimaschutzpolitik“ der Verminderung der Emissionen, oder zumindest der Verminderung des Anwachsens dieser Emissionen. Auch unter sehr positiven Annahmen wird so eine Klimapolitik aber nicht weitere Klimaänderungen verhindern können, so dass das Thema der Anpassung unserer dringenden Aufmerksamkeit bedarf. Gerade regional und lokal werden sich diese Änderungen auf „das Leben“ auswirken. Um diese Auswirkung abschätzen zu können, ist Wissen über diese regionale Manifestation des menschgemachten Klimawandels erforderlich; es sind Reaktionsoptionen zu entwickeln, um mit diesen regionalen und lokalen Herausforderungen umgehen zu können. Für diesen Zweck sind Regionale Klimaservices zu entwickeln.
31. Juli 2011 - Interview "Starkregen wird zunehmen" mit Hans von Storch von Nadine Heggen zum Sommer und Klimawandel in Norddeutschland in (einvernehmlich) gekürzter Form erschienen in der Schleswig Holstein Zeitung - die vollständige Fassung ist verfügbar auf der Klimazwiebel. 15. Juli 2011 - Von dem Buch "Climate and Society" von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch wurde nun vom Verlag Aletheia in Sankt Petersburg eine russische Fassung mit dem Titel "Wetter, Klima, Mensch" herausgebracht. 172 Seiten; ISBN 978-5-91419-525-7. Damit liegt das Buch, in verschiedenen Versionen vor in deutscher, chinesischer, slowenischer, englischer und russischer Sprache. Weitere Übersetzungen sind in Arbeit. 
12. July 2011 -The project RADOST (Regionale Anpassungssgtrategien für die deutsche Ostseeküste) discusses "Climate Change, the Science Policy Interface and Coastal Zone Management" with Michael K. Orbach and Hans von Storch as opponents.
7. July 2011 - CLISAP Interview with Jin-Song von Storch. 4-9. Juli 2011 Forschung vor Anker – von Stralsund über Greifswald nach SzczecinDas Institut für Küstenforschung des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht lädt auf die Ludwig Prandtl ein. Vom 04. bis 09. Juli kann das institutseigene Forschungsschiff in den Häfen Stralsund, Greifswald und Szczecin besichtigt werden. Küsten- und Klimaforscher präsentieren an Bord ihre Arbeit und stehen den Besuchern Rede und Antwort. Das Schwerpunktthema Klimawandel im Ostseeraum ist auch Inhalt der tourbegleitenden Vortragsserie.
Vgl. auch Rundfunksendung "Logo" / Thema Küstenforschung vom 8. Juli 2011, und Instituts-News nach Beendigung der Fahrt.
13 June 2011 - Number ten in my series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter, Vol. 5 (2) published - this time with Bette Otto-Bliesner
6. Juni 2011 - Third CLISAP-interview with members of the climate cluster of excellence in Hamburg, this time with macroeconomist Michael Funke (see http://www.klimacampus.de/interview_funke.html?&L=0)
31. May 2011 - On the occasion of the 2011-Symposium of Baltic Sea States Subregional Cooperation (BSSSC) the Hamburg Declaration has been published.
28. May 2011 - Inge Auer reviews the book "Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk" of Nico Stehr and myself in Meteorologische Zeitschrift, read here.
25. May 2011: Press release: HOW CLIMATE CHANGES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA: RESEARCHERS GATHER IN ROME.
Toward the end of CIRCE, the European project on impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean area.How climate change will affect public health, socioeconomic and ecological trends in the Mediterranean Region? Researchers from all over Europe, North Africa and Middle East are gathering in Rome and discussing these issues in the Final Conference (23-25 May 2011) of CIRCE (Climate Change and Impact Research: the Mediterranean Environment), the research project funded under the Sixth Framework Programme of European Union (EU). The aim of the meeting is to summarise 4-years project major outcomes and achievements on the effects of climate change in the Mediterranean Basin.
CIRCE, co-ordinated by INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia- Italy), confirmed climate change trends in the Mediterranean area already foreseen by IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), implementing ad hoc models capable to provide more resoluted projections (30 km instead of 300) from nowadays to 2050. CIRCE models can be used for simulations on future climate features more realistic and detailed. The CIRCE project shows a scenario in the Mediterranean basin that will be characterised by an increase of temperature of about 2°C (from 0,8 to 1,8°C on the sea surface), an according sea level rise of 6-11 centimeters, a precipitation reduction from 5 to 10%, and an increase of extreme events (heat waves, floods, torrential rains, cyclones) rate. Laurence Tubiana, director of IDDRI (Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations- France) and CIRCE Executive Board co-chair, highlighted how CIRCE could represent a relevant stimulus to foster solidarity among countries in Europe, Northern Africa and Middle East, which faceclimate change challenges.
23. Mai 2011- Das Norddeutsche Klimabüro gibt factsheet Regionale Klimaszenarien
in der Praxis - Beispiel deutsche Ostseeküste heraus.
17 May 2011 - Interview series with participants of CLISAP ("Integrated Climate Analysis and Prediction"), the center of excellence on climate science in Hamburg has been continued with an interview with Beate Ratter - Professor at the Institute of Geography at the University of Hamburg and Head of the department “Human Dimensions of Coastal Areas” at the Institute of Coastal Research at the Helmholtz-Center Geesthacht.Barkhordarian, A., J. Bhend and H. von Storch: Consistency of observed near surface temperature trends with climate change projections over the Mediterranean region, Climate Dynamics DOI 10.1007/s00382-011-1060-y
has now been published as online/open access. The journal Climate Dynamics had in 2009 an impact factor of 3.917, which is "rank 5 of 52 in subject category Meteorology & atmospheric sciences".
10. Mai 2011 - Od dziś w internecie: Scenariusze zmian klimatycznych dla polsko-niemieckiego obszaru Zatoki Pomorskiej w okolicach Szczecina jest dostępny w "Atlas klimatu"- informacje dotyczące temperatury, opadów, wiatru i innych. Dotychczas tylko w języku niemieckim, ale wkrótce, we współpracy z Uniwersytetem Szczecińskim także w języku polskim. Eine Zusammenfassung von wesentlichen Beiträgen und Ergebnissen des Workshops haben Werner Krauss und Hans von Storch probiert - auf Deutsch. A few arguments from the workshop have been summarized in an editorial" in nature.
Abstract: An important challenge in current climate modeling is to realistically describe smallscale weather statistics such as topographic precipitation, coastal wind patterns or regional phenomena like polar lows. Global climate models simulate atmospheric processes with increasingly higher resolutions, but still regional climate models have a lot of advantages. They consume less computation time due to their limited simulation area and thereby allow for higher resolution both in time and space as well as for longer integration times. Using regional climate models for dynamical downscaling purposes, their output data can be processed to produce higher resolved atmospheric fields, allowing the representation of small-scale processes and a better description of physiographic details (such as mountain ranges, coastal zones, and details of soil properties).
But does the higher resolution lead to an added value when compared to global model results? Most studies implicitly assume that dynamical downscaling leads to output fields superior to the driving global data, but few work has been done to substantiate these expectations. Here, we review a series of articles that evaluate the benefit of dynamical downscaling by explicitly comparing results of global and regional climate model data to observations. These studies show that the regional climate model generally performs better for the medium spatial scales, but not always for the larger spatial scales.
We conclude that regional models may indeed provide added value, but only for certain variables and locations; in particular when influenced by regional specifics such as coasts, or mesoscale dynamics like Polar Lows is involved. Therefore the decision whether a regional climate model simulation is required depends crucially on the scientific question.
19 April 2011 - New interview series with participants of CLISAP ("Integrated Climate Analysis and Prediction"), the center of excellence on climate science in Hamburg. Start with Junior professor Johanna Baehr, head of „Climate System Data Assimilation“.This study investigates storminess in northern Italy and the northern Adriatic Sea through the examination of several storm proxies. These proxies are based on homogenized daily mean pressure series given at a set of stations (Genoa, Milan, Padua, Turin, and Hvar). The application of widely accepted and well?known methods on pressure series allows for a longterm year?to?year analysis of the intra?seasonal storm variability. As storminess is usually more intense throughout the cold season, our analysis is limited to the October?March period of each year. The following proxies are considered in this study: First, we assess the statistics of geostrophic wind speed. These statistics are derived from two adjacent triangles that are located across the Adriatic Sea (Padua?Hvar?Genoa) and in northern Italy (Genoa?Padua?Turin). Second, we evaluate annual statistics of time series of pressure tendency. Last, intra?seasonal low percentiles of pressure are also made use of. These proxies are used to describe the evolution of the storm climate far back in time, covering in some cases a 260? year long period. The proxies show pronounced interannual and interdecadal variability, but no sustained long-term trend.
Seit 2006 führt das Norddeutsche Klimabüro des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht und des KlimaCampus Hamburg einen intensiven Dialog zwischen der norddeutschen Öffentlichkeit, regionalen Entscheidern und Wissenschaftlern aus dem Bereich Klimaforschung. Highlights dieser Dienstleistung sind der „Norddeutsche Klimaatlas“, der zukünftig mögliche Entwicklungen des regionalen Klimas beschreibt, sowie der „Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg“, der das derzeitige Wissen über den regionalen Klimawandel zusammenfasst. Wissenschaftler des Norddeutschen Klimabüros werden durchschnittlich einmal pro Woche von verschiedensten gesellschaftlichen Gruppen (Vereine, Behörden, Schulen, Parlamente) eingeladen, um sich vor Ort mit Menschen aus der Region auszutauschen und über Chancen und Risiken des Klimawandels zu informieren.
Die wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen kommen dabei zumeist aus dem Institut für Küstenforschung des Helmholtz-Zentrums Geesthacht und auch dem KlimaCampus Hamburg und werden für Norddeutschland aufbereitet und interpretiert. Für weitere Details, siehe vollständiger Text. Pressekonferenz: 12. April 2011, um 11:00 Uhr im Hauptgebäude der Universität Hamburg, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, 20146 Hamburg, Saal A.
6 April 2011 - An interview with Gabi Hegerl has now been published in the Atmospheric Science Section of AGU Newsletter. No 9 in the series, which is to be continued.Zusammenfassung: Norddeutschland braucht einen regionalen Klimaservice, der sich an den Bedarfen von regionalen und lokalen Entscheidern in Politik, Behörden und Firmen orientiert, und den Wissensbedarf von Öffentlichkeit, Medien und Schulen zu bedienen hilft. Wesentlich dabei ist, dass dieser Service in die Wissenschaft zurückkoppelt, um die praktische Relevanz von wissenschaftlichem Wissen sicherzustellen. Die Konkurrenz von populären Vorstellungen und wissenschaftlicher Analytik gilt es zu überwinden. Um dies zu leisten werden Datenbanken benötigt, die den derzeitigen Wandel und die derzeitige Verletzlichkeit darstellen und realistische Perspektiven für die Zukunft bis zum Ende des Jahrhunderts beschreiben. „CoastDat“ und der „Norddeutsche Klimaatlas“ sind Beispiele und Elemente solcher Datenbanken. Auch ist das wissenschaftlich legitime Wissen über Klima, Klimawandel und –wirkung zusammenzufassen und zu bewerten. Als Beispiel kann hier der Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg dienen.
Es geht nicht um den Aufbau neuer Institutionen oder großer Investitionen, sondern vielmehr um den Ausbau von Netzwerken vorhandener Expertise in Wissenschaft, Resort? und Planungskompetenz. Ein wesentliches Element eines solchen Netzwerkes ist das Norddeutschen Klimabüro des Helmholtz?Zentrums Geesthacht und des Exzellenzzentrums CLISAP, das bereit steht, seine Kommunikationsleistung für Anwender und Öffentlichkeit in Norddeutschland weiter auszubauen.
Further, we find that the recent trends are significantly (at 2.5% level) consistent with all the 23 GS patterns, except in summer and spring, when 8 and 5 models respectively underestimate the observed warming. Thus, we conclude that GS forcing is a plausible explanation for the observed warming in the Mediterranean region. Consistency of observed trends with climate change projections indicates that present trends may be understood of what will come more so in the future, allowing for a better communication of the societal challenges to meet in the future.
Abstract: Sea level rise, especially combined with possible changes in storm surges and increased river discharge resulting from climate change, poses a major threat in low-lying river deltas. In this study we focus on a specific example of such a delta: the Netherlands. To evaluate whether the country’s flood protection strategy is capable of coping with future climate conditions, an assessment of low-probability/highimpact scenarios is conducted, focusing mainly on sea level rise. We develop a plausible high-end scenario of 0.55 to 1.15 m global mean sea level rise, and 0.40 to 1.05 m rise on the coast of the Netherlands by 2100 (excluding land subsidence), and more than three times these local values by 2200. Together with projections for changes in storm surge height and peak river discharge, these scenarios depict a complex, enhanced flood risk for the Dutch delta.
5. March 2011 - Hans von Storch has become a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, EASA). The inauguration took place during the academy's Festive Plenary Session 2011 in Salzburg.Abstract: We compare two different sets of assessment of the abilities of contemporary climate models. One group is made of experts, and their results are provided in two expert reports, while the other is the subjective assessment made by ‘physical climate scientists’ in general, sampled in a series of three survey questionnaires. The expert group is considerably more optimistic than the general group; the former suggesting progress, while the perception of the latter group is more or less stationary.
Abstract: In this article, we discuss the advisory capacity of climate science for political and societal decisions. To provide options, open up perspectives and enhance the understanding for the dynamics of climate is a task we name climate services. After a general discussion, experiences of providing these services on a regional and local scale – Northern Germany, the metropolitan area of Hamburg and the Baltic Sea Basin – during the last few years is reviewed.Key components of this regional climate service is the establishment of a regional climate office, of regional IPCC-like assessments of knowledge about regional and local climate change, and detailed homogeneous data sets describing changing weather statistics (i.e., climate) in past decades and in perspectives for the next several decades.
8 February 2011- Proceedings of the International Conference on Coastal Engineering (June 30 - July 5, 2010, Shanghai) published with article Downscaling tropical cyclones from global re-analyses and scenarios: Statistics of multi-deacdal variability of TC activity in E Asia by Hans von Storch, Frauke Feser, Monika Barcikowska.Abstract: An atmospheric regional climate model was employed for describing weather of E Asia for the last decades as well as for the coming century. Re-analyses provided by Global National Center for Environmental Prediction - National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) for the past six decades, as well a scenario generated by the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model were dynamically downscaled to a 50 km grid using a state-of-the-art regional climate model (CCLM). Using an automated tracking system, all tropical cyclones (TCs) are identified in the multi-decadal simulations. The different analysis products of TC-statistics were found to differ strongly, also in recent times when the data base was good, so that in the long-term statistics 1950-2010 inhomogeneities mask real climatic variations. The 1948-2009 time series of the annual numbers of TCs in the NCEP-driven simulation and in the JMA best track data (BT) correlate favourably. The number is almost constant, even if there is a slight tendency in BT to show less storms, whereas CCLM shows somewhat more storms, which became more intense. The ECHAM5/MPI-OM-driven scenario simulation, subject to 1959-2100 observed and projected greenhouse gas concentrations, shows a reduction of the number of storms, which maintains a stationary intensity in terms of maximum sustained winds and minimum pressure. Thus, BT-trends and downscaled trends were found to be inconsistent, but also the downscaled trends 1948-2009 and the trends derived from the A1B-scenario were different.
Abstract: Yearly percentiles of geostrophic wind speeds serve as a widely used proxy for assessing past storm activity. Here, daily geostrophic wind speeds are derived from a geographical triangle of surface air pressure measurements and are used to build yearly frequency distributions. It is commonly believed, however unproven, that the variation of the statistics of strong geostrophic wind speeds describes the variation of statistics of ground level wind speeds.
The study evaluates this approach by examining the correlation between specific annual (seasonal) percentiles of geostrophic and of area-maximum surface wind speeds to determine whether the two distributions are linearly linked in general. The analyses rely on bootstrap and binomial hypothesis testing, as well as on analysis of variance. Such investigations require long, homogeneous, and physically consistent data. As such data are barely existent, regional climate model generated wind and surface air pressure fields in a fine spatial and temporal resolution are made use of. The chosen regional climate model is the spectrally nudged and NCEP driven REMO that covers Europe and the North Atlantic. Required distributions are determined from diagnostic 10m and geostrophic wind speed, which is calculated from model air pressure at sea level.
Obtained results show that the variation of strong geostrophic wind speed statistics describes the variation of ground level wind speed statistics. Annual and seasonal quantiles of geostrophic wind speed and ground level wind speed are positively linearly related. The influence of lowpass filtering is also considered and found to decrease the quality of the linear link. Moreover, several factors are examined that affect the description of storminess through geostrophic wind speed statistics. Geostrophic wind from sea triangles reflects storm activity better than geostrophic wind from land triangles. Smaller triangles lead to a better description of storminess than bigger triangles.
