Boris Herrmann - Segeln am Limit: Boris Herrmann - Das Rennen - hier anschauen

In 80 Tagen umrundet Boris Herrmann bei der Vendée Globe den Globus – 45.000 Kilometer nonstop allein auf seinem Segelboot. Er kämpft mit Extremwetter, Blitzeinschlag, Höhenangst und Einsamkeit. Schlafen kann er nie mehr als 90 Minuten am Stück. Immer wieder geht etwas am Boot kaputt, was das Aus bedeuten kann. Nach dem Zusammenstoß mit einem unbekannten Gegenstand ist eine der Schwingen des Bootes beschädigt, das Foil. Die letzten knapp 4000 Kilometer legt er mit einem notdürftigen Flickwerk am Foil zurück - in der Hoffnung, dass es hält. Doch es geht bei dieser Regatta für ihn nicht nur um eine gute Platzierung. Er sagt, er segele eigentlich zwei Rennen - das eine davon ist ein Rennen gegen den Klimawandel. Dafür setzt Boris Herrmann auf den Ozeanen Messbojen aus und sammelt auf seiner Route Messdaten aus den entlegensten Winkeln der Weltmeere, wo kein anders Schiff je hinkommt – denn: die Meere produzieren den Sauerstoff für jeden zweiten unserer Atemzüge!

Klimapolis Laboratory

“Hasselmann legacy” symposium on stochastic thinking in climate science

Renowned researchers meet at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in order to discuss current and future work in the line of Klaus Hasselmann’s contributions to climate science.

Portraits of Climate

Indirect stratospheric moisture increase after a Pinatubo-magnitude eruption can be comparable to direct increase after 2022 Hunga - Communications Earth & Environment

Indirect moisture injections to the stratosphere after a Pinatubo-sized volcanic eruption could be comparable to direct injection observed after the 2022 Hunga Tonga eruptions, according to a quantification based on the warming of the lowest cold-point temperatures in the tropical tropopause layer.

Klima, Klimawandel und zunehmende Extremereignisse

Dieses Kapitel liefert einen Überblick über die klimatischen Bedingungen in China und hierbei insbesondere über die Besonderheiten von zwei wichtigen Parametern für Extremereignisse, der Temperatur und des Niederschlags. Auf dieser Basis...

End-of-century levels of extreme heat and drought are approaching Europe swiftly

Extreme heat and drought typical of an end-of-century climate could soon occur over Europe, and it could do so repeatedly. Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, MSCA Fellow at ETHZ and formerly at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), in collaboration with MPI-M scientists Wolfgang Müller and Jochem Marotzke, show that single and compound heat and drought stress typical of an end-of-century climate could occur over Europe within the next two decades, and that it could occur again in consecutive years. The authors also show that multi-year heat extremes are connected to one of the most predictable components of the climate system: the multidecadal variability of the north Atlantic.

How the Atlantic overturning got its observing system

The RAPID observing system has monitored the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) at 26.5°N since 2004. Many physical oceanographers and climate scientists routinely use these measurements or refer to them, and the observing system’s 20th anniversary in April 2024 marks it as one of the longest dynamical time series in oceanography. But the history of ideas that have led to the establishment of the RAPID monitoring system has been shrouded in mystery for all but a select few. In a paper just published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) has lifted this veil and also proposes a strategy for how we might finally arrive at a robust understanding of what causes AMOC variability.

The Varying Earth’s Radiative Feedback Connected to the Ocean Energy Uptake: A Theoretical Perspective from Conceptual Frameworks

Abstract When quadrupling the atmospheric CO2 concentration in relation to preindustrial levels, most global climate models show an initially strong net radiative feedback that significantly reduces the energy imbalance during the first two decades after the quadrupling. Afterward, the net radiative feedback weakens, needing more surface warming than before to reduce the remaining energy imbalance. Such weakening radiative feedback has its origin in the tropical oceanic stratiform cloud cover, linked to an evolving spatial warming pattern. In the classic linearized energy balance framework, such variation is represented by an additional term in the planetary budget equation. This additional term is usually interpreted as an ad hoc emulation of the cloud feedback change, leaving unexplained the relationship between this term and the spatial warming pattern. I use a simple nonlinearized energy balance framework to justify that there is a physical interpretation of this term: the evolution of the spatial pattern of warming is explained by changes in the ocean’s circulation and energy uptake. Therefore, the global effective thermal capacity of the system also changes, leading to the additional term. In reality, the clouds respond to what occurs in the ocean, changing their radiative effect. In the equation, the term is now a concrete representation of the ocean’s role. Additionally, I derive for the first time an explicit mathematical expression of the net radiative feedback and its temporal evolution in the linearized energy balance framework. This mathematical expression supports the new proposed interpretation. As a corollary, it justifies the 20-yr time scale used to study the variation of the net radiative feedback. Significance Statement Linearized energy balance models have helped the study of Earth’s radiative response. However, the present linear models are at the edge of usefulness to get more insights. In this work, I justify that part of the nonlinearity in the radiative response can be explained without peculiar atmospheric radiative feedback mechanisms or a nonlinearity in the radiative response. Instead, the concept of an evolving thermal capacity recovers the ocean’s role in redistributing the energy, changing the spatial warming pattern, and, finally, altering the atmospheric feedback mechanisms. This work also justifies the time scales used in the field for studying the variation of the net radiative feedback.