Stephan Matthiesen

NHG presentations now online

The two presentations (in German) on Climate Change (29 April 2013) and Boreal Forest Fires and Air Quality (1 July 2013), presented at the Society for Natural History (NHG) in Nürnberg, Germany, are now available as PDFs in the section Material.

Position paper on surface temperatures published - comments are welcome

The EarthTemp community position paper, which reviews the state of art of measuring the surface temperatures of Earth and recommends steps to improve our understanding, has been published as a discussion paper in the open access journal Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (Discussions) (GI(D)). As the paper aims to capture a community position and influence future science funding and policy decisions, all interested colleagues are encouraged to submit comments or reviews during the discussion phase (until 6 August) which will then be considered (together with the invited peer-reviews) when preparing the final version of the paper.

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Programme EarthTemp Workshop "Extreme regions"

The programm for the EarthTemp Workshop "Characterising surface temperatures in data-sparse and extreme regions (with focus on high-latitude domains)" on the 12.-14. Juni in Copenhagen now available on the EarthTemp website.The workshop focusses on the specific challenges of measuring temperatures in higher latitudes, but it is also open to all researchers from all backgrounds who are interested in exchanging their experiences.

EGU: Presentation and poster now online

My oral presentation and my poster at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union are now available (see also the overview over our EGU conference sessions).

EGU conference sessions: programme is online

The programme of the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), including the two sessions that we have organised, is now online. The session on measuring the surface temperatures of Earth will take place on Monday and Tuesday (8 and 9 April), the session on impacts of boreal wildfires on the troposphere follows on Wednesday (10 April).

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BORTAS overview paper published

The overview paper for the BORTAS project has just been published. It introduces the background and setup to the BORTAS consortium, which aims to "Quantify the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the North Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellite". The paper is open access and currently in the open review and discussion stage in the BORTAS special issue of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Discussions) (ACP(D)), and interested colleagues are invited to comment.

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Patterns course starting again

The open studies course "Patterns in Nature" starts again today (14 January 2013) and will run for 10 weeks every Monday evening. We will review and discuss a number of pattern formation processes that can be observed in nature. More details about the course, and the course material, can be found on the page Patterns in Nature (OLL Jan-Mar 2013).

10000 years climate and human history

Title of the Magazine Kijk 12/2012

The effect of climatic changes on human history is the topic of the article “10.000 years of powerful climate” by Marysa van den Berg in the current issue of the Dutch science magazine Kijk. The author had interviewed me about the topic and quotes me several times with comments about climate history. This carefully researched article, beautifully illustrated by Marco Lap, gives an overview over many interesting phases of human history which I have also discussed in my course Climate and human history, starting about 10,000 years ago, when the warmer and, more importantly, more stable climate of the post-glacial period made the transition to a sedentary farming livestyle (“neolithic revolution”) possible.

Position paper: surface temperatures - towards an integrated understanding

New on the EarthTemp website: the position paper arising from the first EarthTemp workshop isnow online. It details the main recommendations that are, in our view, useful steps towards an integrated understanding of the variability and change of the Earth's surface temperatures.

Two conference sessions at EGU Vienna 2013

The programme committee has now approved two conference sessions, on "Taking the surface temperature of the Earth" and on the "Impact of boreal wildfires on tropospheric chemistry", which I had submitted to the General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union (EGU). EGU conference sessions need at least 20 talks and posters; I will now, together with the co-conveners, advertise these widely in my networks and look for contributors. The conference takes place on 7-12 April in Vienna.

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