3 February 2011 - Number #8 of my interviews in the Newsletter of the AGU Atmospheric Science Section was published in December last year - this time Alan Robock. (Klick here for the full No 4, Vol 6 issue).
2 February 2011 - In 2008, the BACC-book was published: The BACC author team, 2008: Assessment of Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Basin., Springer Verlag Berlin - Heidelberg; ISBN 978-3-540-72785, 473 pp - now the first two print editions of the BACC book have been sold out, and Springer offers the book as porint-on-demand at half price, i.e. € 104.30. At the same time, it can be accessed as free pdf from the BALTEX secrtariat. If you detect any errors, please report theBALTEX secretariat via the BACC Blog.Abstract: Sea level rise, especially combined with possible changes in storm surges and increased river discharge resulting from climate change, poses a major threat in low-lying river deltas. In this study we focus on a specific example of such a delta: the Netherlands. To evaluate whether the country’s flood protection strategy is capable of coping with future climate conditions, an assessment of low-probability / high-impact scenarios is conducted, focusing mainly on sea level rise. We develop a plausible high- end scenario of 0.55 to 1.15 meters global mean sea level rise, and 0.40 to 1.05 meters rise on the coast of the Netherlands by 2100 (excluding land subsidence), and more than three times these local values by 2200. Together with projections for changes in storm surge height and peak river discharge, these scenarios depict a complex, enhanced flood risk for the Dutch delta.
7. January 2011 - Sadly, my teacher, the theoretical meteorologist Prof. Dr. Günter Fischer has passed away. He loved weather and weather forecasting. After a short tour of duty as navy man at the end of WW II, he began studying meteorology. During a stay at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Stockholm in the 1950s, he built a numerical model of the North Sea (tides and wind-driven; Fischer, G., 1959: Ein numerisches Verfahren zur Errechnung von Windstau und Gezeiten in Randmeeren. Tellus, 11, 60-76) - as a first German scientist. Issues of numerical discretization was a favorite interest of Günter Fischer, with significant publications in the 1960s, when he was a visiting scientist at the then new NCAR.I was his PhD student from 1976 to 1979, and then postdoc until 1985.
23. December 2010 - The BACC project, on the assessment of the knowledge about climate, climate change and climate impact in the Baltic Sea region, has launched a blog for communications about BACC - news about the new report BACC-2 (due in 2013) and discussions about the first BACC-1 report (published in 2008; see Reckermann, M., H.-J. Isemer and H. von Storch, 2008: Climate Change Assessment for the Baltic Sea Basin. EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. U., 161-162), in particular about newly found errors.BACC is a project run within BALTEX.
In December 2010, a Slovenian translation of the book Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk by Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch has been published as: Podnebje in druzba; Podnebje kot vor, podnebje kot tveganje, Zalozba Sophia, Ljubljana. 2010 (210 pp)A russian translation will be soon on the market.
7. Dezember 2010 - Mit einer gemeinsamen Presseerklärung des Senats der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg und dem KlimaCampus ist die Veröffentlichung des "Klimaberichts für die Metropolregion Hamburg" bekannt gemacht worden.Das Buch wurde vom Springer-Verlag herausgegeben: von Storch, H., M. Claussen and KlimaCampus Autoren Team, 2010: Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg, Springer Verlag Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-16035-6, 321 pp.
Ein kleines allgemeinverständliches Büchlein ist als Kurzfassung des Berichts zusammengestellt worden (download).
2. December 2010 - My colleague Professor Erik Pasche has died - Professor Erik Pasche was the head of a group of water works engineers at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH). Our joint interest in storm surges and the measures for dealing with this risk brought us together. We shared a joint lecture trip to Cape Town and Stellenbosch in September 2009 for the German Academic Exchange Service(DAAD). He had served on the Scientifc Stering Board of the "Hamburger Klimabericht". I had hoped that with his help it would become possible to combine the technical knowledge at the TUHH with the scientific knowledge at the University of Hamburg - for forming a real multidisciplinary KlimaCampus in Hamburg. It is sad that Erik Pasche is no longer with us.
24. November 2010 - A new interview in the Atmospheric Science Newsletter of AGU-series: Nanne Weber. Next interviewee will be Alan Robock.
24. November 2010 - Ein ausführliches Interview von Ingeborg Breuer im Rahmen des "Doppelkopf"-Formats mit Hans von Storch im Radioprogramm von hr2-Kultur (podcast) 23. November, Göteborg - the 2nd BALTEX assessment of the scientific legitimate knowledge about climate, climate change and climate impact in the Baltic Sea region (BACC 2) has been launched with the 1st meeting of its Lead Authors together with the Scientific Steering Committee of BACC. The final product, the BACC-2 report, is expected for 2013. For details of BACC II about the contents, the procedures, the participating individuals and time agenda, refer to BACC's web-page.Siehe auch ARD-Fernsehsendung [w] wie wissen vom 12.9.2010 mit Hintergrundinfos.
Bray, D., and H. von Storch, 2009: 'Prediction' or 'Projection'? The nomenclature of climate science. Sci. Comm. 30, 534-543, doi:10.1177/1075547009333698, and
Bray, D., 2010: The scientific consensus of climate change revisited. Env. Sci. Pol. 13: 340 – 350
At least one form of extreme weather is likely to become rarer in a future warmer climate, according to a report in this week’s Nature . Matthias Zahn and Hans von Storch use regional climate simulations to show that the severe North Atlantic storms known as ‘polar lows’, which are also referred to as Arctic hurricanes, may decrease in frequency by as much as 50% by the end of this century.
It has become commonplace to state that a warmer climate will bring an increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves or intense precipitation. Polar lows are small-scale but severe winter storms that threaten offshore human activities in the northern North Atlantic region. Zahn and von Storch studied the formation of polar lows in a series of regional climate simulations corresponding to different possible future climates.
In projections for the end of this century, assuming a range of elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the authors found a significantly lower frequency of polar lows, compared to a late-twentieth-century control simulation. The authors attribute this effect to a greater increase in temperature in the lower atmosphere than at the surface of the North Atlantic: the resulting decrease in vertical temperature gradient stabilizes the atmosphere, hindering the formation or intensification of polar lows.
German press release.
12 September 2010 - Our book - Stehr, N. and H. von Storch, 2010: Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk published by World Scientific - has been reviewed by Scott McNall in Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews (2010 39: 406; DOI: 10.1177/0094306110373236c)
08.09.2010 - Pressemitteilung und Einladung zur Pressekonferenz: GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht - Sturmflutkongress 2010 - Wissenschaftler aus 30 Ländern tagen in HamburgRisiken und Management von gegenwärtigen und zukünftigen Sturmfluten
13. bis 17. September 2010, Universität Hamburg Das Institut für Küstenforschung des GKSS-Forschungszentrums Geesthacht veranstaltet in Kooperation mit dem Hamburger KlimaCampus der Universität Hamburg und weiteren nationalen und internationalen Partnern vom 13. bis 17. September 2010 an der Universität den internationalen Sturmflutkongress „Storm Surges Congress 2010“.
Organisiert wird der Kongress durch das globale Erdsystem - Forschungsprojekt "Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone" (LOICZ), das sich weltweit mit Veränderungen an Küsten und den gesellschaftlichen Konsequenzen befasst.
Detaillierte Informationen zur Tagung sowie eine Einladung zur Pressekonferenz hier.
5 September - In the series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter a new one has now been published - with Roger A Pielke Sr.. The previous interviewees were Rene Laprise, Raino Heino, Aristita Busuioc, Christoph Kottmeier and Heinz Wanner. The next will be Nanne Weber. 
5. September 2010 - Beitrag zum Interacademy Council Review des IPCC in der Fernsehreihe zdf.umwelt. Mit Wortbeiträgen von Ottmar Edenhofer und Hans von Storch.
18. August 2010 - An analysis of the assessment of climate model performance by "climate scientists" has been made, based on surveys among climate scientists from all over the world (CLISCI) and in the Baltic Sea basin (BALTEX). Results concerning atmospheric hydrodynamics and clouds have now been published on-line at Climate Science & Policy .
27. Juli 2010 - Auf ihrer Internet Seite bietet jetzt die Zeitschrift YACHT einen 6:45 Film auf dem internet an: Wissenschaft auf dem Wattenmeer. Ein Tag auf See mit dem GKSS-Küstenforschungsschiff Ludwig Prandtl. 24. Juli 2010 - Die beiden CLISAP-Klimaforscher Irene Neverla und Hans von Storch schreiben in der österreichischen PRESSE über Wer den Hype braucht: "Am
Anfang war „Klimawandel“ nur eine – gut begründete – Hypothese.
Innerhalb weniger Jahrzehnte wurde daraus mediale Gewissheit: erst die
einer nahenden Katastrophe, schließlich die einer längst gegenwärtigen
globalen Tragödie. Zur Karriere eines Begriffs." Irene Neverla ist Medienwissenschaftlerin, Hans von Storch Naturwissenschaftler.This paper first reviews previous work undertaken to assess the level of scientific consensus concerning climate change, concluding that studies of scientific consensus concerning climate change have tended to measure different things. Three dimensions of consensus are determined: manifestation, attribution and legitimation. Consensus concerning these dimensions are explored in detail using a time series of data from surveys of climate scientists. In most cases, little difference is discerned between those who have participated in the IPCC process and those who have not. Consensus, however, in both groups does not amount to unanimity. Results also suggest rather than a single group proclaiming the IPCC does not represent consensus, there are now two groups, one claiming the IPCC makes overestimations (a group previously labeled skeptics, deniers, etc.) and a relatively new formation of a group (many of whom have participated in the IPCC process) proclaiming that IPCC tends to underestimate some climate related phenomena
29. Juni - In the Newsletter of the European Academy Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH ist the discoursive article Thoughts on climate research and policy by Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr has been published. The introductory paragraph reads: The climate issue requires both scientific analysis and political decision-making. Perceiving climatic impacts, possibilities and necessities through the lens of political interests will hardly achieve long-term success. Quite to the contrary, a dispassionate scientific analysis is needed to present the various options in detail and thus to enable normative political decisions. To this end, climate research is in need of self-reflection. Fundamental scientific values such as contradiction, openness, sustainability, independence of individuals and falsification, enable science to unfold its potential as an action-guiding knowledge provider. For this purpose, the natural sciences need input from the social sciences, cultural studies and a discerning public. 
29 June 2010 - Hans von Storch has been appointed a lead author of chapter 2, Foundations of Decision Making, of Working Group II of IPCC Assessment Report 5. Because of this significant additional work load, Hans von Storch has left a number of advisory bodies such as the Scientific Steering Committee(WLA) of DKRZ/M&D and the Nationalparkkuratorium Nordfriesland. 24. Juni 2010 - In 2010 findet "Forschung vor Anker längs der ostfriesischen Küste statt. Open Ship und Informationsreise: Vom 12. bis 16. Juli läuft unser Forschungsschiff verschiedene Hafenstädte an der Ostfriesischen Nordseeküste an. An den Nachmittagen öffnet die Ludwig Prandtl beim Open Ship 2010 seine Türen für Besucher. Auf begleitenden Abendveranstaltungen berichten Küstenforscher über die aktuellen Entwicklungen an der Küste. Hans von Storch spricht am 16. Juni in Leer (Ostfriesland) über "Meeresspiegel und Sturmfluten im Nordseeküstenbereich ". 18. June 2010 - The Preliminary Session Program for the Storm Surges Congress 2010 / Risk and Management of Current and Future Storm Surges in Hamburg, 13-17 September 2010, has now been published.Conference sessions
a) Driving factors and scales of storm surges
b) Contemporary risk and management
c) History and intercultural perception
d) The role of scientific information – dealing with uncertainty
e) Institutional and economic dimensions – dealing with uncertainty and Disaster Reduction
f) Dealing with nature
g) Social dimensions of risk and vulnerabilty
h) Supporting storm surge applications using satellite data
i) The climate of storm surges
18. June 2010 - The EU project CIRCE (Climate Change and Impact Research: the Mediterranean Environment) has published a number of "flash results", among them this result of Armineh Barkhordarian of GKSS:
"Observed temperature changes in the Mediterranean Region are consistent with climate change projections?We have investigated whether anthropogenic forcing is a plausible explanation for the observed near-surface temperature trends over the Mediterranean area. To this purpose observed trends over 1979-2009 period in near-surface temperature are compared to human induced changes as predicted by a set of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models derived from the CMIP3 database. As indicated by the measures of pattern similarity statistics the annual and seasonal pattern of recent trends in near-surface temperature are consistent with the patterns of model-projected response to anthropogenic forcing. This consistency is found in all four seasons which is maximum in summer and minimum in winter."
13 June 2010 - The Scientific Steering Group of BALTEX has elected Hans von Storch to become vice-chair of BALTEX. 11 June 2010 - in my series of interviews of eminent atmospheric scientists in the Atmospheric Science Section of the AGU, a new one has come out - with Aristita Busuioc. The list of interviewees comprises now five atmospheric scientists: Aristita Busuioc, Raino Heino, Heinz Wanner, Rene Laprise and Christoph Kottmeier. More will follow. Suggestions are welcome. 11 June 2010 - Hans von Storch has been invited to present his views at the IPCC Review meeting of the Interacademy Council (IAC) on 15 June 2010 in Montreal. An audio of presentations will be webcast live. For a report, refer to nature. The IAC committee is conducting an independent review of the procedures and processes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In a public session on 15 June 2010, the committee will hear scientists’ presentations on IPCC assessment processes. Speakers include Robert Watson, professor of environment sciences and director of strategic development, University of East Anglia, and chief scientific adviser, U.K. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs; he was also the chair of IPCC from 1997 to 2002. Other speakers are Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Stanford, Calif.; John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama, Huntsville; and Hans von Storch, professor, Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg, and director, Institute of Coastal Research, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany. Christy and von Storch were both participating authors in prior IPCC assessment, and Field is the co-chair of Working Group II of the current IPCC assessment.
6 June 2010 - The Second BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin has now been initiated - for details refer to the new web-page of BACC2. 
- 1. Juni 2010 - Interview im Luxemburgischen RTL: Klimafuerscher Hans von Storch zu Lëtzebuerg.. 
20. May - The German book Klima, Wetter, Mensch by Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch, published by Verlag Barbara Budrich, will come out in Slovenian language - published by the Slovenian academic publishing house Zalozba Sophia, dedicated to theory, humanities and social sciences. 19 May 2010 - The second issue (number 2, valume 1) of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews/Climate Change has now been published.At present Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews/Climate Change is free to access online and will be so until January 2011. From that point the journal will be free to institutions who opt-in for free access until January 2012.
5 May 2010 - Springer book with interview with Walter Munk has been published right in time, namely one week before the the awarding ceremony for the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences “for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to our understanding of ocean circulation, tides and waves, and their role in the Earth’s dynamics”. Bibliographic detail: von Storch, H., and K. Hasselmann, 2010: Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography. A prolonged weekend discussion with Walter Munk. Springer Publisher, 137pp - DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-12087-9. This is the 6th interview in a series with eminent scientists.
29. April 2010 - Vortrag "Klimaforschung und Klimapolitik. Rollenverteilung und Nachhaltigkeit" von Hans von Storch bei der Europäischen Akademie Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH gemeinsam mit der Kreissparkasse Ahrweiler im Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen. Details.Eine überarbeitete Fassung, mit Nico Stehr als Koauthor, wird in der Naturwissenschaftlichen Rundschau erscheinen.
A shorter English version Thoughts on climate research and policy will be published in the Newsletter of the Europäischen Akademie.
15. April 2010 - Hans von Storch has been elected a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, class of Technical and Environmental Sciences. Abstract: As an initial educated look tells us, the scientific analysis of climate is mostly a physical science discipline. The object of climate science is not a social construct but part of the real world that is governed by physical principles, such as conservation of energy, momentum and mass in hydrodynamics. Thus, the climate science field comprises the “physics of the climate system”. None the less, this is only part of the story; another significant part of the set of issues represented by “climate” is deeply embedded in social and cultural processes. Thus, climate science is a genuinely trans-disciplinary scientific field, which poses special challenges and approaches requiring the skills of both physical scientists as well as social and cultural scientists.
2 April 2010 - A Russian translation of the book Stehr/von Storch: "Climate and Society" or "Klima Wetter Mensch" (see web-page) is expected to be published in the fall of 2010. 22 March2010 - Session A16 "Changing Statistics of Tropical, Mid-latitude and Polar Pacific Storms" (organized by Bin Wang and Hans von Storch) at the 2010 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, will take place on June 25, 14:00-17:30. 
22. März - Rundfunk-Sendung Heißer Tanz im Kältewinter. Wie Fehler und Verdächtigungen die Klimaforschung in eine Vertrauenskrise stürzten.
von Volker Mrasek mit Beiträgen von u.a. Peter Lemke und Hans von Storch. 19 March 2010 - My "Climate models and modeling: an editorial essay" has now been published by Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews/Climate Change.At present Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews/Climate Change is free to access online and will be so until January 2011. From that point the journal will be free to institutions who opt-in for free access until January 2012.
