The 22nd Swiss Global Change Day focused on IPCC

After a three-year break, with the exception of an online edition in 2021, the climate-interested community met again on site for the 22nd Swiss Global Change Day.

The focus of the event was on the recently published Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The message is clear: extreme weather events are likely to increase in the future. And as warming progresses, the risks multiply. The adaptive capacity of humans and nature is increasingly being exceeded.

But what does this mean for Switzerland? 16 researchers from Switzerland contributed to the current IPCC report as authors - and they shared their findings with presentations, as moderators or in the audience on site:

Gian Kasper-Plattner (WSL) led through the session ’The Physical Science Basis’. Erich Fischer, Sonia Seneviratne (both ETH Zurich) and Samuel Jaccard (Universities of Lausanne and Bern) discussed their contributions.

Moderated by Andreas Fischlin (ETH Zurich), the discussion on ‘Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’ included Veruska Muccione (University of Zurich), Thomas Bernauer (ETH Zurich) and Gueladio Cisse (Swiss TPH).

The third session on ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’ was moderated by the new ProClim President Karin Ingold. Stefano Battiston (University of Zurich), Julia Steinberger (University of Lausanne) and Anthony Patt (ETH Zurich) completed the series of talks.

Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga was also a guest at this year's Swiss Global Change Day. In her speech, she reaffirmed Switzerland's climate goals: The net zero target is technically possible and economically viable. Switzerland could invest almost twelve billion francs in domestic energies (see also video below).

The young researchers, for their part, invested their time in preparing a scientific poster for the traditional poster competition: with 31 posters, they presented the diversity in climate and global change research. The following four young researchers were awarded a prize worth 1000 Swiss francs:

Atmosphere • Hydrosphere

• Angela-Maria Burgdorf (University of Bern): A written path to the past. A global inventory of quantitative documentary evidence related to climate since the Late Medieval Period.
• Linnea Bühler (University of Bern): Source Regions of Sea Salt Aerosols from Dome C, Antarctica

Geosphere • Biosphere

• Giulia Wienhues (University of Bern): Multiproxy paleolimnological reconstruction of Lake Victoria`s environmental history

Human Dimensions • Sustainability

• Lena Gubler (WSL): Shared Socioeconomic Pathways SSPs fur die Schweiz

The event was also marked by the arrival of new faces: Philippe Thalmann (EPF Lausanne) handed over the presidency of ProClim to Karin Ingold (University of Bern). Filippo Lechthaler, who will take up his position as Head of ProClim on 1 June 2022, also introduced himself.

After the Swiss Global Change Day, ProClim has more events coming up this year: From 14 to 15 September 2022, the K3 Congress on Climate Communication will take place in Zurich, and on 16 November 2022, the 13th Symposium on Adaptation to Climate Change will be held jointly with the 5th NCCS Forum in Biel.

The presentations of the speakers are not all available yet. Thank you for your understanding.