13. März 2010 - die Westküstenreise im Sommer 2009 des Instituts für Küstenforschung mit RV "Ludwig Prandtl" hat ein erfreuliches "Nachspiel" gehabt - der Bericht "Klimawandel an der Küste Kampf um jeden Zentimeter" des Journalisten Max Rauner (ZEIT, 21.8.2009) erhielt auf dem 2010 Extremwetterkongress in Bremerhaven den Medienpreis für Meteorologie 2010.
Im Sommer 2010 besucht RV "Ludwig Prandtl" die Ost- und Westfriesische Küste in der Zeit vom 12. bis 16. Juli 2010.
Noch im Dezember 2007 erhielten Al Gore und der UN-Klimarat IPCC in Oslo den Friedensnobelpreis. Heute, zwei Jahre später, beschäftigen Fehler im Bericht die Öffentlichkeit. Ein Rauschen geht durch den Blätterwald, Rücktrittsforderungen gegen den Vorsitzenden werden laut. Schlagworte wie "Climategate", "verlorene Unschuld" und "Interessenskonflikt" heizen die Debatte über die Verlässlichkeit der wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse an.
Was ist geschehen? Wie können deutsche Forscher als zuverlässige Klimawissenschaftler Profil zeigen? Wie lässt sich das Vertrauen der Öffentlichkeit zurückgewinnen?
Auf dem Podium:
- Prof. Dr. Martin Claußen, Sprecher des Exzellenzclusters CliSAP, Universität Hamburg, Direktor Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie
- Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke, Direktor Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Mitglied im Exzellenzcluster CliSAP
- Prof. Dr. Heinrich Miller, Direktorium Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven
- Prof. Dr. Hans von Storch, Leiter des Instituts für Küstenforschung des GKSSForschungszentrums Geesthacht, Mitglied im Exzellenzcluster CliSAP
- Prof. Dr. Martin Visbeck, Sprecher des Exzellenzclusters "Ozean der Zukunft", Leibniz-Institut für Meereswissenschaften, IFM Geomar, Kiel
Ort der Pressekonferenz: Invest in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern GmbH; Schlossgartenallee 15; 19061 Schwerin.
Medienecho: welt-online, Nordkurier.de.
Am 23. März gibt Hans von Storch einen Vortrag "Ist Klimaforschung Physik?" auf Einladung des Wissenschaftlich-Technischen Rates der GKSS. Details.Zusammenfassung: Viele Klimaforscher kommen aus der Physik oder verwandten Gebieten, von Ingenieurswissenschaften bis hin zur Meteorologie. Insofern finden sich Methoden aus der Physik häufig angewandt in der Klimaforschung – aber ist Klimaforschung deshalb eine Art Physik? In dem Vortrag werden einige Aspekte herausgearbeitet, die die Klimaforschung „anders“ machen, insbesondere die Unmöglichkeit echter Experimente (abgesehen von Modellexperimenten), die Abwesenheit einer Falsifikationskultur, und die Nutzung historischer, oft wenn nicht meist inhomogener Daten. Was aber die Klimaforschung „ganz anders“ macht, ist der „postnormale“ Kontext, wonach einerseits die Unsicherheiten aller Aussagen notgedrungen hoch sind, in der andererseits hoch-relevante wirtschaftliche und politische Entscheidungen betroffen sind und zusätzlich kulturelle Werte eine Rolle spielen. Insofern stellt sich heraus, dass, obwohl vordergründig viel Physik in der Klimaforschung enthalten ist, es doch eine Feld mit einer ganz eigenen Aufstellung ist, und von daher auch mit anderen Konzepten betrieben werden muß. Stichworte sind hier transdisziplinäre Selbstreflektion und Klimaservice. Die Zugangsweise im Institut für Küstenforschung sowie die aktuelle Vertrauenskrise um den Klimabeirat der UN, das IPCC, werden diskutiert.
Ein ausführliches Interview mit Hans von Storch zu der aktuellen Lage bietet 3sat-nano.
Medienecho. Bergedorfer Zeitung.
28. February - The deadline for submitting abstracts to the "Storm surges / Risk and Management of current and future storm surges"-conference on 13. -17. September 2010 in Hamburg, Germany, has been extended to 31 March 2010. 25. Februar 2010 - Ab sofort online: Regionaler Klimaatlas für Deutschland.
Die Regionalen Klimabüros der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft haben gemeinsam einen "Regionalen Klimaatlas für Deutschland" erarbeitet, der über die möglichen Veränderungen auf regionaler Ebene durch den Klimawandel informiert. Ab sofort stehen Klimaszenarien für die deutschen Bundesländer online zur Verfügung. Mehr in der Presseerklärung der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft HGF.21. Februar 2010 - In der Sendung zdf-Umwelt am heutigen Tage wurde unter dem Titel Pannen im IPCC Bericht der vom IPCC behaupteten Zusammenhang zwischen Schäden und Klimawandel (Disasters and hazards) aufgegriffen. Dabei wurde dargestellt, dass die Abbildung SM1-1 im "Chapter 1 des Supplementary Material" nicht wie behauptet aus der angegebenen Quelle stammt und auch sonst aus keiner bekannten Veröffentlichung. Daraufhin sprach Mojib Latif in der Sendung von "Betrug". Offenbar gibt es für die Abbildung und die damit implizierte Behauptung eines Zusammenhangs keine sachliche Begründung. Trotzdem hat der IPCC hat die Vorwürfe in gehabter arroganter Art ohne weitere Begründung als "baseless" abgetan.Bemerkenswert auch die ZDF-Umwelt-Sendung Der Himalaya Flop und das IPCC vom 31. Januar mit dem Bericht über "High Noon".
21. Februar. -Interview mit Hans von Storch in der Wirtschaftswoche: Mischung aus Dummheit und Arroganz
21. Februar 2010. - Ein ausführliches Fernsehinterview (30 min) von Frank Farenski mit Hans von Storch wurde von 3sat aufgenommen und in die 3sat-mediathek aufgenommen. Parallel dazu gibt es ein Interview mit Stefan Rahmstorf. Aus den beiden Interviews wurde eine Sendung zusammengeschnitten und gesendet: Die Kernaussage bleibt: Fehler ändern die Botschaft des IPCC-Berichts nicht. 19. Februar 2010 - In einem interessanten Beitrag diskutiert Stephan Kosch in der taz die derzeitige Diskussion in Deutschland zum IPCC. 13. February 2010 - On 14-18 June 2010, the 6th Study Conference on BALTEX will take place in the Baltic Sea holiday resort of Miedzyzdroje on the Polish island of Wolin. Abstract submission deadline is 15 February! The conference is titled "Changing water, energy and biogeochemical cycles in the Baltic Sea basin" and will reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the BALTEX programme. For comprehensive information on the conference, please go to the conference website.
The Online Registration tool is now online! Registration deadline: 10 April. For online registration and information, click here.
Deltas form a frontline of the world’s changing climate. As the sea level rises deltas become more vulnerable. The need to address challenges such as flooding, soil salination and the heat island effect calls for sharing knowledge worldwide. Scientists, officials, policymakers and business leaders from around the world will gather for a major international conference, ‘Deltas in Times of Climate Change’ from 29 September to 2 October 2010. Rotterdam, being one of the forerunners in climate adaptation, hosts the conference.
More information is available at the website and the brochure of the conference.
13. Februar 2010 - Deutsche Welle: Führende Klimaforscher fordern eine grundlegende Reform des Weltklimarates mit Hans von Storch - mp3 download möglich. 11. February 2010 - Interview with Hans von Storch on Deutsche Welle and Sveriges Radio. 
5. Februar 2010 - Jonas Bhend hat erfolgreich seine Doktorarbeit "Detection of an anthropogenic influence on the observed changes in the near-surface temperature and precipitation in Northern Europe" verteidigt - für die Arbeit gab es ein "sehr gut", für die Disputation ein "ausgezeichnet".
27 Januar 2010 - In einem Artikel "Klimawissenschaft zwischen Skylla und Charybdis. Beharrlich sucht der Forscher Hans von Storch einen Weg an Skeptikern und Alarmisten vorbei" in der on-line Version der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung bewertet Sven Titz meine Position in der Klimadebatte positiv. 26 January 2010 - Interview of Christoph Kottmeier (KIT) in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter 4(1). 
25. Januar 2010 - Richard Tol, R. Pielke jr. und H. von Storch schreiben auf SPIEGEL online über die Probleme des IPCC: Rettet den Weltklimarat! (English). For a Dutch version, see VN-klimaatpanel moet drastisch hervormen in NRC handelsblad, 25 januari 2010 22–25 June 2010 - A significant event of the 2010 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, is Session A16. Changing Statistics of Tropical, Mid-latitude and Polar Pacific Storms (organized by Bin Wang and Hans von Storch):
The session deals with the analysis of changes in storminess in the historical past, in recent decades and in possible futures. The term "storms" refers to tropical cyclones, baroclinic mid-latitude storms as well as polar lows. Methodical problems relate to data inhomogeneity, to proxy representativity and to length of data sets. Changes are studied by using proxy data, historical data, re-analyses and dynamical or empirical downscaling products. Attribution studies for assessing causes for detected changes are welcome. Also, the impact of storms on the marine environment will be dealt with.
Abstract submission is invited until 25 February 2010. 
21 January 2010 - the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences 2010 to Walter Munk Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA for his pioneering and fundamental contributions to our understanding of ocean circulation, tides and waves, and their role in the Earth’s dynamics”. For a movie on Walter Munk, refer to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je3QvqNdHl0.
19 Januar 2010 - Helmholtz.Podcast #44 - Klimaforschung/ REKLIM mit Peter Lemke und Hans von Storch : Acht Forschungszentren der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft haben ihre Kompetenzen in dem Helmholtz-Verbund Regionale Klimaänderungen (REKLIM) gebündelt und untersuchen die regionalen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels. 11. January 2010 - The Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews/Climate Change web-site has gone live with the first on-line issue.WIREs Climate Change is a new inter-disciplinary review journal covering all aspects of climate change, including history, science, geography, sociology, economics, policy, ethics and psychology. On-line content will be free for all for the first year. In the second year institutions will be able to register for free access. Thereafter access will be by paid subscription only. The WIREs Climate Change website provides added value functionality to maximise the impact of content. Users are able to browse content by topic, article type or issue. Users will also be able to comment on the content on the site. Review articles are categorised as either: Overviews, Advanced Reviews, Focus Articles or Opinion Pieces.
Register for complimentary access at http://wires.wiley.com/climatechange.
10 January 2010 - The introductory part (list of contents, figures, and Preface) of the 2009-book Weisse/von Storch: Marine Climate and Climate Change Storms, Wind Waves and Storm Surges has now been made available online by the Springer Publisher - see http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-540-25316-7. 29. Dezember 2009 - Beitrag Die lästige Demokratie von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch in Spiegel on-line. 26. December - The second announcement and call for abstracts for the "Storm surges / Risk and Management of current and future storm surges"-conference on 13. -17. September 2010 in Hamburg, Germany, has been released. Deadline for abstract submission is 28 February 2010. 
23. December 2009 - Hans von Storch has been invited to the Editorial Board of Environmental Science and Policy.
23. December 2009 - Op Ed in Wall Street Journal: Good science, bad politics by Hans von Storch. 
13. Dezember 2009 - Interviews mit Hans von Storch, Mojib Latif und Stefan Rahmstorf in der ZDF-Sendung Das Klimakartell. 11. Dezember 2009 - Drei weitere Interviews mit Hans von Storch zu Klimagate, COP-15 und die politisierte Kultur der Klimaforschung in Deutschland im Deutschlandradio ("Ich glaube, dass die Bundesregierung überhaupt nicht gut bedient ist"; 9.Dezember 2009; mp3), in der Radiosendung Kontext des SWR2 (10. Dezember 2009; mp3), und im Tagesspiegel ("Spekulationen als Sicherheit verkauft"; 11. Dez 2009). 
6. December - Eduardo Zorita and I have started a blog - Klimazwiebel. So far, there is the English translation "The Cartell" of my recent WELT essay, and a list of a few somewhat surprising CRU-emails. 6. December 2009 - on November 29, a German Interview "Dramatisierte Darstellung" by Daniel Lingenhöhl was published first on Spektrum direkt and later on Zeit online - now Marcel Hendrickx has translated the interview into English. 6. December 2009 - Working Group 1 of IPCC has issued a statement, according to which this working group has worked flawlessly, and that all conclusion are holding up. I think this is by and large correct, but an analysis of how the lost credibility in the public (cf. Rasmusson survey) may be regained, would be helpful. 
4 Dezember 2009 - Die deutsche Fassung der Kulturgeschichte des Klimas von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch ist jetzt beim Barbara Budrich-Verlag unter dem Titel "Klima, Wetter, Mensch" erschienen. 3. Dezember 2009 - Der schon angekündigte "Kartell"-Essay von mir ist jetzt unter dem Titel "Die Klima-Krieger" in der WELT erschienen. Ebenfalls sehr empfehlenswert: Mike Hulmes "The Science and Politics of Climate Change" im Wall Street Journal. 30. November 2009 - Interviews mit Hans von Storch zum Komplex Copenhagen Diagnosis / CRU mails in Spektrum direkt von Daniel Lingenhöhl und in Stuttgarter Nachrichten von Reimund Abel.
29 November 2009 - My interview with Raino Heino (Helsinki) has been published in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter 3 (5). 28. November - An excellent analysis of the politicized situation, climate science finds itself in, is provided by Judy Curry.Two more interesting analyses in Economist and New York Times as of today.
26. November 2009 - Eduardo Zorita has commented: CRU files: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process. More on this issue below.
25. November 2009 - Der auf meine Initiative im Rahmen des Exzellenzzentrums CLiSAP an der Hamburger Universität, zu dem auch das Institut für Küstenforschung der GKSS beiträgt und zu dessen Scientific Steering Committee ich gehöre, entstandene "Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg" ist jetzt der Öffentlichkeit vorgelegt worden. Darüber infomiert die Presseerklärung "Klimawandel in Hamburg - Wissenschaftler des KlimaCampus Hamburg legen Bericht für die Metropolregion vor" der Hamburger Behörde für Wissenschaft und Forschung. Im Hamburg-Journal des NDR Fernsehens wurde ein schöner 2:31 min Beitrag gesendet; auch sonst gab es ein gutes Echo in den regionalen Medien.
Die bisherige Fassung des Berichts liegt als Entwurf vor; Einwände sind erbeten bis Ende Februar 2010. Ein recht dataillierte Zusammenfassung findet man dort auch. Der endgültige Bericht in Buchform wird vermutlich Ende 2010 beim Springer Verlag erscheinen.
Gemeinsame Pressekonferenz von Wissenschaftsbehörde Hamburg, Kieler Klimaschutzabteilung und KlimaCampus Hamburg. Vollständige Presseeinladung der BWF hier.
Auf der Klimakonferenz der Städte hat sich Hamburg gegenüber Europa und der Welt als „Europäische Umwelthauptstadt 2011“ präsentiert. Dass Klimapolitik nicht nur eine globale Herausforderung ist, sondern immer auch vor Ort stattfindet, macht der „Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg“ deutlich. In insgesamt zehn Kapiteln ist das vorhandene Wissen über bisherige und zukünftig mögliche Klimaänderungen in der Metropolregion Hamburg aufbereitet und zusammengefasst worden.
Den Klimabericht vorstellen werden Senatorin Dr. Herlind Gundelach (Behörde für Wissenschaft und Forschung der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg), Dr. Harmut Euler (Abteilungsleiter für Technischen Umweltschutz und Klimaschutz im Ministerium für Landwirtschaft, Umwelt und ländliche Räume des Landes Schleswig-Holstein), Prof. Dr. Martin Claußen (KlimaCampus/MPI-Meteorologie, Sprecher des Exzellenzclusters Hamburg) und Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans von Storch (GKSS Forschungszentrum Geesthacht, KlimaCampus).
24. November 2009 - Heute wurde am Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung UFZ in Leipzig offiziell das Mitteldeutsche Klimabüro eröffnet; ich war dabei und habe beim Pressegespräch geholfen, den Kontext herauszuarbeiten - siehe dazu meine vorbereitete Stellungnahme. 24. November 2009 - The scandal around the stolen CRU-mails is rolling on; the interest, as documented by traffic on the internet is enormeous - and likely the damage done to the credibility of climate science by the unfortunate writing by Phil Jones and others as well. But inspite of this, one can interpret the whole affair also in positive way - namely that science was strong enough to overcome the various gatekeeping efforts, even it may take a few years. The self-correcting dynamics in science is robust and kicking. And the practice of allowing our adversaries to use our data (after a certain grace period) will become finally common.We need to publically discuss the ethical norms, science is to operate under. Obviously, science can not define itself which these norms should be, but this is a task for society at large - who pays for the efforts and is looking for utility of science. The main guard to this respect is with the media - and it seems the media beginning to become serious, finally. An example is from Wall Street Journal - online. In Germany, journalists judge the affair more cavalier, e.g., in the Tagesspiegel.
More on this issue below.
23. November 2009 - Unter der Leitung von Prof Beate Ratter (Institut für Küstenforschung, GKSS und Geographisches Institut Uni HH) wurde die empirische Untersuchung "Heimat, Umwelt und Risiko an der deutschen Nordseeküste" von Wahrnehmungen, Sorgen und Selbstverständnis der Menschen an der deutschen Nordseeküste durchgeführt. Jetzt sind die Ergebnisse als GKSS-Bericht erschienen. Eine spannende Analyse. Siehe Presseerklärung. 22. November - Unfortunately, Franciscus Colijn is going to retire in the middle of 2010. Therefore GKSS together with the University in Kiel is looking for a successor, who will become co-director at the Institute for Coastal Research at GKSS and professor in Coastal Research and Instrumentation in Coastal Oceanography at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel. Further details. Applications are welcome until January 7, 2010.
21. November 2009 - A hacker has stolen many e-mails (and other files) from the server at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in the United Kingdom. For an account refer to New York Times or to Roger Pielke jr.'s weblog. The hacked mails have been published at several sites, and I got through a journalist a full copy. As far as I myself can judge, and according to responses by others, the files are authentic, but not complete.Going through the files, which due to the sheer size I can do only in a sampling mode, the mails begin in the late 1990s and extend to about today. They are all mails to/from Phil Jones. There are a number of problematic statements, which will be discussed in the media and the blogosphere. I found the style of communication revealing, speaking about other people and their ideas, joining forces to "kill" papers, exchanges of "improving" presentations without explaining.
Also mails from/to Eduardo Zorita and myself are included; also we have been subject of frequent mentioning, usually not in a flattering manner. Interesting exchanges, and evidences, are contained about efforts to destroy "Climate Research"; that we in the heydays of the hockeystick debate shared our ECHO-G data with our adversaries; and that Mike Mann was successful to exclude me from a review-type meeting on historical reconstructions in Wengen (demonstrating again his problematic but powerful role of acting as a gatekeeper.)
I would assume that more interesting issues will be found in the files, and that a useful debate about the degree of politicization of climate science will emerge. A conclusion could be that the principle, according to which data must be made public, so that also adversaries may check the analysis, must be really enforced. Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC.
For an account of our role in the hockey-stick deconstruction, refer to our 2007-article on the nature blog. An account on the problem around "Climate Research" is provided on this web-page of mine from 2003.
13. November 2009 - The 2nd Announcement and Call for Abstracts for the international "Storm Surges Congress - Risk and Management of current and future Storm Surges", 13-17 September 2010 in Hamburg, has been made. Deadline for submissions is 28 February 2010.
9-18 November 2010: Visit of joint delegation of GKSS Institute of Coastal Research, Max-Planck Institute of Meteorology and Institute of Oceanography of the University of Hamburg to Chinese partner institutions in Yantai (CAS Institute for Coastal Zone Research on Sustainable Development ), Qingdao (Ocean University of China, CAS Institute of Oceanology and others), Shanghai (State Key Laboratory for Estuarine and Coastal Research) and Beijing (CAS Institute for Atmospheric Physics and Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences). 
29. October 2009. The colloquium "Dissent is the motor of further development" on the occasion of my 60th birthday and 30-year anniversary of receiving my PhD took place on board of MS Cap San Diego in the port of Hamburg. Among the more personal compliments made to me are Werner Krauß' article (German) and Roland Doerffer's movie (600 mb!).
28. Oktober 2009 - Pressegespräch um 11:00 Uhr in der Geschäftsstelle der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Straße 2, 10178 Berlin zum Helmholtz-Verbund Regionale Klimaänderungen (REKLIM). Presseerklärung. 22. October 2009 - The new book Stehr, N. and H. von Storch, 2010: Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk. World Scientific is much cheaper when ordered from the publisher, namely only 60$s - only about half of the price listed at Amazon (110$), where it is out of stock. In Deutschland für EUR 47,46 laut Angabe des Versenders.
21. Oktober 2009 - Interview auf Extra-Eins zu COP 15 in Copenhagen. - 16. October 2009. A new Egger sketch in my collectiong of Stork-sketches, this one referring to my 60th birthday colloquium „Dissent is the Motor of further Development“ on board of MS Cap San Diego in the port of Hamburg, on 29 October 2009.
15. Oktober 2009 - Interview in der Sendung ZIB2 im ORF 3 - zum Thema Optionen der Klimapolitik und rezente Wetterkapriolen in Österreich.8. Oktober 2009 - Öffentliche Ringvorlesung an der Universität Hamburg: "Klimasystem und Klimawandel: Hamburger Beiträge zur internationalen Forschung" beginnt am 20. Oktober 2009. Programm.Pressemitteilung: Kaum ein Forschungsthema wird zurzeit so heiß diskutiert wie das Klima - der Mensch beeinflusst das Klima direkt und wird wiederum spürbar von ihm beeinflusst. Trotzdem ist die Klimaforschung keine Dienerin des Zeitgeistes oder der Politik, so sehen es die Forscher am Hamburger KlimaCampus. Hier werden vielmehr Erklärungen und Lösungen für wissenschaftliche Probleme erarbeitet und eingeordnet. Mit der neuen Vortragsreihe „Klimasystem und Klimawandel: Hamburger Beiträge zur internationalen Forschung“ lädt er die Bevölkerung ein, sich über den aktuellen Stand zu informieren.
In gut verständlicher Sprache werden renommierte Forscher ab dem 20. Oktober wöchentlich ihre Beiträge zur internationalen Klimaforschung vorstellen. Ziel des KlimaCampus ist es, zu einer seriösen Diskussion beitragen und dabei interessierte Bürgerinnen und Bürger einzubinden. „Wir verharmlosen nichts, gleichzeitig werden aber auch keine überzogenen Schreckensszenarien an die Wand gemalt“, so Sprecher Prof. Dr. Martin Claußen.
Die Hamburger Forschungsthemen spannen einen weiten Bogen: Könnte zum Beispiel durch die globale Erwärmung der Permafrostboden Sibiriens tauen und gigantische Methanvorkommen freisetzen, die dann den Treibhauseffekt beschleunigen? Hängt die explosionsartige Entwicklung giftiger Algenblüten im Ozean mit höheren Wassertemperaturen zusammen? Und wie müssen Metropolen der Zukunft aussehen, damit Wohnen in der Großstadt auch mit dem Klimawandel lebenswert bleibt?
Start: Dienstag, 20. Oktober 2009, mit dem Thema: „Das Klimaproblem - was wissen wir denn wirklich?“ von Martin Claussen; danach vom 27.10.09 bis 02.02.10 immer dienstags, 16.00-18.00 Uhr im Geomatikum der Universität Hamburg, Hörsaal 2, Bundesstraße 55, 20146 Hamburg
5. Oktober 2009. - Interview "Freude am Absurden" mit Jonas Janssen in der taz. 3. Oktober 2009. In einem Artikel "Digitaler Norddeutscher Klimaatlas informieren über möglichen künftigen Klimawandel" beschreiben Insa Meinke und Eva Gerstner jetzt in den DMG-Nachrichten den "Klimaatlas" möglicher zukünftiger norddeutscher Klimate . 25. September 2009 - am 25. November wird in Hamburg der Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg veröffentlicht: Dieser Bericht wurde unter dem Vorsitz von Hans von Storch im Rahmen des Exzellenzclusters CliSAP am KlimaCampus der Universität Hamburg erarbeitet. Zweck ist eine Zusammenstellung des Wissens über Klima, Klimavariabilität und Klimawandel in dieser Region. Neben grundlegenden Kapiteln wurden bestimmten Bereichen berichtet wird. Dazu zählen
zum Beispiel Landwirtschaft, Stadtklima und Küstenschutz. Der Bericht stellt dar, inwiefern Übereinstimmung über Wissen besteht, in welchen Fragen Uneinigkeit oder Unwissen herrscht und inwiefern weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht.Details siehe Programm.
23 September 2009 - The monograph Marine Climate and Climate Change Storms, Wind Waves and Storm Surges by Ralf Weisse and myself has now been published by Springer Praxis Books as part of its series "Environmental Sciences"; 200 pages, hardcover, ISBN: 978-3-540-25316-7.A summary of the book: The book reviews the present knowledge on marine climate and climate change. The emphasize generally is more on methods, concepts of understanding and the problems related rather than a description of the present climate, ongoing and future changes. Moreover the book concentrates on wind, wind-generated waves, mean sea level and storm surges, while aspects such as ocean temperature, salinity, or circulation are not addressed.
The book starts with a general introduction to climate and climate variability. In particular concepts for understanding climate variability are discussed and emphasize is put on stochastic climate models that are considered to be fundamental for the understanding of observed climate variability ranging from several months to hundreds of years. Also a discussion of the interplay between different the scales in climate are provided.
Chapter 2 describes the marine weather phenomena this book is about, namely mid-latitude storms and storm tracks, tropical cyclones, wind-generated waves at the sea surface, mean sea level, tides, and storm surges. Chapter 3 discusses the use of numerical models in environmental sciences. Such models are widely used; however, different concepts are often applied. The book starts with an overview of the different concepts and lateron concentrates on what is called quasi-realistic modelling, that is to use as complex as possible models for experimentation and simulation. In the following, examples of such models are discussed, namely global and regional climate models, general circulation models, wind wave and tide-surge models.
Chapter 4 addresses the question on how long-term changes in marine climate may be determined. This chapter represents a central part of the book as it discusses the concepts and methods involved together with a number of problems typically associated with the application of these methods. The book starts with a discussion of problems associated with data quality, availability and homogeneity. Next proxy data are introduced as an approach to minimize such problems. Reanalyzes and regionalization techniques, and the problems inherent in these methods for the interpretation of long-term changes, are discussed. The chapter concludes with an introduction of the detection and attribution problem.
While the first four chapters were primarily about methods and concepts, chapter 5 reviews the present knowledge about past, ongoing and potential future changes in marine climate. Again, different sections are provided for the different phenomena this book is about, namely extra-tropical cyclones and storm tracks, tropical cyclones, wind-generated waves, tides, storm surges and mean sea level. Finally, appendices covering fundamental concepts such as scale analysis, geostrophic wind, or geopotential height are provided. A comprehensive index helps in easily indentifying pages of interest.
List of Content.
23. September 2009 - Im Zusammenhang mit der Tagung zur 500jährigen Wiederkehr der Cosmas- und Damian Flut in 1509, auf die die Bildung zumindest eines Teils des Dollart zurückgeführt wird, erreichte mich die Frage: „Sind solche Sturmfluten - Klimawandel - auch heute noch denkbar? Sind unsere Deiche unter dem Gesichtspunkt ausreichend?“ Meine Antwort dazu:„Derzeit sind Mensch und Gesellschaft hinter den norddeutschen Deichen wesentlich besser geschützt als 1509 bei der Cosmas- und Damianflut im Dollart, oder 1634 bei der groten Manndränke in Nordfriesland; der Küstenschutz ist technisch auf viel höherem Niveau; man hat den physikalischen Prozeß hinter den Sturmfluten verstanden; man kann Sturmfluten einige Stunden und Tage vorhersagen mit einiger Genauigkeit.
Das Risiko einer extremen Sturmflut mit Versagen von Deichen und anderen Küstenschutzmaßnahmen ist heute sehr, sehr klein geworden aber doch nicht verschwunden - und vermutlich mit verheerenden Folgen auch deshalb verbunden, weil viele ein solches Ereignis in Unkenntnis der Lage fälschlich als undenkbar ausschließen. Eine 1962 Wetterlage, wie sie zur Katastrophe nicht nur in Hamburg führte, mit etwas mehr Wind und einer etwas langsameren Verlagerung des Sturmtiefs könnte doch zu deutlich höheren Wasserständen führen, aber die Ausbildung der 1962er Wetterlage war aber doch schon sehr selten. Ein "höher" ist nicht unmöglich. Aber doch sehr unwahrscheinlich.
Der Klimawandel wird die Gefahrensituation etwas verschärfen, aber auf absehbare Zeit nicht in einem Umfang, der wasserbaulich nicht bewältigt werden kann. Bisher hat es bei den Sturmfluten klimawandelbedingt keine wesentliche Änderung gegeben. Unsere Szenarien für das vor uns liegenden Jahrhundert deuten an, daß es erforderlich ist, über innovative Anpassungsmaßnahmen nachzudenken, daß wir aber für dies "Nachdenken" einige Jahre zur Verfügung haben, um Vor- und Nachteile im demokratischen Prozeß abzuwägen.“
In diesem Zusammnenhang ist auch die Einschätzung des Instituts für Küstenforschung, wie sie in einer Stellungnahme vor dem Kieler Landtag formuliert wurde, von Interesse - siehe die entsprechende Broschüre des Norddeutschen Klimabüros. A short version is also available in Dutch.
19 September - The interview with René Laprise (Montréal) has published by the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter 3 (4).Abstract: The height of storm surges is extremely important for a low-lying country like The Netherlands. By law, part of the coastal defence system has to withstand a water level that on average occurs only once every 10 000 years. The question then arises whether and how climate change affects the heights of extreme storm surges. Published research points to only small changes. However, due to the limited amount of data available results are usually limited to relatively frequent extremes like the annual 99%-ile. We here report on results from a 17-member ensemble of North Sea water levels spaning the period 1950–2100. It was created by forcing a surge model of the North Sea with meteorological output from a state-of-the-art global climate model which has been driven by greenhouse gas emissions following the SRES A1b scenario. The large ensemble size enables us to calculate 10 000 year return water levels with a low statistical uncertainty. In the one model used in this study, we find no statistically significant change in the 10 000 year return values of surge heights along the Dutch during the 21st century. Also a higher sea level resulting from global warming does not impact the height of the storm surges. As a side effect of our simulations we also obtain results on the interplay between surge and tide.
Compare with Woth K., 2005: Projections of North Sea storm surge extremes in a warmer climate: How important are the RCM driving GCM and the chosen scenario? Geophys Res Lett: 32, L22708, doi: 10.1029/2005GL023762
2. September - Die Autoren Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch haben eine deutschsprachige Zusammenfassung ihres Buches "Climate and Society" (World Publisher, Singapore) verfasst. Auch das Inhaltsverzeichnis und das einführende Kapitel können heruntergeladen werden.29. August 2009 - On 13-17 September 2010, GKSS will organize together with a number of sponsors, among them KlimaCampus in Hamburg, Hamburg Port Authority, Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, and IOC, an international conferencce on the various facets of storm surges - the organization is with the LOICZ International Project Office /(IPO) - for further details refer to this web page. Right after the storm surge conference in Hamburg (13-17 September) there will be a related event in Rotterdam Deltas in Times of Climate Change , 29 September - 1 October 2010.
20. August 2009 - The book Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk coauthored by Nico Stehr and myself, has been published by World Scientific (Singapore).On the book: "Climate and Society" presents from a transdisciplinary view, climate and its changes, impact and perception. The history of climate and its different approaches over time - which are anthropocentric and more system-oriented, academic and application-driven - are reviewed, as are the possibilities of managing climate, in particular by steering the greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, the concepts of climate as a resource for societies are discussed and the emergence of climate non-constancy and its impact, studied. In essence, this book provides an absorbing account of the cultural history of climate and relates it to contemporary scientific knowledge about climate, climate change and its impact.
One of the messages of this book is that the scientific subject matter “climate” should not only be located within the domain of natural sciences, but also within the realm of the social sciences and humanities. This is even more valid when the public and policy-makers have to be advised how to deal with suggestions and warnings prompted by scientific climate research.
The list of contents and the first overview section is available from this pdf.
1. on Thursday, 27. August in the University of Cape Town will Hans von Storch and George Philander speak and discuss about The Science and Ethics of Global Warming - Facing Future Challenges: Consequences and Opportunities. Press release by DAAD Information Centre Johannesburg.
2. on Friday, 28. August in the STIAS Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study will Hans von Storch, Erik Pasche, Dave Phelp and Mario Roussow speak and discuss about Flood Resilience in Climate Change Scenarios - State-of-the-Art Approaches for Shoreline-Stabilisation. Press release by DAAD Information Centre Johannesburg.
8. August 2009 - Chances are good that later this year, or early 2010, the book Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography. A prolonged weekend discussion with Walter Munk, co-edited by Klaus Hasselmann and myself, will be published by Springer Publisher. An exciting read.5. August - The textbook Marine Climate Change: Ocean Waves, Storms and Surges in the Perspective of Climate Change coauthered by Ralf Weisse and myself, published by Springer Praxis Books / Environmental Sciences, will become available of 26 August 2009.On the book: Marine environmental conditions such as storms, storm surges and wave heigths are directly experienced by, for example, off-shore operations or coastal populations. The authors review and bring together the state-of-the-art and present day knowledge about historical changes, recent trends and concepts on how marine environmental conditions may change in the future.
Contents: Weather and Sea; Climate Change; Modelling the Marine Environment and Climate Change; Storms; Waves; Storm Surges; Summary and Discussion; Bibliography.
See also announcement
24 July 2009 - The date and location for the 6th Study Conference on BALTEX have been fixed: Miêdzyzdroje, Island of Wolin, Poland, 14 to 18 June 2010.
The initial website for the BALTEX Conference with more information on e.g. Conference themes is up now.
19. July 2009 - Two new editions of the 1999-booklet Stehr/von Storch: "Wetter, Klima, Mensch" will be published in German and English languages this fall - they are already announced at Amazon: - Climate and Society. Climate as a Resource, Climate as a Risk, World Scientific, and
- Klima, Wetter, Mensch Verlag Barbara Budrich
19. July 2009 - First short interview with eminent atmospheric scientists on their subjective views about the state of atmospheric science, its developments in recent years, and the perspectives for the future in
Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter (Volume 3, issue 3) - with Heinz Wanner. 13. July - Digitaler Norddeutscher Klimaatlas online --
Sommerniederschlag kann in Norddeutschland um bis zu 40 Prozent abnehmenDas Norddeutsche Klimabüro des GKSS-Forschungszentrums Geesthacht hat einen einzigartigen digitalen Online-Atlas zum künftigen Klimawandel in Norddeutschland entwickelt. Entscheidungsträger und interessierte Laien können sich ab sofort im Internet schnell und umfassend über den aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Klimawandel in der Region informieren. Eines der zahlreichen Ergebnisse des Klimaatlas: Der Sommerniederschlag in Norddeutschland kann bis zum Ende des Jahrhunderts um acht bis 40 Prozent abnehmen.
Weitere Details.
With the G8 set to meet in Italy this week, a report from a world-wide consortium of research institutes outlining a strategy to avert an otherwise imminent failure in climate policy is being published by the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Mackinder Programme and the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society at the University of Oxford.
How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course argues that the only polices that will work are those which focus directly on improvement in energy efficiency and the decarbonisation of energy supply (called the “Kaya Direct” Approach in the report) rather than on emissions, which is an outcome of these processes. Professor Gwyn Prins from LSE and the report’s coordinating author said: ‘Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.’The report argues that the recent Japanese ‘Mamizu’ climate strategy is the world’s first to start down this real world course in sharp contrast to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the UK Climate Change Act and the US Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation. Professor Steve Rayner, Director of InSIS at the University of Oxford, said: ‘The world has centuries of experience in decarbonising its energy supply and Japan has led the world in policy-driven improvements in energy efficiency. These are the models to which we ought to be looking.’
Professor Prins said: ‘These are confusing times for anyone interested in global climate policy. Currently, huge institutional and diplomatic effort is being expended as the world moves quickly toward a major international meeting in Copenhagen in December. But the best case outcome being predicted is merely more of the symbolic exhortation that has characterised climate policy for almost two decades.’ The report points out that between 1990 and 2000 the carbon intensity of the global economy was 0.27 tonnes for every additional $1000 of GDP. In the period 2001 to 2006 this rose to 0.53. Professor Prins said: ‘In the real world, indicators are moving stubbornly in the wrong direction. The world has been re-carbonising, not de-carbonising. The evidence is that the Kyoto Protocol and its underlying approach have had and are having no meaningful effect whatsoever.’
The Obama Administration has argued that one should never waste a good crisis. How to Get Climate Policy back on Course shows how deep the crisis of climate policy really is and gives a real world alternative to the continued pursuit of policies that have so clearly failed. How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course is the sequel to The Wrong Trousers: Radically Re-thinking Climate Policy (2007), its influential LSE/Oxford predecessor. That study documented how the Kyoto Protocol method had failed and why it was doomed to fail. Since then, its analysis has held true.
The authors of the report are: Gwyn Prins, London School of Economics, Malcolm Cook, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australia, Christopher Green, McGill University, Canada, Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, UK Professor Atte Korhola, University of Helsinki, Finland Eija-Riitta Korhola, University of Helsinki, Finland Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado, USA, Steve Rayner, University of Oxford, UK Akihiro Sawa, University of Tokyo Japan, Daniel Sarewitz, Arizona State University, USA Nico Stehr, Zeppelin University, Germany Hans von Storch, GKSS Research Centre, Germany
Professor Prins is the overall co-ordinating author.
24. June 2009 - In the context of the BALTEX project, a new effort is made to review the available liteature on sea level change in the Baltic Sea. Please inform Birgit Hünicke (birgit.huenick(at)hzg.de) at GKSS about publications in any language, ongoing projects and initiatives dealing with sea-level variations and change in the Baltic Sea, including coastal erosion. Helpful suggestions, comments, details and references concerning planned or ongoing research related to Baltic Sea level studies are most welcome. For further details refer to this document.
23. Juni, Skt. Hans - Eine persönliche Bemerkung: Der Leser Werner K. aus C.S. im Staate T. hat mir ein Buch zukommen lassen: Die grosse Hitze oder die Errettung Österreichs durch den Legationsrat Dr. Tuzzi. 1974 erschienen. Von Jörg Mauthe. Auf dem Umschlag heisst es "Eine Hitzeperiode von unvollstellbarem Ausmaß überfallt ... Österreich ...". und weiter: "Dieser Roman handelt von der unaufhaltsamen Verösterreichung der ganzen Welt", die tatsächlich auch schön durch meine Meldung des gestrigen Tages sowie die Graphik eines mir doch ähnelnden Donald Duck, die mir ebenfalls heute aus Österreich zukam, demonstriert wird. 
15. Juni 2009 - Für die Freunde der friesischen Sprache gibt es jetzt das westfriesische Abstract Klimaatferoaring, seespegel, stoarmfloeden yn ‘e Noardsee: wat stiet út te wachtsjen? meines Vortrages am 13. Juni beim Friesenkongreß in Leer. Siehe auch Bericht in nijsnet.nl. 
14. Juni 2009 - Die "Klimainitiative" der HGF, in der die Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft HGF ihr Potential im Bereich der regionalen Klimaforschung bündelt, ist nach erfolgreicher Begutachtung durch den Senat der Helmholtz Gemeinschaft nun genehmigt worden. Siehe dazu eine Presseerklärung der HGF. Das Institut für Küstenforschung der GKSS übernimmt im Bereich der Modellierung signifikante Aufgaben.
22. Mai 2009 - Der Umwelt- und Agrarausschuß des Schleswig-Holsteinischen Landtages beriet am 20. Mai in Kiel die Antwort der Landesregierung auf die Große Anfrage der Fraktion der SPD zur Bilanz und Zukunft des Küstenschutzes in Schleswig-Holstein an Nord- und Ostsee. Im Rahmen einer mündlichen Anhörung hat das Institut für Küstenforschung dazu eine Stellungnahme abgeben. In dieser Stellungnahme wird der aktuellen Forschungsstand zu Änderungen von Nordseesturmfluten im Klimawandel so zusammengefasst: Bisher hat sich der vom Menschen verursachte Klimawandel kaum auf die Nordseesturmfluten ausgewirkt. Künftig können sie jedoch höher auflaufen. Bis 2030 ist der derzeitige Küstenschutz an der Nordsee fast genauso wirksam wie heute. Bis Ende des Jahrhunderts kann jedoch Handlungsbedarf entstehen, denn bis dahin können Sturmfluten 3 - 11 Dezimeter höher auflaufen als heute.
Wie sich küstennahe Prozesse, wie zum Beispiel Gezeiten, Sedimentation und wasserbauliche Maßnahmen, auf Wasserstände in der Deutschen Bucht auswirken können, muss künftig noch erforscht werden.
Abstract: The present paper is a call to cultural sciences for helping climate science to establish a sustainable practice of policy advice concerning man-made climate change.
As a climate scientists engaged in communication with stakeholders and the media, mostly in Germany, the author has noticed a notable discrepancy between scientific knowledge about climate change, and the understanding in the public at large, specifically as fostered by the media and some publicly visible climate scientists. In this essay, this discrepancy is analysed to some extent and framed as the presence of two competing types of knowledge, namely a body of knowledge named “scientific construct” and another body of knowledge named “cultural construct” of man-made climate change. The relationship and the dynamics of these two knowledge claims are not well researched. In order to understand the dynamical interaction of the different knowledge claims significant efforts from cultural sciences are needed. Unfortunately, so far these disciplines do not often consider this field. Two examples of useful analyses are presented as examples.
14. April 2009 - Vom 6-10 Juli 2009 fährt das Institut für Küstenforschung die schleswig-holsteinische Westküste ab. Unter dem Titel "Forschung vor Anker. Die Ludwig Prandtl - OpenShip 2009" besuchen wir mit dem Schiff die Orte Büsum, Tönning, Husum, Wyk und Hörnum. Weitere Informationen hier. 
14. April 2009 - Das Norddeutsche Klimabüro nimmt Stellung zu Meldungen in den Medien, wonach 50o C Lufttemperatur zukünftig in Norddeutschland in Extremfällen eintreten werden - die Behauptung ist durch gegenwärtige Szenarienrechnung nicht gestützt - siehe Norddeutsches Klimabüro nimmt Stellung: Maximaltemperaturen bis zu 50 Grad Celsius auch im Hamburger Raum? in den DMG Nachrichten 1-2009, Seiten 12-13.Verschiebungen der Niederschlagsperiode, Häufigkeit von Starkregen u.ä. erzwingen Entscheidungen in der Forstwirtschaft oder der Abwasserwirtschaft mit erheblichen finanziellen Folgen. Zur sachlichen Vorbereitung von notwendigen Entscheidungen ist es daher erforderlich, ein größeres Wissen über die regionalen Veränderungen des Klimawandels zu erschließen und in die kommunalpolitische Diskussion einzuführen. Da die Wissenschaft an Modellen arbeitet, die eine Vorhersage auch regional bezogen erlauben werden, so zumindest die Hoffnung, wird über kurz oder lang, dieses Wissen zur Verfügung stehen. Auch wenn Klimaveränderungen erst in den Jahren 2050 ff erkennbar auftreten, müssen relevante Entscheidungen im kommenden Jahrzehnt getroffen werden. So ist der Austausch von Kanälen und ihre ausreichende Dimensionierung zwar keine kommunalpolitisches Highlight und das Vergraben von Steuermillionen rettet auch keinen Wahlsieg, die rechtzeitige Vorsorge vor einem Zusammenbruch der Stadtentwässerung werden verantwortungsbewusste Kommunalpolitiker aber in Angriff nehmen, so das Problembewusstsein vorhanden ist.
Dies ist für mich eine wohltuende und klare Darstellung jenseits der "Wir retten das Klima"-Rhetorik und symbolischer Akte.
6. April 2009 - the manuscript of the book "Climate and society" by Nico Stehr and Hans von Storch has now been completed and sent to the publisher World Scientific. The book is expected to be available in October 2009, or possibly a bit earlier. It is an updated, English version of the 1999 book "Klima Wetter Mensch" of which 5000 copies were printed and sold by Beck-Verlag. An updated German version is almost completed as well.Abstract: Prewhitening of hydrologic as well as other types of natural time series has been suggested in the literature to eliminate the adverse effect of autocorrelation on the results of trend tests. It has been suggested in a recent study that prewhitening is not recommended when a true trend exists in the data. When prewhitening is applied, there has also been a debate on whether or not to remove an apparent trend before estimating the autocorrelation parameter q to ensure effective prewhitening. This is because while failing to remove an apparent trend before estimating q results in loss of power due to overestimation of q when a true trend exists in the data, it is also true that removing an apparent trend before estimating q results in loss of significance due to underestimation of q when no trend exists in the data. In this study, the applicability of prewhitening in the possible presence of a true trend is first established. It is then shown that simultaneous estimation of the trend slope and the autocorrelation coefficient, followed by correction of bias in the correlation coefficient largely eliminates the under/over-estimation of q within the limits of sampling variations, thus greatly enhancing the effectiveness of prewhitening. It is also shown that careful inference about the correlation model is critical for effective prewhitening. A comparison between the results obtained with and without bias correction is presented for a case study of trends in riverflow series from different parts of the world. The results emphasize the importance of bias correction in small samples, as well as the importance of careful choice of a serial correlation model for the data, especially in the case of long time series.
Abstract: A survey among climate scientists is used to examine the terminology concerning two key concepts in climate science, namely, predictions and projections, as used among climate scientists. The survey data suggest that the terminology used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not adopted, or only loosely adopted, by a significant minority of scientists. Contrary to established guidelines, approximately 29% of the respondents associate probable developments with projections, and approximately 20% of the respondents associate possible developments with predictions.
24. März 2009 - Ein gutes Buch, ein nützliches Buch, eine herrliche Schreibe. Distanz, Kompetenz und Tiefe: Das neue Buch von Reinhard Böhm: "Heiße Luft – Reizwort Klimawandel. Fakten – Ängste – Geschäfte". Edition Vabene. Hier eine Besprechung.Zusammenfassung: Die naturwissenschaftlichen und populären Wissensansprüche in Bezug auf Klima, Klimawandel und Klimawirkung unterscheiden sich erheblich; dies hat Folgen für die naturwissenschaftliche Beratung von Politik und Gesellschaft. Wie üblich in einer postnormalen Phase einer Wissenschaft sieht sich die Klimaforschung für verschiedene Interessengruppen instrumentalisiert. Zusammen mit dem Gebot der Bringeschuld entsteht so eine Mischung aus Politik und Wissenschaft, wobei die spezifischen Aufgaben und Leistungen der Wissenschaft verschwimmen. Hier ergeben sich wichtige Aufgaben für eine sozialwissenschaftliche Begleitforschung, die es bisher nur vereinzelt gibt. Abschließend werden die Bemühungen des Forschungszentrums GKSS beschrieben, dennoch eine unabhängige wissenschaftlich basierte Beratungsleistung zu erbringen..
Im Jahre 2009 jährt sich zum 30.sten Male der Beginn der wissenschaftlichen Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Institut für Meereskunde der Universität Hamburg (IfM) und dem Institut für Wasserbau der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Danzig (IBW). Diese Kooperation ist seit 1979 ununterbrochen durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) und die Polnische Akademie der Wissenschaften (PAN) gefördert worden. Es ist in dieser Zeit gelungen, von einem Brückenschlag zwischen den Machtblöcken in West und Ost zu einer vertrauensvollen und fruchtbaren Partnerschaft im vereinten Europa voranzuschreiten.
Der Begründer der Kooperation auf deutscher Seite, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Sündermann, ist heute emeritierter Professor an der Universität Hamburg, der Begründer auf polnischer Seite, Prof. Dr. Piotr Wilde, ist im Jahre 2007 leider verstorben. Gleichwohl ist die Zusammenarbeit auf beiden Seiten institutionell so stark verankert und so vital, dass sie nun mit neuen Führungspersonen in eine nächste Phase eintreten soll. Auf deutscher Seite ist jetzt Prof. Dr. Hans von Storch, Direktor am Institut für Küstenforschung des GKSS Forschungszentrums Geesthacht der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (IfK), Mitantragsteller; auf polnischer Seite ist der verantwortliche Partner Prof. Dr. Andrzej Sawicki, heutiger Direktor des IBW. Das IfK war schon im vergangenen Jahrzehnt an der Kooperation aktiv beteiligt.
Jetzt hat die DFG dem Vorschlag zugestimmt, diese bewährte Partnerschaft von IfM, IfK und IBW weiterhin zu fördern - für die kommenden drei Jahre.
Die statistische Bewertung der Klimaentwicklung in den letzten Jahrzehnten zeigt, dass wir derzeit eine Erwärmung erleben, die stärker ist als aufgrund natürlich Vorgänge zu erwarten ist. Unsere Klimamodelle verschaffen uns Vorstellungen, wie die Reaktion des Klimasystems auf verschiedene mögliche Faktoren sein würde, seien es veränderte Konzentrationen von Aerosolen oder Treibhausgasen, veränderter Landnutzung, aber auch Sonnenaktivität oder die Gegenwart vulkanischen Materials in der Atmosphäre. Nutzt man dies Wissen, so ist die beste Erklärung für diese Erwärmung die sich laufend erhöhende Konzentration von Treibhausgasen in der Atmosphäre Die Feststellung der Unnatürlichkeit der Erwärmung nennt man Detektion; die Bestimmung der Treibhausgaskonzentration als plausibelster Erklärung Attribution.
Die Modelle erlauben uns auch abzuschätzen, wie sich zukünftig das Klima entwickeln würde, wenn wir verschiedene plausible Entwicklungen der Treibhausgaskonzentration annehmen. In allen Fällen ergibt sich eine deutliche Erwärmung sowie ein höherer Meeresspiegel; Niederschlagsmuster werden sich verändern, Meereis- und Schneegebiete sich vermindern. Wie stark diese Veränderungen sein werden, hängt vonder Stärke der Emissionen von Treibhausgasen ab. Das diese Veränderungen bis zur Mitte des 21.ten Jahrhunderts vollends zum Stillstand kommen, ist sehr unwahrscheinlich; dass dies zum Ende des Jahrhunderts gelingen wird, wäre gut aber ist nicht wahrscheinlich. Der Meeresspiegel insbesondere wird weiter steigen, auch jenseits des Jahres 2100.
Klimamodelle stellen also ein wichtige Quelle an Klimawissen dar - und wie in der modernen Wissenschaft üblich wird auch dieses Instrument beständig auf den Prüfstand gesetzt, ob sie wie gewünscht funktionieren, ob sie tatsächlich die Klimadynamik und die des Klimasystems gegenüber Veränderungen in so wichtigen Eigenschaften wie der Zusammensetzung der Atmosphäre korrekt beschreiben.
Es gibt immer einen Restzweifel, aber in den letzten Jahren schält sich immer besser heraus, dass die Modelle tatsächlich viele wesentliche Eigenschaften des Klimasystems nachweislich richtig darstellen. Nicht in jedem räumlichen Detail, aber die großen Muster - auf der Grösse von Kontinenten und mehr, nicht auf der Grösse von Alpentälern. Derzeit werden Klimamodelle weiter vervollkommnet - so dass sie besser räumliches Detail darstellen, und mehr Faktoren beschreiben, wie etwa die Reaktion der Vegetation auf verändertes Klimazustand und die Rückwirkung auf der Klima.
Ein Thema der Tagung am 26. Februar 2009 im 16:00 und der Pressekonferenz am 27. Februar 2009 (beides im Theatersaal der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sonnenfelsgasse 19) ist eben dieses, nämlich ,,Klimamodelle - was können sie und was können sie nicht?", über das Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans von Storch sprechen wird.
Ein anderes Thema ist der Beitrag, den Österreich an der globalen Erwärmung spielt und zukünftig spielen wird. Es sieht derzeit so aus, dass sich die österreichischen Emissionen von Treibhausgasen stabilisieren, aber sie sind auf einem recht hohen Niveau, dass die Temperaturen auch aufgrund der österreichischen Freisetzung von Treibhausgasen noch weiter steigen werden. Österreich steht also, wie alle anderen Länder auch vor der Aufgabe, die Emissionen noch weiter (und zwar durchaus erheblich!) zu senken. Aber auch mit den nicht mehr vermeidbaren Klimaänderungen, die sich auch in Österreich in den kommenden Jahrzehnten zeigen werden, wird das Land konstruktiv umzugehen haben. Man wird sich in Österreich anpassen müssen an veränderte Klimabedingungen; vielleicht wird es auch gelingen, günstige mikroklimatische Veränderungen durch geeignete Stadt- und Landschaftsplanung zu bewirken. In Bezug auf Anpassungspotentiale und mikroklimatische Gestaltung gibt es noch viel Forschungsbedarf für die kommenden Jahrzehnte, wo Österreich wesentliche Impulse setzen kann.
Medialer Response
Abstract. We investigated whether anthropogenic forcing is a plausible explanation for the observed warming in the Baltic Sea catchment area. Therefore, we compared the most recent trends in the surface temperature over land with anthropogenic climate change projections from regional climate model simulations. We analyzed patterns of change with different spatio-temporal resolutions. The observed annual area-mean change in the daily-mean temperature was consistent with the anthropogenic climate change signal. This finding was robust to the removal of the signal of the North Atlantic Oscillation. In contrast to the annual area-mean change, we found little consistency in both annual cycle and spatial variability of the observed and projected changes.
CL42 - Global and regional sea level rise and variability, and
CL43 - Perspectives of local and regional sea level rise and storm surge statistics in the North Sea and elsewhere
For abstract submission klick here.
Weisse, R., H. von Storch, U. Callies, A. Chrastansky, F. Feser, I. Grabemann, H. Guenther, A. Pluess, T. Stoye, J. Tellkamp, J. Winterfeldt and K. Woth: Regional meteo-marine reanalyses and climate change projections: Results for Northern Europe and potentials for coastal and offshore applications has beeen published on the web-site of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The printed version is announced for May 2009.
Also available in English.
25. December 2008 - In the framework of "CSC (China Scholarship Council) Junior Scientists Exchange Program" GKSS is offering three PhD positions under my supervision for Chinese students:Details of the overall process
Positions list
Our three positions relate to polar low simulations in the North Pacific, tracking algorithms for storms and optimizing convection parameterizations for typhoon simulations in regional climate models.
A useful clarification on the whole issue has been published by KNMI's Wilco Hazeleger in an article published in NRC/handelsblad
Abstract: Previous statistical detection methods based partially on climate model simulations indicate that, globally, the observed warming lies very probably outside the natural variations. We use a more simple approach to assess recent warming at different spatial scales without making explicit use of cli mate simulations. It considers the likelihood that the observed recent clus tering of warm record-breaking mean temperatures at global, regional and local scales may occur by chance in a stationary climate. Under two statistical null-hypotheses, autoregressive and long-memory, this probability turns to be very low: for the global records lower than p=0.001, and even lower for some regional records. The picture for the individual long station records is not as clear, as the number of recent record years is not as large as for the spatially averaged temperatures.
11. November 2008 - Presseerklärung "Klima wandelt Herbst in Norddeutschland: Später, wärmer, grüner" des Norddeutschen Klimabüros zu erwarteteten Veränderungen des Herbstklimas.
24 October 2008, Göteborg - The Faculty of a Science of the University of Göteburg - some call this city Gothenburg - has conferred to me the degree of a "Hedersdoktor" or "doktor honoris causa". In a formal ceremony with extensive use of Latin language the University celebrated it own "promovendi", which of course after the procedure were "promota" and "promoti", honoured its "jubilee doctors", who had received their doctorate degree 50 years ago, plus a number of mostly international scientists, among them me. The ceremony was quite Swedish, formal and joyous at the same time, with reasonable hats quite different from what is seen in movies. The citation mentions in particular the BALTEX effort.
Obviously, I am very glad about this recognition; moreover, that it comes from Sverige, more specifically from Västra Götaland, means a lot for me.
Dixi.
The first round ran in 1996; the second in 2003. The results are available from a report available on the web. After suspicions have been raised that the second survey would have been hijacked by "skeptics" (even if an analysis of the issues, where skeptics would be expected to leave a mark, yielded no indications for irregularities), this time the on-line participation is constrained. After selecting potentially suitable respondents, these were invited by e-mail and a response URL, which could be used only once. The selection was done (A) by screening the top ten ISI ranked journals for the past 10 years, (B) by using the list of respondents used in the analysis by Oreskes (as published on Peiser's web site) and (C) drawing e-mail addresses of members of climate research institutes posted on the web. Duplicate addresses were removed. In many cases, the emails to the invitees failed because of addresses having gone out of operation. Also, some respondents declined to participate because they did not consider themselves to be climate scientists.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Total | |
| Original mail-out | 1042 | 802 | 837 | 2681 |
| Valid sample | 546 | 732 | 780 | 2058 |
| Responses | 148 | 76 | 151 | 375 |
| 27% | 10% | 19% | 18% |
Interestingly, the survey is already now attracting interest in the blogosphere. We have placed a response to some of the comments made there on Prometheus.
The reference is: Schlüter MH, Merico A, Wiltshire KH, Greve W, von Storch H, A statistical analysis of climate variability and ecosystem response in the German Bight, Ocean Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s10236-008-0146-5.
29. September 2008 - Der Hamburger Klimabericht, der das wissenschaftlich abgesicherte (also: entsprechend veröffentlichte) Wissen über Klimawandel im Grossraum Hamburg dokumentiert, macht gute Fortschritte. Für den 26. November 2008 ist eine erste fachöffentliche Präsentation der Teilkapitel geplannt. Logistisch wird das Projekt geleitet vom Norddeutschen Klimabüro, das gemeinsam von GKSS und dem Hamburger Klima-Exzellenzzentrum CLISAP betrieben wird. Eine aktuelle Webseite gibt Auskunft über Kapitelstruktur und Ansprechpartner. Wissenschaftler, die einschlägig relevantes Material veröffentlicht haben, werden gebeten, sich mit den entsprechenden Leitautoren in Verbindung zu setzen.
20 September 2008 - Meteorologische Zeitschrift published a special issue on the design, performance and usage of the regional atmospheric model COSMO-CLM, which serves in Germany as community model for regional climate simulations (the consortium has 70 members in 21 working groups). This issue (volume 17/4) has been edited by Burkhardt Rockel (GKSS), Andreas Will (TU Cottbus) and Andres Hense (U Bonn) - with the result of 15 articles, of which three document work done at GKSS, on the simulation of polar lows, typhoons and the climate a different regions:- Zahn, M., and H. von Storch, 2008: Tracking Polar Lows in CLM, Meteor. Z. 17: 445-453
- Feser, F.,and H. von Storch, 2008: Regional modelling of the western Pacific typhoon season 2004, Meteor. Z. 17, 519-528 -- open access
- Rockel, B., and B. Geyer, 2008: The performance of the regional climate model CLM in different climate regions, based on the example of precipitation. Meteor. Z. 17: 487-498
Hans von Storch is since many years a member of the review panel of Meteorologische Zeitschrift.
Abstract: The possibility of using global mean near-surface temperature, its rate of change, or the global mean ocean heat-flux as predictors to statistically estimate the change of global mean sea-level is explored in the context of a long climate simulation of the past millennium with the climate model ECHO-G. Such relationships have recently been proposed to by-pass the difficulty of estimating future sea-level changes based on simulations with coarse-resolution climate models. It is found that, in this simulation, a simple linear relationship between mean temperature and the rate of change of sea-level does not exist. A regression parameter linking both variables, and estimated in sliding 120-year windows varies widely along the simulation and in some periods even attains negative values. The ocean heat-flux and the rate-of-change of mean temperature see to better capture the the rate-of-change of sea level due to thermal expansion.
“I used to think adaptation subtracted from our efforts on prevention. But I’ve changed my mind,” says Al Gore, a former American vice-president and Nobel prize-winner. “Poor countries are vulnerable and need our help.” His words reflect a shift in the priorities of environmentalists and economists. ... For years, greens said adaptation coping with climate change, rather than stopping it was a bit like putting out a fire on the Titanic: desirable, no doubt, but the main thing was to change course."
Amazing.
The assessment of the Delta Commissie is based on the work of a group of international scientists, among them Ralf Weisse and Hans von Storch from GKSS, who had been asked to prepare high-end scenarios until the year 2200. Their report undergoes presently final editing; it will be published in October, or so. This group had no influence of what has been published now. No prior information was given about specific dates or wording, no feedback was sought if the scienfitic assessment was correctly understood.
Abstract: In this paper, we compare the retained and added variability obtained using the regional climate model CLM (Climate version of the Local Model of the German Weather Service) to an earlier study using the RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System) model. Both models yield similar results for their standard configurations with a commonly used nudging technique applied to the driving model fields. Significantly both models do not adequately retain the large-scale variability in total kinetic energy with results poorer on a larger grid domain. Additional experiments with interior nudging, however, permit the retention of large-scale values for both models. The spectral nudging technique permits more added variability at smaller scales than a four dimensional internal grid nudging on large domains. We also confirmed that dynamic downscaling does not retain (or increase) simulation skill of the large-scale fields over and beyond that which exists in the larger-scale model or reanalysis. Our conclusions should be relevant to all applications of dynamic downscaling for regional climate simulations.
28. Juli 2008 - Das sehr erfolgreiche 128-seitige Büchlein Wetter, Klima, Mensch von Nico Stehr und Hans von Storch, das 1999 beim Beck Verlag München mit einer Auflage von 5000 Exemplaren herauskam, ist seit letztem Jahr vergriffen. Nun ist für 2009 eine Neuauflage bei einem anderen Verlag verabredet worden. Möglicherweise wird ein anderer Titel verwendet; der bisherige Titel "Klima, Wetter, Mensch" war vom Beck-Verlag ausgewählt worden und ist von mir immer als unsachgemäß empfunden worden, auch weil er vor Jahrzehnten schon für ein anderes Buch verwendet worden war.Obviously, Professor Kellows has not visited centers of climate science, has not extensively spoken with actors, but has relied heavily on all kind of documents, in journals, in media and on the internet. Among others, he is also dealing with the hockeystick-affair, and on that occasion also my own role has been in his focus. He got the details by and large right, which may be taken as evidence that the whole book is well researched. After beginning with the case of the protection the non-existent Pseudonovibus spiralis, the “postnormal” field of climate science is examined, with the cases of the MER/PPP controversy at the base of the SRES scenarios and the hockeystick controversy, and finally the orchestrated attacks on Bjørn Lomborg and his book. In all these cases, Kellow sees “noble cause corruption” at work, a tendency to be cavalier with evidence when the significance of the cause requires such. Thus, he speaks about the construction of knowledge, without falling into the trap of social science constructionists, who simply declare everything arbitrary, constructed, “just text”. Kellow is working out how values and cultural convictions about what is good and what is bad, is influencing scientific practice. The latter is obviously missing in the contemporary debate about the role of science when we are lead to believe that there are only skeptics and good scientists; that good policy follows directly from better natural science knowledge; that scientific knowldge needs to be framed so that it supports the good case.
The book is certainly provocative to some; others may welcome it as a refreshing opening of views, hypotheses and insights; of a valuable contribution of social sciences not in the naïve way of providing numbers and subroutines to climate modelers, but in analyzing the cultural background and conditioning of us environmental scientists sitting in the trenches (mostly in front of our computers). The book is certainly not the last word on the issue, but it is a good contribution to a scientific reflection about our own practice.
Abstract: Rising sea level together with regionally increased storm activity, caused by elevated and increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will in many parts of the world increase the risk of storm surges significantly. Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere may mitigate the increasing risks somewhat, but the major task for regional and local stakeholders will be to prepare for appropriate adaptation. In most cases, possible strategies include intensification of coastal defense measures, in particular strengthening dykes, and adaptation to intermittent flooding. In case of Hamburg and the tidal Elbe river a third option seems to be available, which aims at mitigating storm surge risks by applying estuary engineering constructions. This option is sketched in this paper. The option has the potential to significantly reduce the expected future increases of local surge heights.
Preprints can be ordered from me - HvS.
Abstract: It is difficult to assess the performance of climate reconstructionmethods in pre-instrumental periods. Here, the virtual reality created by a climate simulation of the past millennium with the model ECHO-G is used as a test bed of three methods to reconstruct the annual Northern Hemisphere temperature. The methods are Composite plus Scaling, the inverse regression method of Mann et al. (1998) and a direct principal components regression method. The testing methodology is based on the construction of pseudo-proxies derived from the climate model output, the application of each of these methods to pseudo-proxy timeseries, and the comparison of their result with the simulated mean temperature. Different structures of the noise have been used to construct pseudo-proxies, ranging from to the the simulated grid-point precipitation. Also, one sparse and one denser pseudo-proxy network, co-located with two real networks, have been considered. All three methods underestimate the simulated variations of the Northern Hemisphere temperature, but the Composite plus Scaling method clearly displays a better performance and is robust against the different noise models and network size. The most relevant factor determining the skill of the reconstruction appears to be the network size, whereas the different noise models tend to yield similar results.
DOI 10.1007/s00531-008-0349-5
19 June 2008 - Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita and Julie Jones have received the Günther-von-Sengbusch Award for the best GKSS paper for von Storch, H., E. Zorita, J. Jones, Y. Dimitriev, F. González-Rouco, and S. Tett, 2004: Reconstructing past climate from noisy data, Science 306, 679-682. A personal assessment of the impact of this paper is available here.DOI: 10.1127/0941-2948/2008/0282 - Abstract: An ensemble of typhoon events was examined to detect systematic skills and deficiencies of regional atmospheric models in dynamical downscaling these extreme weather phenomena from global reanalyses data. A regional atmospheric model hindcast was computed for the typhoon season 2004 for SE Asia and the western North Pacific. Global reanalyses data were dynamically downscaled to a grid resolution of about 50 km and in a double-nesting approach to 18 km. Simulated typhoon tracks and intensities were compared to best track data. The comparison revealed improved SLP and near-surface wind values by the RCM compared to the reanalyses for most cases. The reanalyses showed smaller great circle distances to the best track data than the regional model. Precipitation patterns and rainfall amounts were simulated more realistically by the RCM using the higher resolution compared to the 50 km run. It is concluded that regional models can improve simulated typhoon developments from global forcing reanalyses data by giving lower core pressure and higher wind speeds and more realistic precipitation patterns even though these values still do not reach observed values.
(Second in a series of papers - first one is: Feser, F., and H. von Storch, 2008: A dynamical downscaling case study for typhoons in SE Asia using a regional climate model. Mon. Wea. Rev. 136, 1806-1815)
Hamburgs Bürger empfinden Klimawandel als große Bedrohung GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht veröffentlicht Forsa-Studie
Der Klimawandel ist eine große bis sehr große Bedrohung für die Stadt, meinen 61 Prozent aller Hamburger Bürgerinnen und Bürger und nennen fast ausschließlich (83 Prozent) Sturmfluten und Überschwemmungen als mögliche klimarelevante Naturkatastrophen. Dies ist das Ergebnis einer Umfrage von Forsa (Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung und statistische Analyse mbH) im Auftrag des GKSS-Forschungszentrums Geesthacht. Insgesamt wurden 500 Hamburger zwischen März und April 2008 befragt.
Klimawandel präsent
44 Prozent der Befragten gaben an, dass sie Folgen des Klimawandels für Hamburg bereits heute deutlich wahrnehmen. "Die Umfrage macht deutlich, dass der Klimawandel in den Köpfen der Hamburger präsent ist. Das Risikobewusstsein für Naturkatastrophen ist hoch", so Prof. Dr. Beate Ratter, Leiterin der neuen Abteilung "Sozioökonomie im Küstenraum" am GKSS-Forschungszentrum in Geesthacht. Die Ausbildung oder das Geschlecht machen bei der Risikowahrnehmung der Hamburger kaum einen Unterschied.
Unterschied zwischen Alt und Jung
Signifikante Unterschiede zeigen sich tatsächlich beim Alter: Jugendliche und die Befragten bis 45 Jahre sehen sich besonders von einer Naturkatastrophe bedroht. "Erstaunlicherweise fühlt sich die Generation, die die große Sturmflut 1962 eventuell selbst erlebte, deutlich weniger beängstigt", sagt Beate Ratter. So fürchten 69 Prozent der über 60 jährigen Hamburger keine Naturkatastrophen, obwohl 72 Prozent von Ihnen zuvor angaben, den Klimawandel bereits heute zu spüren oder in spätestens 10 Jahren deutliche Folgen erwarten. "Nach mir die Sintflut, könnte man da meinen", so Beate Ratter und sieht gerade auch für diese Gruppe Nachholbedarf bei der Aufklärungsarbeit zu den möglichen Folgen des Klimawandels in der Stadt. "Das Risikobewusstsein ist das A und O im Katastrophenmanagement. Wenn es in den Köpfen der Hamburger keinen Platz für präventives Handeln und den Schutz im Katastrophenfall gibt, greifen alle anderen Bemühungen kaum", erläutert Beate Ratter. Denn sollte Hamburg eine schwere Sturmflut treffen, ist es gerade für die älteren Mitbürger wichtig, angemessen vorbereitet zu sein, um sich bei einer Katastrophe schützen zu können.
Klimabericht für Hamburg
Unabhängig von der jetzt erschienenen Forsa-Studie erarbeiten Küstenforscher aus Geesthacht bereits seit einem halben Jahr gemeinsam mit Instituten der Universität Hamburg am KlimaCampus Hamburg im Rahmen der Exzellenzinitiative (CLISAP) einen Klimabericht für die Metropolregion Hamburg. Dieser Report fasst den derzeitigen Wissenstand zum Klimawandel in der Region zusammen; erste Ergebnisse werden Ende 2009 erwartet.
Die FORSA-Studie und weitere Informationen erhalten Sie von:
Prof. Dr. Beate M.W. Ratter
Abteilung: Sozi-Ökonomie des Küstenraums
Institut für Küstenforschung
GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht
Tel.: +49(0)40-42838-5225
Fax.: +49(0)40-42838-4981
Mail: ratter@geowiss.uni-hamburg.de
Prof. Dr. Beate M.W. Ratter ist Professorin für Geographie an der Universität Hamburg und seit Oktober 2007 Leiterin der Abteilung "Sozio-Ökonomie des Küstenraums" im Institut für Küstenforschung des GKSS-Forschungszentrums Geesthacht.
Nargis, ein Tropensturm der Stärke 3, hat vor wenigen Tagen die südliche Küste Myanmars überquert und dabei eine 200 km breite Spur der Verwüstung hinterlassen. Die Zahl der Toten geht in die zehntausende, die wirtschaftlichen Schäden sind erheblich und werden viele Jahre nachwirken.
Die Ursache für die Katastrophe ist augenscheinlich – der Sturm und die damit einhergehende Sturmflut. Der Sturm selbst, auch vom deutschen Wetterdienst vorhergesagt, war nicht besonders stark; die Sturmflut war hoch, aber auch nicht ungewöhnlich. Ungewöhnlich waren zwei andere Faktoren. Zum einen die Verlaufsbahn des Zyklons fast parallel zur Küste, so dass nicht ein eng begrenztes Gebiet Gegenstand der Zerstörungskraft und Überschwemmung wurde, was schlimm genug ist, sondern ein ausgedehntes Gebiet längs der ganzen Südküste Myanmars. Zum anderen ist die Küste flach, durch das Irrawadi-Delta breit, verwinkelt und dicht bevölkert. Ein nennenswertes Warnsystem gibt es nicht; ein wirksamer Katastrophenschutz für die Zeit während und nach der Flut gibt es auch nicht; und der Küstenschutz ist unzureichend, auch für das gegenwärtig bekannte Gefahrenpotenzial.
Also, ein weiteres Beispiel für eine alte Wahrheit: – die gesellschaftlichen Zustände entscheiden, ob aus einem extremen Wetterereignis eine folgenschwere Katastrophe wird oder „nur“ eine schwere, aber kürzere Störung.
Dass es so nicht hätte kommen müssen, zeigt das Beispiel Bangladeshs, wo 1970 der Sturm Bhola und 1991 der Sturm 02B 250,000-500,000 Tote bzw. 140,000 Tote hinterliessen. Dort wird die Gefahr heute viel ernster genommen, und – auch mit Hilfe aus dem Westen - Küstenschutz und Katastrophenschutz praktiziert, so dass die Gefahr zwar nicht gebannt, aber doch deutlich vermindert werden konnte. Die Herrschenden in Myanmar und die internationale Gemeinschaft sind dem Beispiel Bangladeshs bisher nicht gefolgt. Sie haben offenbar Anderes, in ihrem Sinne Wichtigeres zu tun gehabt!
Dies Versagen ist gravierend, weil Stürme vom Kaliber Nargis regelmäßig vorkommen. Sie treffen immer wieder andere Küstenabschnitte; ihr Auswirkungen sind ist in der Regel relativ eng begrenzt, so dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass ein vorgegebener Bereich getroffen wird, nicht sehr groß ist. Es ist aber praktisch sicher, dass irgendein Gebiet in der Gefahrenzone innerhalb eines Jahres betroffen sein wird. Wenn man lange genug wartet, dann wird jedes Gebiet in der gefährdeten Region getroffen. Also ist Küsten- und Katastrophenschutz in diesen Gebieten überall erforderlich, und die reichen Länder müssen diese Region dabei unterstützen.
Die Reaktion auf die Katastrophe in Birma in den Medien des Westens zielt aber auf eine völlig andere Lernziel. Man liest kaum von Forderungen, die Bevölkerung zukünftig besser vor diesen Gefahren zu schützen, oder ihr zu ermöglichen, mit den Folgen zukünftiger Wetterextreme dieser Art effektiver umzugehen. Nein, Nargis ist wieder eine Warnung an die Menschheit, dem menschgemachten Klimawandel Einhalt zu gebieten. Die Lehre auf Nargis ist insofern ein weiterer Verweis darauf, mehr Fahrrad zu fahren, die Verwendung von Energiesparlampen zu steigern, auf ökologisch unsinnige Fernreisen zu verzichten und die Notwendigkeit, mehr bewusstseinsbildende Rockkonzerte zu veranstalten.
Dieses Reaktionsmuster haben wir auch schon früher erlebt, zum Beispiel beim Wirbelsturm Mitch, der zeitlich passend zum Rio-Summit in 1992 das Gewissen der Welt wach rüttelte, aber darüber hinaus die Betroffenen im Wesentlichen allein mit ihren Problem ließ.
Im Falle des Tsunamis im Jahre 2004 zog man eine andere Lektion für das weitere Vorgehehen. Neben akuter Nothilfe wurde ein effizientes Frühwarnsystem versprochen, das gute Fortschritte zu machen scheint. In diesem Falle wurde die Gefahr selbst Gegenstand von Vorsorge. Im Falle von Nargis wird stattdessen von der zukünftigen Verschärfung der Gefahr gesprochen, die eine erfolgreiche Klimaschutzpolitik auch erst in einigen Jahrzehnten, wenn überhaupt, in den Griff bekommen würde. Worauf es aber ankommt, ist mit der nächsten Flut, die vielleicht „nur“ 1000 Tote kosten könnte, fertig zu werden.
Wir fordern deshalb eine wissenschaftliche und politische Offensive, die gegenwärtige Verletzbarkeit vor Ort zu bestimmen und geeignete Anpassungsmaßnahmen zur Reduktion eben dieser Verletzbarkeit zu ergreifen. Das wird Geld kosten, aber die Welt sicherer machen. Daneben sollen wir uns weiter engagieren in einer wirksamen Klimaschutzpolitik mit signifikanten Minderungen der Emissionen von Treibhausgasen. Wir müssen aber verstehen, dass die Minderung der Emissionen nicht gegen gegenwärtige Gefahren hilft. Die Welt hat neben dem Menschen gemachten Klimawandel auch noch andere Probleme.
Abstract: When investigating a human contribution to the observed climate change, often detection and attribution studies are sought after. However, for regional scale climate change, a human influence is often not detectable due to the increasing variability with decreasing spatial aggregation and limitations in modelling regional scale climate. Nevertheless, one can investigate if anthropogenic forcing is a plausible explanation for the observed changes. Therefore, we compare the most recent trends in surface temperature over land with anthropogenic climate change projections from regional climate model simulations. We analyze patterns of change with different spatiotemporal resolution. The observed annual area mean changes in daily mean temperature are consistent with the anthropogenic climate change signal. In contrast, we find little consistency in both the seasonal cycle and the spatial variability of the modelled and projected changes. These findings are further robust to the removal of the signal of the North Atlantic Oscillation.
(First paper was - Bhend, J., and H. von Storch, 2007: Consistency of observed winter precipitation trends in northern Europe with regional climate change projections. Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0335-9)
Abstract: Polar lows are severe cyclones in sub-polar oceans sized beyond the resolved scale of existing global reanalysis products. We used the NCEP/NCAR reanalyses data to drive a regional climate model (CLM) to reproduce finer resolved atmospheric fields over the North Atlantic over a two year period. In these fields we detected polar lows by means of a detection algorithm based on a spatial digital bandpass filter. CLM was run in two different ways, the conventional way and with additionally prescribing the analysed large scale situation. The resulting temporal and spatial distributions of polar lows between the different simulations are compared. A reasonable seasonal cycle and spatial distribution was found for all simulations. A lower number of polar lows in the spectral nudged simulation indicates a closer vicinity to reality. Higher temporal and spatial variability between the conventional simulations suggest a more random generation of polar lows. Frequency distributions of track-lengths reveal shorter tracks when nudging is applied. Maximum wind speeds reveal only minor, insignificant differences between all runs and are higher in conventional mode.
30 years of Polish-German cooperation in the field of shelf sea oceanography and coastal engineering: Polish Academy of Science honours Professor Jürgen Sündermann.
Am 8. April wurde Prof. Jürgen Sündermann, ehemals Direktor des Zentrums für Meeres- und Klimaforschung der Universität Hamburg, in einer Feierstunde in Gdansk mit der Jubiläumsmedaille der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften geehrt. Dies geschah in Würdigung seiner langjährigen Verdienste um die deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit auf den Gebieten der Ozeanographie und des Ingenieurwesens der Küstengewässer.
Ausgangspunkt der Kooperation war eine Konferenz über „Advances in Sediment Transport“ in Jablonna bei Warschau, auf der Jürgen Sündermann – eben zum Professor an der Universität Hamburg berufen – eingeladener Vortragender war. Dabei zeigten sich bei dem Institut für Meereskunde der Universität Hamburg und dem Institut für Wasserbau der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gdansk sehr verwandte Forschungsinteressen. Im Mai 1979 unterzeichneten die Direktoren der beiden Institute (Prof. Jürgen Sündermann und Prof. Piotr Wilde) ein „Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Scientific Cooperation“ mit dem Ziel, auf den Gebieten
· numerische Simulation von Strömungs- und Transportvorgängen in Flachwassergebieten,
· Verifikation hydrodynamisch-numerischer Modelle durch Beobachtungsdaten
näher zusammenzuarbeiten. Diese Kooperation sollte begleitet sein von einem Austausch von Wissenschaftlern und regulären gemeinsamen Seminaren über aktuelle Forschungsthemen.
Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft und die Polnische Akademie der Wissenschaften förderten diese Zusammenarbeit von Anfang an und haben sie inzwischen 30 Jahre lang kontinuierlich unterstützt. Die gemeinsame Arbeit erwies sich als sehr fruchtbar sowohl bezüglich der wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse als auch der zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen und wurde zu einer Keimzelle für eine breitere deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit in der Küstenforschung. Schrittweise wurden auf beiden Seiten weitere interessierte Partner einbezogen wie das GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht, das Franzius-Institut Hannover, das Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde, das Institut für Ozeanologie der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Sopot, die Universität Sczcecin. So entstand eine Plattform für Kommunikation und Koordination in der Küstenforschung, besonders der südlichen Ostsee, die zu weiteren bilateralen und später europäischen Projekten führte. Namentlich in den achtziger Jahren, als die politischen Machtblöcke in Europa noch existierten, erwies sich diese Forschergruppe als zuverlässig und vertrauensbildend.
Bis heute sind zehn gemeinsame Seminare über jeweils aktuelle Themen der Küstenforschung (z.B. Oderflut, regionale Auswirkungen von Klimaänderung) veranstaltet und dokumentiert worden: 1982 Hamburg, 1985 Gdansk, 1988 Hannover, 1991 Sopot, 1993 Insel Vilm, 1995 Swinoujscie, 1997 Ueckermünde, 2000 Starbienino, 2003 Ratzeburg, 2007 Gdansk.
Als Zeichen der Anerkennung und für seine wissenschaftlichen Beiträge wurde Jürgen Sündermann 1994 zum Ausländischen Mitglied der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften gewählt. Er gehört seit einigen Jahren dem Herausgeberteam der renommierten polnischen Zeitschrift „Oceanologia“ an.
Jürgen Sündermann ist inzwischen emeritiert. Daher 2007 wurde zwischen Jürgen Sündermann und Hans von Storch verabredet, dass die deutsche Federführung dieser deutsch-polnischen Kooperation vom GKSS Instituts für Küstenforschung übernommen wird; auf polnischer Seite liegt die Federführung beim Instituts für Wasserbau Gdansk. Mit der Ausrichtung des 2007er Treffen in Gdansk hat diese neue Anordnung ihre erste Probe erfolgreich bestanden; eine Fortsetzung der Seminarreihe und eine aktive Gestaltung der Zusammenarbeit in konkreten Projekten ist vorgesehen – mit Jürgen Sündermann als wichtigem Akteur, dessen Erfahrung, Übersicht und diplomatische Fähigkeiten unverzichtbar in diesem Prozess sind.
In English.
Abstract: This study explores the possibility to reconstruct the weather of SE Asia for the last decades using an atmospheric regional climate model, the Climate version of the Lokal Model (CLM). For this purpose global National Centers for Environmental Prediction - National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) reanalyses data were dynamically downscaled to 50 km and in a double-nesting approach to 16.5 km grid distance. To prevent the regional model from deviating to a great extent from the reanalyses for spacious weather phenomena, a spectral nudging technique was used which serves as a constraint exclusively for the large spatial scales of the regional simulation. The performance of this technique in dealing with SE Asian typhoons is now examined. First case studies indicate that tropical storms which are described by the reanalyses are correctly identied and tracked; considerably deeper core pressure and higher wind speeds are simulated compared to the driving reanalyses. When the regional atmospheric model is run without spectral nudging, significant intra-ensemble variability occurs; also additional, non-observed typhoons form. Several sensitivity experiments were performed concerning varied grid distances, different initial starting dates of the simulations and changed spectral nudging parameters.
So wurden Stellvertretergrössen für Sturmtätigkeit, die auf Luftdruckmessungen beruhen, gemeinsam mit dem Österreichischen Wetterdienst in Wien ausgedehnt auf Zentaleuropa und Ostkanada [1,2]. Auch hier zeigten sich, wie schon zuvor im Bereich von Nord- und Ostsee, keine systematischen, anhaltenden Anstiege oder Abstiege von Sturmtätigkeit sondern vielmehr markante Schwankungen von Jahrzehnt zu Jahrzehnt.
Ein anderer Zugang, der bei GKSS entwickelt worden ist, verwendet regionale Klimamodelle, die operationelle großskalige Analysen oder Szenarien globaler Klimamodelle dynamisch „herunterskalieren“. Dieser Ansatz ist jetzt angewandt worden auf Taifune in Ostasien [3,4] und auf „Polar Lows“ im nördlichen Nordatlantik [5,6]. In beiden Fällen ist die Tauglichkeit des Ansatzes in Fallstudien nachgewiesen worden, sodass nun die volle Zeitperiode der letzten 45 Jahre bzw. Szenarien zukünftigen Klimawandels angegangen werden können. Die Arbeiten zu den ostasiatischen Taifunen ist eingebettet in eine informelle Kooperation mit taiwanesischen und südkoreanischen Partnern; die Arbeiten zu den Polar Lows sind Teil des virtuellen HGF Instituts EXTROP, in dem DLR, Universität Hamburg, Max-Planck Institut für Meteorologie und GKSS zusammen arbeiten. Die vorliegenden Ergebnisse werden auch zusammengefasst [7] und für Anwendungsfragen, etwa im Zusammenhang mit dem Küstenschutz in Norddeutschland, kontextualisiert [8]. Sie fließen direkt in die Praxis des Norddeutschen Klimabüros bei GKSS.
[1] Matulla, C., and H. von Storch, 2008: Changes in Eastern Canadian Storminess since 1880. J. Climate, eingereicht
[2] Matulla, C., W. Schöner, H. Alexandersson, H. von Storch, and X.L. Wang, 2007: European Storminess: Late 19th Century to Present, Climate Dynamics DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0333-y
[3] Feser, F.,and H. von Storch, 2008: Regional modelling of the western Pacific typhoon season 2004, Meteor. Z., 17 (3), 1-10
[4] Feser, F., and H. von Storch, 2008: A dynamical downscaling case study for typhoons in SE Asia using a regional climate model. Mon. Wea. Rev. 136, 1806-1815
[5] Zahn, M., H. von Storch, and S. Bakan, 2008: Climate mode simulation of North Atlantic Polar Lows in a limited area model, Tellus, im Druck
[6] Zahn, M., and H. von Storch, 2008: Tracking Polar Lows in CLM, Meteor. Z., im Druck
[7] von Storch, H., and R. Weisse, 2008: Regional storm climate and related marine hazards in the Northeast Atlantic, In Diaz, H.F. and Murnane, R.J. (eds.), Climate Extremes and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, im Druck
[8] von Storch, H. and K. Woth, 2008: Storm surges, perspectives and options. Sustainability Science Vol.3 No.1 DOI 10.1007/s11625-008-0044-2
pdf's der gelisteten Beiträge können hier heruntergeladen werden.
31. March 2008 - Hans von Storch has been invited to become a member of the Centre for Globalisation & Governance at the University of Hamburg, Department of Social Sciences. The goal of the centre is to improve the understanding of processes and effects of globalisation and to contribute to the further development of the state of empirical research and the methodological and theoretical framework for an analysis of the combined effects of globalisation and governance. A particular focus of analysis is on the role of new governance structures and mechanisms which evolve as a result of the increasing density of economic, social, technological and cultural relations worldwide. Besides the investigation of globalisation-related changes of structures and processes of governance, the centre is predominantly concerned with changes in the substantial effects of governance.I have indeed used the speed-analog, but with a different meaning. The 150 km/h should represent the present climate dangers, and the 160 km/h the dangers in a climate changing due to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations. Obviously this is not the same as "world's problems were already so big that the added burdens caused by rising temperatures would be relatively small". Unfortunately, and quite differently from the routine I am used with US journalists, did Mr Zarembo not speak to me to find out what I actually said and mean. Misrepresentations like this happen, but it is unfortunate as Zarembos lines have been used by other media and by blogs, which proliferates a significantly distorted view of mine.
It seems that others quoted in the same article are also less than satisfied with the reporting - see prometheus..
Abstract: An ensemble of typhoon events was examined to detect systematic skills and deficiencies of regional atmospheric models in dynamical downscaling these extreme weather phenomena from global reanalyses data. A regional atmospheric model hindcast was computed for the typhoon season 2004 for SE Asia and the western North Pacific. Global reanalyses data were dynamically downscaled to a grid resolution of about 50 km and in a double-nesting approach to 18 km. Simulated typhoon tracks and intensities were compared to best track data. The comparison revealed improved SLP and near-surface wind values by the RCM compared to the reanalyses for most cases. The reanalyses showed smaller great circle distances to the best track data than the regional model. Precipitation patterns and rainfall amounts were simulated more realistically by the RCMusing the higher resolution compared to the 50 km run. It is concluded that regional models can improve simulated typhoon developments from global forcing reanalyses data by giving lower core pressure and higher wind speeds and more realistic precipitation patterns even though these values still do not reach observed values.
Kollegen, die einschlägig relevantes Material für den Bericht veröffentlicht haben, werden gebeten, sich direkt mit den Leitauthoren in Verbindung zu setzen.
Im Rahmen der GKSS-Kommunikationsstrategie mit der Öffentlichkeit spielen neben regionalen Klimabüros derartige Berichte eine signifikante Rolle (vgl. auch Beitrag in nature geosciences).
Abstract: This review paper attempts to summarize the scattered and fragmented knowledge about past and possible future changing storm-surge statistics using the particularly well-studied case of the North Sea as an example. For this region, a complete and robust analysis methodology has been developed in recent years. This methodology is based on dynamical and statistical models. Using the concept of dynamical downscaling, development during recent decades, when sufficiently good and homogeneous weather data exist, has been ‘‘reconstructed,’’ and scenarios of possible future change are described. ‘‘Localization’’ allows estimation of changes at specific sites, e.g., harbors. As local water-level statistics depend not only on climate variations but also on local modifications of the local bathymetry, new options for adaptation emerge. For the case of Hamburg, an option for such future adaptations is discussed.
Graduate students, PhD students and postdocs are invited to apply. For application, please send an email to ilona.liesner(at)hzg.de and include a short cv and a list of publications.
Profesor Zdzislaw Kaczmarek, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (P.A.S.). Studied hydraulic engineering at the Technical University in Warsaw. Received Ph.D. in 1958, habilitation in 1961. From 1961 to 1978 professor at the Technical University in Warsaw, teaching hydrology and water resources. From 1976 to 1980 director of the Polish Hydrological and Meteorological Service, and from 1981 to 1988 – the General Secretary of the Polish Academy of Sciences. From 1975 to 1976 and from 1989 to 1991 research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, leading the Institute’s Water Resources Division. From 1992 to 2004 head of Water Resources Department of the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His scientific interests included stochastic hydrology, theory of water resource systems, water management, impact of climate change on environment, risk governance and science policy. Former president of the International Commission on water Resources Systems and v-president of the BALTEX Steering Committee. Member of Global Change Committee of P.A.S., National Council for Water Management, and of several national and international associations. Lead author for the 2nd and 3rd IPCC Assessments. Awarded the International Hydrology Prize of the International Association of Hydrologic Sciences. Published over 180 papers in hydrology, water resources and science policy.
Abstract: Polar lows are not properly resolved in global re-analyses. In order to describe the year-to-year variability and decadal trends in the formation of such meso-scale storms, atmospheric limited area models, which post-process re-analysis data, may be an appropriate tool. In this study we demonstrate the merits and potential of this approach.
A series of three week long ensemble simulations of weather situations over the NE Atlantic with a limited area model/regional climate model (CLM) are examined. The model was driven with NCEP-NCAR re-analyses at the lateral and lower boundaries; additionally, the spectral nudging technique was used to enforce the large-scale state, as given by the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis, on the simulation. The ensemble members differ by initial conditions taken from several consecutive days.
In most of the cases, a polar low developed after a simulated time of about two weeks, i.e., long after the initialization of the model calculations. The spectrally nudged version of the model is very insensitive to initial conditions. The observed polar lows were reproduced in all ensemble members. A reasonable correlation between the simulated polar low features and those derived from a satellite product (HOAPS-III) and operational high-resolution weather analyses (DWD) is found. The polar lows are considerably deepened compared to the driving NCEP-NCAR analysis, but the comparison with local data indicates some differences in detail.
When CLM is run without the large-scale constraint of spectral nudging, considerable variability emerges across the different ensemble members and the observed polar low often does not emerge.
The scientific work at the Institute for Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Center is embedded in two major research programmes, namely the HGF programme PACES (Polar Regions and Coasts in the changing Earth System) and the center of excellence CLiSAP (Integrated Climate System Analysis and prediction). The former, a joint effort with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), focusses on processes, specific regions (polar, coasts), past climates and ecosystems, while the later is made up of geoscience and other institute for the University of Hamburg, the Max-Planck Institute of Meteorology and our Institute of Coastal Research CLiSAP contributes significantly global research, scenario development and regionalization and other issues. Significantly, the partners of PACES and CLiSAP together run the German Climate Computer Center DKRZ).
Now, the PACES programme has been reviewed by an independent, international review panel, which after three days of presentations and inquiry recommended funding of the effort and praised the proposed work. CLiSAP had passed its critical review already earlier, so that the GKSS work can go full speed ahead in all its directions, mainly the analysis of decadal variability and change of coastal systems (climate, water quality, ecosystems), as well as the development of monitoring methods and exploitation of such monitoring data.
Springer Publisher has published the BACC (BALTEX Assessment of Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Basin) report as book on 16 January 2008. Pressemitteilung, English press release, Finnish press release.Abstract: We study the appearance of long-term persistence in temperature records, obtained from the global coupled general circulation model ECHO-G for two runs, using detrended fluctuation analysis. The first run is a historical simulation for the years 1000?1990 (with greenhouse gas, solar, and volcanic forcing) while the second run is a 1000 year ”control-run” with constant external forcings. We consider daily data of all grid-points as well as their biannual averages in order to suppress two-yearly oscillations appearing in the model records for some sites near the Equator. Our results substantially confirm earlier studies of (considerably shorter) instrumental data and extend their results from decades to centuries. In the case of the historical simulation we find that most continental sites have correlation exponents between 0.8 and 0.6. For the ocean sites the longterm correlations seem to vanish at the Equator and become non-stationary at the Arctic Circles. In the control-run the long-term correlations are less pronounced. Compared with the historical run, the correlation exponents are increased, and show a more pronounced latitude dependence, visible also at continental sites. When analyzing biannual averages, we find stronger long-term correlations in the historical run at continental sites and a less pronounced latitude dependence. In all cases, the exponent does not depend on the continentality of the sites.
A significant aspect of this paper is that it addresses an issue which has had some public repercussions in the past. Earlier studies had shown that control runs with global GCMs would not reproduce the same level of long term memory as found in observed records. The present paper shows that when dealing with millenial simulations exposed to natural volcanic and solar forcing this contradiction vanishes. It seems that "long term memory" is not an intrinsic property of the GCMs themselves but of the set-up of the model simulations.
Apart of the fact that Hasse was a very nice, intelligent and cooperative guy, he was a key member of the WASA project with his century-long time series of winter percentiles of geostrophic winds derived from triangles of pressure readings - Alexandersson, H., T. Schmith, K. Iden and H. Tuomenvirta, 1998: Long-term trend variations of the storm climate over NW Europe. The Global Atmosphere Ocean System 6, 97-120. So far, this article scored 56 hits on Google Scholars, and I am sure it will be frequently referenced in future papers as a classic paper on storminess. Using his approach and data another paper came out in 2007 (Matulla, C., W. Schöner, H. Alexandersson, H. von Storch, and X.L. Wang, 2007: European Storminess: Late 19th Century to Present, Climate Dynamics DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0333-y), which eventually made me a proud co-author of Hasse.
Hasse was a very careful scientist, who would not succumb to the temptations of fame and limelight; indeed he devoted most of his scientific life to the problem of homogeneity of data (his article A homogeneity test applied to precipitation data in J. Climatol, 1986 got 225 hits). Homogeneity is the fundamental, often hardly visible problem in all analysis of observed data, which is so often neglected by people eager to publish dramatic and suprising articles. Some underestimate the challenges associated with the issue, and consistently neither "science" or "nature" can claim of having had Hasse as an author (as far as I know), but for the insider homogeneity and homogenization is an challenging and most relevant issue, which needs much more attention - now sadly without Hasse's support.
Abstract: This review paper attempts to summarize the scattered and fragmented knowledge about past and possible future changing storm surge statistics – with using the particularly well studied case of the North Sea as an example. For this region, a complete and robust analysis methodology has been developed in the past years. This methodology is based on dynamical and statistical models. Using the concept of dynamical downscaling, the development during the past decades, when sufficiently good and homogeneous weather data exist, has been “reconstructed”, and scenarios of possible future change are described. A “localization”-allows to estimate changes at specific sites, e.g. harbors. Since local water level statistics do depend not only on climate variations but also on local modifications of the local bathymetry, new options for adaptation emerge. For the case of Hamburg, an option for such future adaptations are discussed.
Abstract: Often it is claimed that the recent changes in northern European climate are at least partly anthropogenic even though a human influence has not yet been successfully detected. Hence we investigate whether the recent changes are consistent with regional climate change projections. Therefore, trends in winter (DJF) mean precipitation in northern Europe are compared to human induced changes as predicted by a set of four regional climate model simulations. The patterns of recent trends and predicted changes match reasonably well as indicated by pattern correlation and the similarity is very likely not random. However, the model projections generally underestimate the recent change in winter precipitation. That is, the signal-to-noise ratio of the anthropogenic precipitation change is either rather low or the presently used simulations are significantly flawed in their ability to project changes into the future. European trends contain large signals related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), of which a major unknown part may be unrelated to the anthropogenic signal. Therefore, we also examine the consistency of recent and projected changes after subtracting the NAO signal in both the observations and in the projections. It turns out that even after the removal of the NAO signal, the pattern of trends in the observations is similar to those projected by the models. At the same time, the magnitude of the trends is considerably reduced and closer to the magnitude of the change in the projections.
Jetzt kam ein bemerkenswerter Leserbrief eines Sozialwissenschaftlers, in dem es heisst: "Die beiden schreiben in ihrem Beitrag zu dem Heft, welches ja auch in den Schulen herumgeht und eine wesentliche Quelle der Lehrerbildung ist: 'Für die Verminderung der Klimaveränderungen - nur darum geht es, nicht um Vermeidung - besteht ..." (S. 35). Nach dem Wortlaut von Art. 2 Klimarahmenkonvention (zusammen mit der Definition von 'Klimawandel' in Art. 1 No.2) geht es der Menschheit aber um die Beendigung des anthropogenen Klimawandels, nicht lediglich um dessen 'Verminderung'. Das ist völlig unstrittiger Konsens in der Staatengemeinschaft." Offenbar gilt auch hier Morgenstern: was nicht sein darf, das nicht sein kann.
28.9.2007 - Interview mit Hans von Storch "Dem Klimawandel durch Anpassung begegnen" in heise.de
18 June 2007 - The new CAS "Yantai Institute for Coastal Zone Research on Sustainable Development" (YIC) makes Hans von Storch a Guest Professor. (Foto: with director Ping Shi)Hans von Storch has been invited into a first cohorte of contributors, and here is The decay of the hockey stick, a joint contribution of Hans von Storch and Eduardo Zorita.
4 April 2007 - Roger Pielke jr.'s new book The Honest Broker - "Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics" - now available in Europe (Cambridge U Press). A needed book for a much needed debate about the relationship of science, scientists, politics and policies.Roger Pielke jr. was the 2006-recipient of the Eduard Brückner Preis.
"Die Ruhe vor dem Sturm -
Sturmfluten an der Nordsee können ab Mitte des Jahrhunderts gefährlicher werden -
Wissenschaftler am Institut für Küstenforschung des GKSS Forschungszentrums Geesthacht GmbH haben die Vergangenheit der Stürme und Sturmfluten analysiert und jetzt mit Modellen die Zukunft berechnet. Ihr Ergebnis: Durch den Menschen verursachte Klimaveränderungen werden zu erhöhten Sturmflutwasserständen im Bereich der Deutschen Nordseeküste führen. Sturmfluten unserer Tage sind vom menschengemachten Klimawandel aber noch nicht berührt."
Press release, 30 October 2005
"The Calm before the Storm -
Storm surges in the North Sea could become more dangerous from the middle of the century.
Scientists from the Institute for Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre Geesthacht in Germany have analysed the past history of storms and storm floods in the North Sea region, and used models to investigate future changes. Their result: human-induced climate changes will lead to higher storm surges along the German, Dutch and Danish North Sea coasts but current storm surges are not influenced by human-induced climate change."
Audio Interview der HGF (auf deutsch)
Impressum: Hans von Storch, Kirchenallee 23, 20099 Hamburg, +49 40 4192 4472, hvonstorch(at)web.de
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